Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today following the United States Supreme Court decision that trying Guantanamo detainees before military commissions violates U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions:

“Today’s Supreme Court decision reaffirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system. This is a triumph for the rule of law.

“The rights of due process are among our most cherished liberties, and today’s decision is a rebuke of the Bush Administration’s detainee policies and a reminder of our responsibility to protect both the American people and our Constitutional rights. We cannot allow the values on which our country was founded to become a casualty in the war on terrorism.”

“All are entitled”? “Our” Constitutional rights? Hamdan is a Yemeni captured in Afghanistan. He has no Constitutional rights. Pelosi is the leader of the House Democrats, and she misunderstands the most basic aspects of our system of government. She’s a joke.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-3 against the Bush Administration in the Hamdan case.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti- terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.

….

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court’s liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

More later after the ruling becomes available.

The ruling can be read here.

Via Michelle Malkin:

U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) today issued the following statement on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Hamdan case:

“We are disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision. However, we believe the problems cited by the Court can and should be fixed.

“It is inappropriate to try terrorists in civilian courts. It threatens our national security and places the safety of jurors in danger. For those reasons and others, we believe terrorists should be tried before military commissions.

“In his opinion, Justice Breyer set forth the path to a solution of this problem. He wrote, ‘Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.’

“We intend to pursue legislation in the Senate granting the Executive Branch the authority to ensure that terrorists can be tried by competent military commissions. Working together, Congress and the administration can draft a fair, suitable, and constitutionally permissible tribunal statute.”

So in short, it’s a mixed bag – the Supreme Court made a bad ruling that undermines the authority of the Commander in Chief during wartime, but they left open a door to allow Congress to rectify the problem the Court created today. Congress should act quickly to do so. There’s a war on – trying to give amnesty to illegal aliens and stopping a few hippies from burning the flag can wait a week or two.

Via The Washington Post the Democrats are trying to spin their call for retreat in Iraq as the same as the Pentagon’s events-based planning for eventual troop reductions in Iraq.

Senate Democrats reacted angrily yesterday to a report that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that the plan attributed to Gen. George W. Casey resembles the thinking of many Democrats who voted for a nonbinding resolution to begin a troop drawdown in December. That resolution was defeated Thursday on a largely party-line vote in the Senate.

“It shouldn’t be a political decision, but it is going to be with this administration,” Levin said on “Fox News Sunday”, calling the kettle black.

It’s really quite simple – the military is planning for eventually leaving Iraq based on events in Iraq. The Democrats want to set an arbitrary date for withdrawal that is completely unconnected to events on the ground in Iraq. The former is contingency planning, the latter is a surrender resolution, which the terrorists in Iraq would certainly take as a victory.

Even a senator as intellectually challenged as Barbara Boxer should be able to tell the difference.

CBS’ 60 Minutes did a profile of ex-CIA officer Tyler Drumheller back in April. We discussed the problems with that story back in April.

Now The Washington Post has essentially done the same story months later. This is the old “Curveball” story; there’s no news here, except that Drumheller is selling a book. Nothing wrong with selling a book of course, but does it warrant a page A1 story in the Post?

The bottom line remains the same – the consensus view before the invasion and liberation of Iraq was that Saddam was a state sponsor of terror who had and/or was developing WMD. Going back now and cherry-picking footnotes and caveats from old intelligence reports will not change that fact. More “I told them so” from ex-CIA agents who are trying to cover their mistakes and sell books will not change that fact.

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Another Mt. Soledad Cross update: The activist liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has essentially sided with those who want to destroy the Mt. Soledad war memorial.

ANN ARBOR, MI – A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to stay Federal District Judge Gordon Thompson’s order to remove the Mt. Soledad Cross pending an appeal. Thus, the City of San Diego must remove the Cross by August 1, 2006, or face fines of $5,000 per day thereafter. In its decision, however, the Ninth Circuit scheduled oral arguments on the matter for the week of October 16, 2006, weeks after the Cross is to be removed. The 43- foot Cross was erected in 1954 and currently is the centerpiece of a national memorial honoring American veterans of all wars.

He obviously has a lot on his plate right now, but it would be great if the president stepped in to help save the war memorial. All of our civilization’s enemies aren’t over in the Middle East.

Discuss: Astrology is as logical and rational a set of beliefs as leftism.

If you thought left-wing blogs were nutty before, just read this.

Via MSNBC:

MIAMI – The FBI has arrested seven men here as part of an ongoing anti-terrorism operation, federal law-enforcement sources tell NBC News.

FBI agents swarmed over a warehouse in Miami’s Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off its metal door. Neighbors said the suspects said they were Muslim and had tried to recruit young people to join their group, which seemed militaristic.

The men “” part of a radical Black Muslim group “” were planning terror acts in Miami and Chicago, officials say. The planned targets were the Sears Tower in Chicago and a federal building in Miami.

….

“There is no imminent threat to Miami or any other area because of these operations,” said Richard Kolko, spokesman for FBI headquarters in Washington. He declined further comment.

“No imminent threat”? So does that mean the Democrats will demand the suspects be set free?

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Update: This story is obviously really all about Karl Rove and the Evil Bushco trying to steal another election, and Patterico can only offer mockery.

Senator John Kerry, exhibiting his great leadership abilities, managed to get twelve other senators to go along with his surrender resolution today. The Senate voted overwhelmingly to reject the idea of a date-certain pullout from Iraq in July 2007.

From The Washington Post:

The Senate today rejected proposals on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, decisively voting down two competing Democratic amendments — one that set a deadline for a pullout and the other that stopped short of establishing a timetable.

Senators first voted 86-13 to defeat a proposal , offered by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), to “require a redeployment” from Iraq starting immediately and to be substantially completed by July 1, 2007.

A second measure , advanced by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), drew support from more Democrats but still went down, 60-39. The nonbinding “sense of Congress” proposal urged President Bush to start pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq this year but did not set a withdrawal deadline.

Both proposals, offered as amendments to the 2007 defense authorization bill, were denounced by Republicans as advocating “defeatism” and a strategy of “cut and run.”

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A small victory in the fight against left-wing political influence in a mainstream American church. Via the NY Times:

Presbyterians Revise Israel Investing Policy

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted yesterday to back off from a decision it made two years ago to pursue divestment from companies that profit from Israel’s involvement in the Palestinian territories.

The resolution, passed overwhelmingly at the church’s general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., responded to outcries by some church members and Jews who accused the church of insensitivity to Israel. The resolution apologized for “the pain that this has caused” among “many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion.”

The news isn’t all good:

The church also sought to reassure Palestinians by including in the resolution a call for an end to Israel’s involvement in Gaza and the West Bank, along with criticism of the Israeli security wall where it encroaches on Palestinian territory and “fails to follow the legally recognized borders of Israel” before the 1967 war.

First, Israel already pulled out of Gaza. Second, it wasn’t Israel that violated the 1967 border in 1967. Third, who can be against a fence to prevent murder-suicide bombers from doing their evil work?

But at least the Presbyterian leadership took a small step in the right direction.

The best comments we’ve run across about Senator Santorum’s news conference about finding WMD in Iraq came from The Evangelical Outpost. An excerpt:

Opposition to the war has nothing to do with the lack of WMDs. It never did. We could find a nuclear bomb in Uday Hussein’s old apartment and John Kerry would still be gearing up for Winter Soldier II. Unless you dropped your moral compass off the side of a swift boat in Cambodia, it’s easy to see that the world is safer because we secured the one WMD that truly mattered: Saddam Hussein.

More important than the weapons that were found (or that have yet to be found) are the ones that will never be created by Saddam’s regime. Many Americans, however, still suffer from the delusion that the only way that Saddam could have been a significant threat was for him to have possessed stockpiles of WMDs.

That’s exactly right. Saddam wasn’t a threat only if he had ready stockpiles of weapons. And the BDS-suffering anti-war left opposed the war before inspections failed to turn up any stockpiles. So it’s impossible for them to honestly say that the absence of stockpiles of WMD is the reason for their opposition.

In the end, the only reason we know for certain that Saddam Hussein is fully and finally disarmed is because President Bush acted. The only reason those screaming “there were no WMD!” know that is because President Bush acted.

Some quick recon of the Angry Left blogosphere today led us to spot this gem, the ultimate in the pot calling the kettle black from Marxist “Screw Them” Moulitsas:

Everything is viewed by partisan lenses by these people. And those who don’t slot nicely into the “Bush is the greatest and infallible!” camp must be viciously attacked. They are really, really, ugly people.

Is this person completely lacking in self-awareness? Or is he simply spouting nonsense he doesn’t believe to his gullible “readers”? We report, you decide.

Update: Any criticism of Kos, makes you “right-wing.” How open-minded.

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And again, via The Corner, another demonstration of a complete lack of self-awareness:

“Memo to everyone who claims there is ‘corruption’ “” saying it doesn’t make it so.”
Markos Moulitos, 6/22/06

From The Boston Globe:

Democrats set to call for phased pullout

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats, seizing on public discontent over the war in Iraq, will offer legislation this week calling for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq and a shifting of forces to other nations, where supporters say American soldiers will be less likely to come under attack.

Note that “seizing on public discontent”. They’re watching polls and making political calculations, putting their electoral prospects ahead of the national interest. Also note the timing – right after the completion of the new Iraqi cabinet, the killing of Zarqawi, and President Bush’s visit to Iraq. They’re not afraid we’re going to fail, they’e afraid we’re going to succeed. Visible success in Iraq is good for America, but bad for Democrats running in November and in 2008.