by Ann Coulter
05/12/2010
Americans can thank the Supreme Court for the attempted car bombing of Times Square, as well as any future terrorist attacks that might be less "amateurish" and which our commander in chief will be unable to thwart unless the bomb fizzles.
Over blistering dissents by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, five Supreme Court justices have repeatedly voted to treat jihadists like turnstile jumpers. (Thanks, Justice Kennedy!)
That's worked so well that Obama's own attorney general is now talking about making massive exceptions to the Miranda warnings -- exceptions that will apply to all criminal suspects, by the way -- in order to deal with terrorists having to be read their rights as a bomb is about to go off.
Let's be clear: When Eric Holder thinks we're being too easy on terrorists, we are being too easy on terrorists.
Either the five liberal justices demanding constitutional rights for terrorists are out of their minds, or the religious worship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt has got to stop. According to liberal logic in the war on terrorism, FDR was a bloodthirsty war criminal.
When six Germans and two Americans were suspected of plotting an attack on U.S. munitions plants during World War II, FDR immediately ordered them arrested and tried in a secret military tribunal held behind closed doors at the Department of Justice.
Within weeks, all were found guilty. Six of the eight, including one U.S. citizen, were given the electric chair. One German was sentenced to life in prison and the other American citizen -- who had turned himself in and revealed the plot to the FBI -- got 30 years.
The Supreme Court upheld the secret trial, but didn't get around to producing an opinion until after Old Sparky had rendered its own verdict.
Consider that the eight saboteurs never actually did anything other than enter the country illegally, which I gather is considered a constitutional right these days (except in my future home state of Arizona).
Still, FDR had them executed or imprisoned after trial in a secret military tribunal.
How many future car bombers would be discouraged if Faisal Shahzad were tried by military tribunal and executed by, say, the end of the month? What if Army doctor Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had already gotten the chair?
But we can't do that because, according to five Supreme Court justices who aren't "progressive" enough for American liberals, terrorists waging war on U.S. soil get full constitutional protections.
So, instead, we're left arguing about whether an exception should be made to Miranda rights in the case of a terrorist who plotted with foreign agents to plant a car bomb in Times Square. ("You have the right to remain violent ...")
We are at war. The Supreme Court has no right to stick its fat, unelected nose into the commander in chief's constitutional war powers, particularly in a war against savages whose only reason for not nuking us yet is that they don't have the technology. (The New York Times hasn't gotten around to printing it.)
The reason Democrats are obsessed with controlling the courts is that unelected judges issuing final edicts is the only way liberals can attain their insane policy agenda. No group of Americans outside of Nancy Pelosi's district would vote for politicians who enacted laws similar to the phony "constitutional rights" liberal justices proclaim from the Supreme Court.
President Obama would rather surrender his authority as commander in chief to the Supreme Court than get blamed for deciding to treat terrorists as if they're Paris Hilton facing a drunk driving charge. Let the court do it.
(Recall that Obama's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attack, in a civilian court in New York was even less popular with the American people than Jay Leno at 10 p.m.)
Meanwhile, elected Democrats in Congress are also happy to yield their law-making authority to the court, so they don't have to be the ones voting for laws mandating late-term abortions; hard-core pornography on the Internet; government-sanctioned race discrimination; forced cross-district busing; confiscatory property tax hikes to fund socially engineered school desegregation plans; bans on the public observation of religious traditions shared by most Americans; free education, health care and welfare benefits for illegal immigrants; and a redefinition of the 2,000-year-old institution of marriage against the express wishes of voters in every state to vote on it.
(Note: This is only a partial list.)
The Supreme Court has become a Blue Ribbon Commission for Lunatics, issuing binding edicts in 5-4 votes that Americans would never in a million years vote for. Distinguishing between Elena Kagan and any other Democratic nominee is like distinguishing between Hannibal Lecter and Vlad the Impaler.
