Bloodthirsty Liberal

Ditto:

To get the obvious out of the way: I loathe John Edwards. I loathe him as a slick ambulance-chasing trial lawyer, as a preening poseur of a presidential candidate, as a multi-bazillionaire “advocate” for “the poor,” as a third-rate sob sister peddling faux-Dickensian guff about entirely mythical “coatless girls” lying in their beds shivering at night because their father was laid off at the mill. I loathe everything about him except his angled nape, which I must concede, having been pressed up against it in a campaign crush in New Hampshire, is a thing of beauty, and well worth every penny of whatever Rachel Mellon paid for it.

And that’s before we get to the affair, and the denial, followed by the admission of adultery but only while his wife’s cancer was in remission, and then the admission of non-remission adultery but certainly not leading to any love child, and finally the admission of a non-remission adulterous love child, and the realization that the sainted, stricken Elizabeth was less the victim than a co-strategist in the massive Edwardsian fraud that was his 2008 presidential campaign, and a full participating partner in an even creepier political marriage than the Clintons’.

Oh, and while we’re at it, I loathe the American media, whose peculiarly contemptible combination of partisanship, snobbery, and self-neutering of any basic journalistic instinct might easily have led (were it not for the candidacy of Barack Obama) to this preening metrosexual slug’s becoming president of the United States.

All that said, his trial is a disgrace.

…

Edwards now faces 30 years in jail, for the crime of getting a couple of pals to pay for his baby’s diapers.

…

As bad as Edwards’s behavior is, the Justice Department’s is worse. The urge to ensnare in legalisms every aspect of human existence — including John Edwards’s rutting — will consume American liberty.

‘Nuff said.

Because they [bleeping] owe us money!

You’ve got till Friday, Mahmoud, or every mother[bleeping] mullah in Qum is going to wake up with his brains in his turban. Capisce?

An Israeli advocacy group won a $323 million judgment in a US court against Iran and Syria for supporting Palestinian militants that killed an American teenager and ten others in a 2006 bombing, the group’s director said Tuesday.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center that represents victims of Palestinian violence said Tuesday that the group had won courtroom victories against Iran but never before against Syria.

The center was representing the family of 16-year-old Daniel Wultz of Florida, who was among 11 killed when an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber set off his explosives at a Tel Aviv restaurant six years ago. Daniel’s father was severely injured in the attack.

Darshan-Leitner said that Iran supports the Islamic Jihad movement financially while Syria had granted the group a haven to train in its territory.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth said in the Monday ruling, “When a state chooses to uses terror as a policy tool – as Iran and Syria continue to do – that state forfeits its sovereign immunity and deserves unadorned condemnation. Barbaric acts like the April 17, 2006 suicide bombing have no place in civilized society and present a moral depravity that knows no bounds.”

That’s going to cost you, shorty.

“Barbaric acts”? Surely he means “acts of legitimate resistance”. Let’s ask the victim. What say you, Daniel?

Oh dear, I’m sorry, Daniel can’t answer. He was murdered six years ago.

Even $323 million won’t bring him back, but if it makes a state sponsor of terrorism think twice about dispatching a mentally ill young man to set off a girdle of Semtex and hex bolts in a crowded restaurant, then it may buy us a measure of peace.

For Daniel and his family, it is sadly too late.

PS: How can we not keep in mind the “barbaric acts” committed by the Arab/Muslim world in any discussion of the Middle East? Aren’t they the defining acts of the region, of the “conflict”? How can one side’s olive trees or another side’s garden shed even rate a mention when these (and I quote) “barbaric acts” are still committed as regularly as opportunity allows? (Just ask the Fogel family or Asher and Yonatan Palmer if you don’t believe me. Oops—dead again!)

If the 9/11 terrorists (and murderers of Daniel Pearl, don’t forget) want to spend their last days on earth acting out a farce more absurd than Noises Off, don’t they have that right? Say, in lieu of a last meal (which they’ll never finish digesting anyway).

You don’t have to be a mind reader to figure out the propaganda strategy of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other terrorists who were arraigned Saturday in a 13-hour spectacle in Guantanamo Bay. The idea is to use the open military trial to promote jihad and discredit American institutions, including the military system of justice.

The point to keep in mind is that this would have happened no matter the trial venue, civilian or military. The critics who have never liked military tribunals and accused them of being a form of railroad justice are now blaming them for being so unruly that they give terrorists a chance to act out. Well, which is it?

The real fault lies with the terrorists, who hope to put American justice on trial instead of themselves. The defendants refused even to look at Judge James Pohl, much less to answer questions or wear headsets to hear the simultaneous translation into Arabic. There were unscheduled prayers and a paper airplane. Ramzi bin Al Shibh commented in English that “Maybe they will kill us and say we have committed suicide.”

Sad to say, they were helped by some of the military defense lawyers, who know they can make a name for themselves by putting the Bush Administration’s detention policies on trial. KSM attorney David Nevin said in a press conference that “The government wants to kill Mr. Mohammed. They want to extinguish the last eyewitness to his torture so he can never speak again.” Sure, 9/11 was one giant cover-up.

The terrorists deserve a zealous defense under our adversarial trial system, but the lawyers’ efforts to defend their clients not by any evidence of their innocence but through political attacks on the procedural detail of military tribunals does a disservice to the victims and to their military peers.

The decision by Cheryl Bormann, the lawyer for Osama bin Laden bodyguard Walid bin Attash, to come to court in a black hijab and abaya and urge other female prosecutors to do the same was beyond any reasonable definition of what’s necessary and proper for women working in a U.S. military courtroom.

The professional female lawyers and members of the U.S. military should cover themselves, she said, so that the suspects wouldn’t be in “fear of committing a sin under their faith.”

To hell with that. I say the lawyers should be required to wear stilettos, sequined hot pants, and nothing on top but a push-up bra. And that’s just the guys!

This is America, baby, love it or leave it. To some of us, the Statue of Liberty is just a big dominatrix: “You’re tired! You’re poor! You’re nothing but a huddled mass yearning to breath free, you pathetic excuse for an American.” Crack! (You can’t truly appreciate liberty unless you’ve been in bondage, I always say.)

It’s not like the Gitmo Five haven’t seen their share of infidel flesh. Didn’t Mohammed (that name again!) Atta and his crew hit every titty bar and strip club in the Northeast before carrying out their mass-murderous mission?

We know that President Obama’s preferred method of dealing with America’s enemies is to terminate them with extreme prejudice—preferably by Predator drone, Navy SEALs a close second—and we salute him for that. (If a couple of wedding parties are mistaken for jihadist book groups and “accidentally” vaporized, just put your hat over heart and say you’re powerful sorry.)

If deprived the pleasure of a Hellfire missile or two in the head, however, Obama would settle for a show trial from out of the Cultural Revolution in lower Manhattan. But this? KSM middle-fingering us without consequence? That’s gotta be eating up Obama inside. We all know that in any other country, he’d get 70% of the vote—but in America and within Al Qaeda, he has to endure these indignities.

Me, on the other hand, I love it. The Gitmo Five can drop trou (or robe) and defecate in the middle of the courtroom for all I care. KSM can grope the female lawyers in their hijabs and say “How ’bout abaya drink?” He may make a farce out of the proceedings, but after his scrupulously fair military tribunal, we’ll get the last laugh at the firing squad.

Just swallow the popcorn before laughing. No choking on the concessions.

Khalid Sheikh Jacobi (or O’Donnell, you decide) gets his day in court: hilarity ensues:

Silence from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others resulted in delays during their arraignment Saturday in Guantanamo Bay.

A hearing before a military judge that could have lasted minutes instead stretched into hours.

It is Mohammed and four others’ first appearance in a military courtroom since being charged a month ago.

Along with Mohammed, the others are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.

…

The silence from the defendants — some ignored the judge and others appeared to be reading — slowed the proceedings to a crawl.

One of the defendants was brought in, in restraints, after refusing to come to court. The restraints were later removed.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, needed the five to confirm their desires to be represented by the attorneys who accompanied them. Because no one answered, Pohl had to go one-by-one and appoint military lawyers for them.

Earlier, the silence caused an issue with the court translations.

Mohammed’s lawyer said that his client “will decline to communicate with the court.”

Because they wouldn’t speak, the judge could not confirm that the defendants could hear the translation of the proceedings. Time elapsed while they set up loudspeakers in the court to carry the translations. Some lawyers objected to this solution, too, and translation remained a problem at the outset of the hearing.
Pohl said he would enter a not guilty plea on Mohammed’s behalf if he refused to enter a plea.

Two of the defendants, Bin ‘Attash and Binalshibh, started praying in the court.

The defendants’ silence was finally broken hours into the hearing by Binalshibh, who shouted in heavily accented English: “You may not see us anymore,” he said. “They are going to kill us.”

The outburst was short and the judge proceeded with the arraignment.

During recesses, the defendants talked amongst each other and seemed relaxed. They passed around a copy of The Economist magazine.

Mohammed wore a white turban; his long beard was colored red by henna.

From another account:

Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh knelt on the gray-carpeted courtroom floor and prayed as a row of burly guards in camouflage uniforms kept a close watch but did not interfere. Later he stood and shouted, and seemed to be saying that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was being held at Guantanamo.

He said tricks were being played on the defendants inside the prison camp and that “maybe they are going to kill us at the camp … and say that we are committing suicide.”

Yemeni defendant Walid bin Attash refused to come into the court and was strapped into a restraining chair and wheeled in by the guards. His prosthetic leg was brought in later.

Ha! That could come from a stage direction from Ionesco or maybe Joe Orton.

But I can’t decide which image makes me laugh harder: the peg leg being brought in later; the praying and then braying about Muammar Qaddafi; the badass terrorists reading the house organ of the establishment, The Economist; or KSM’s hennaed beard. Carol’s right: that’s definitely more Rosie O’Donnell than Lou Jacobi. So’s his attitude and behavior.

It just goes to show you how wrong Holder and Obama were to want to hold a civilian show trial. Besides the obscenity against the American justice system such a kangaroo court would have been, we would have missed this epic farce. It’s going to run for years.

Now I know why Eric Holder has been slow and reluctant to respond to repeated Congressional inquiries into Fast and Furious: he’s had a lot on his mind!

[BTW, am I the only one struck by the similarity between Lou Sheikh Mohammed and Khalid Jacobi?]

The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four accused co-conspirators will appear in public for the first time in more than three years Saturday, when U.S. officials start a second attempt at what is likely to be a drawn out legal battle that could lead to the men’s executions.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants are to be arraigned at a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on charges that include that include 2,976 counts of murder, one for each person killed in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

In the past, during the failed first effort to prosecute them at the U.S. base in Cuba, Mohammed has mocked the tribunal and said he and his co-defendants would plead guilty and welcome execution. But there were signs that at least some of the defense teams were preparing for lengthy fight, planning challenges of the military tribunals and the secrecy that shrouds the case.

The arraignment is “only the beginning of a trial that will take years to complete, followed by years of appellate review,” attorney James Connell, who represents defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, told reporters gathered at the base to observe the hearing.

“I can’t imagine any scenario where this thing gets wrapped up in six months,” Connell said.

Doesn’t it seem like only yesterday that our youthful, dewy-eyed crusader against crime (I mean international terrorism), Barack Obama, and his youthful ward (and chief law enforcement officer) Eric (The Red) Holder were promising a swift and decisive conviction of KSM in a civilian show trial? In New York City, no less? I feel old just remembering. I guess we’ve all grown up a lot since then.

PS: My apologies to any members of the Jacobi family offended by the above comparison.

To any liberal readers out there, this is why we fear you (or hate you, depending on the day):

Last year this column argued that the term “judicial activism” has become a sort of all-purpose pejorative, that it ought to be retired as analytically useless. Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, has a Chicago Tribune op-ed that illustrates the point. He begins by offering his own definition of the term:

When a court exercises restraint, it generally defers to the judgment of the elected branches. Even in the face of a claim that a particular law violates the Constitution, the court gives the elected branches the benefit of the doubt and upholds the challenged law as long as it is reasonable. When a court engages in judicial activism, it second-guesses the judgment of the elected branches and invalidates the law unless the government can prove to the court that the law is clearly constitutional.

He then claims that “the central question in constitutional law is: When is judicial activism appropriate?” Here is how he answers:

The best answer, which is grounded in the vision of the framers and has been a central part of constitutional law for more than 70 years, is that judicial activism is appropriate when there is good reason not to trust the judgment or fairness of the majority. . . .

It is fundamentally misleading to equate activist decisions that protect the interests of corporations, the National Rifle Association and the wealthy with activist decisions that safeguard the rights of African-Americans, women, gays, political dissenters and persons accused of crime. The courts are needed to vindicate the rights of the latter. They are not needed to protect the interests of the former, who can protect themselves quite well in the give-and-take of the democratic process.

In other words, “activism” is appropriate, in Stone’s view, when he agrees with the result and inappropriate when he doesn’t.

In that February 2011 column, we quoted the original definition of “judicial activism,” from a 1947 Fortune article by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. It is the view that “the Court cannot escape politics: therefore, let it use its political power for wholesome social purposes.”

That is precisely Prof. Stone’s view. But he wants to eat his cake too, by denouncing decisions with which he disagrees as activism while using the same term to laud those with which he agrees. In its own weird way, the intellectual vacuity of today’s left-wing constitutional scholarship is impressive to behold.

Impressive, or chilling. To the Left’s way of thinking, there should be no checks or balances when their favored topics are up for discussion. They are right, anyone else is evil. Aggie and I have reported on this trend anecdotally (as have many of you), but to read this cold, intellectual defense of Liberal Fascism is actually scary. That the Left can justify what amounts to a suspension of the Constitution to pursue its passing fancies—and live very happily with itself—makes them monsters.

Hey Aggie! I wonder if our “Saudi Atheist” reader is aware of this?

A Saudi court sentenced a woman to 50 lashes for swearing at her friend, an Arabic newspaper reported on Monday.

Our atheist friend made Saudi Arabia sound like a quaintly conservative state like Mississippi or Arkansas. But they don’t lash women or practice segregation there (anymore).

James Taranto runs through all the apologists and explicators of Obama’s judicial threat:

What do you call it when a liberal law professor or commentator defends President Obama’s ignorant musings on constitutional law? Comedy gold. From WSJ.com:

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and former mentor to President Barack Obama, said the president “obviously misspoke” earlier this week when he made comments about the Supreme Court possibly overturning the health-care law.

Mr. Tribe, who calls the president one of his best students, said in an interview: “He didn’t say what he meant . . . and having said that, in order to avoid misleading anyone, he had to clarify it.”

…

This, from the Daily Beast’s Jesse Singal, cracked us up:

Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at New York University, didn’t think it was fair to take Obama’s statement at face value.

“Do we really think President Obama, a former teacher of constitutional law, believes that any act of Congress enacted by a strong majority is immune to judicial review?” he asked in an email. . . .

“I find that impossible to believe,” Yoshino continued, “especially when the President’s pronouncement is viewed in context”–that is, as following up upon the rather eloquent defense of the law that preceded it in his news conference.

At least Singal didn’t call the president “articulate.”

And then there’s Obama’s own understanding of that “charter of negative liberties”, aka the Constitution:

Obama taught “Con Law III” at Chicago. Judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers–the old “structural Constitution” stuff–is covered in “Con Law I” (or at least it was when I was a student). Con Law III covers the Fourteenth Amendment. (Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – roe v. wade, griswold v. connecticut, romer v. evans, etc.) Of course, even a Con Law professor focusing on the Bill of Rights should know that the principle of judicial review has been alive and well since 1803, so I still feel like my educational credentials have been tarnished a bit by the President’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” remarks.

The 14th Amendment is a hell of an amendment—due process, equal protection—but it’s hardly all there is. Maybe that’s why he’s so down on the Constitution: he hasn’t read it.

From the sound of it, Mohammed was a vampire—he attacks the man’s throat, at night—not a zombie:

Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it. That makes you look like a doofus…

Here in our society, we have a constitution that gives us many rights, specifically, First Amendment rights. It’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don’t think that’s what our forefathers really intended. I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did.

I don’t think you’re aware, sir, there’s a big difference between how Americans practice Christianity – uh, I understand you’re an atheist. But, see, Islam is not just a religion, it’s their culture, their culture. It’s their very essence, their very being. They pray five times a day towards Mecca. To be a good Muslim, before you die, you have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless you are otherwise told you cannot because you are too ill, too elderly, whatever. But you must make the attempt…

Then what you have done is you’ve completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very, very, very offensive. I’m a Muslim, I find it offensive. [Unintelligble] aside was very offensive.

But you have that right, but you’re way outside your bounds on First Amendment rights.

I’m not surprised the guy was attacked, and I’m not surprised the judge called him a doofus. He was a doofus. What grown-up dresses up on Halloween to begin with, let alone with the sole intent of being obnoxious?

And if there is a Moslem in Mechanicsville, PA, you’re going to get punched by him. Own it.

But if that judge isn’t impeached, recalled, sacked tomorrow, we’ve lost our soul.

A Georgia judge rules his status is just peachy:

President Barack Obama’s name will remain on the Georgia primary ballot after a state law judge flatly rejected legal challenges that contend he can not be a candidate.

In a 10-page order, Judge Michael Malihi dismissed one challenge that contended Obama has a computer-generated Hawaiian birth certificate, a fraudulent Social Security number and invalid U.S. identification papers. He also turned back another that claimed the president is ineligible to be a candidate because his father was not a U.S. citizen at the time of Obama’s birth.

The findings by Malihi, a judge for the State Office of Administrative Hearings, go to Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who will make the final determination. Last month, at a hearing boycotted by Obama’s lawyer, Malihi considered complaints brought by members of the so-called “birther” movement.

With regard to the challenge that Obama does not have legitimate birth and identification papers, Malihi said he found the evidence “unsatisfactory” and “insufficient to support plaintiffs’ allegations.”

But at least one person demurs [hat tip reader Judi]

But there is no evidence before the Court that Obama was born in the United States. The court can only rest its finding of fact on evidence that is part of the court record. The judge tells us that he decided the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims. But he does not tell us in his decision what evidence he relied upon to “consider[]” that Obama was born in the United States. The judge “considered” that Obama was born in the United States. What does “considered” mean? Clearly, it is not enough for a court to consider evidence or law. It must make a finding after having considered facts and law. The judge simply does not commit to any finding as to where Obama was born.

He goes on at great length, but I just don’t have the juice. I want to believe Obama is a fraud: he certainly acts like one. But this is one windmill at which I will not tilt. I don’t have the evidence, or the expertise to interpret it, so I have to rely on others—and I can’t bring myself to do that here. I can share my suspicions (because they are mine) that Obama is hiding and stonewalling, but I won’t go on about it because this is a blog about a little more than my suspicions (though very little more, some days). I have more than enough material in what he is (a socialist) than what he isn’t (a citizen, maybe).

Like this, for instance:

Even though Malihi ruled in Obama’s favor, he expressed displeasure that the president’s lawyer, Michael Jablonski of Atlanta, refused to attend the recent hearing.

“By deciding this matter on the merits, the court in no way condones the conduct or legal scholarship of defendant’s attorney, Mr. Jablonski,” Malihi wrote.

How many other defendants get to stiff a judge and walk? Besides the New Black Panthers, that is?