Brendan Calling

Speaking of Specter

A divided judicial panel ruled this morning that hundreds of foreign nationals detained for as long as five years at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do not have rights to challenge their indefinite imprisonment through the U.S. court system.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that Congress’s 2006 Military Commissions Act firmly blocked detainees from trying to appeal the president’s decision to hold them without charges and without any promise of release.

“Everyone who has followed the interaction between Congress and the Supreme Court knows full well that one of the primary purposes of the [Military Commissions Act] was to overrule” the Supreme Court’s decision to give detainees access to federal courts, Randolph wrote. “Everyone, that is, except the detainees. Their cases, they argue, are not covered.”

Randolph wrote in the 25-page opinion that the arguments by the detainees’ attorneys were “creative but not cogent.”

“To accept them,” he said, “would be to defy the will of Congress.”

That is a direct result of Specter’s craven vote for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the Senator himself described as “unconstitutional”. Now the case will be appealed to the Supreme Court, which will take God only knows how long (and may not even be heard), during which hundreds of people, many innocent of wrongdoing, will sit in cages, attempt suicide, and perhaps be abused.

Good old Senator Specter. Whether it’s gutting the Constitution, enabling the President’s illegal warrantless spying program, or ignoring injured veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, he stands true to the GOP motto, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

Unlike dim bulbs like Rick Santorum, Ted Stevens, and other low-lights of the Republican party, Specter can’t explain away his role in this debacle by pleading stupidity. He’s an attorney. He brags that he is the Defender of the Constitution. Specter knows the ramifications of his vote better than most, and he surely knows that many of the detained are innocent. He simply. Does not. Give. A. Shit.

It should happen to his family, one thousand times over. Let Arlen wonder where his kids are for years. Let Arlen wonder if the rumors of rape and torture are true. Let it be Arlen’s grandchildren consigned to windowless cages and solitary confinement.

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