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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (20935)	12/3/2001 8:13:12 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 59480

David Limbaugh Trying times newsandopinion.com -- WHEN I first heard that President Bush was contemplating an executive order to establish military tribunals to try terrorists I just knew that many liberals (and civil libertarians) would go bonkers. They tell us that this is what constitutional rights are all about: ensuring that every scumbag is amply protected -- better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be wrongly convicted. I know that sounds noble, and I know that sounding noble is the garden-variety liberal's greatest aspiration. But we might want to reconsider that cliche in light of the potential destruction 10 terrorists could do to millions of innocents. Please don't convulse into spasms here because I, too, am a champion of civil rights, just not for terrorists. More than that, there is nothing in Bush's order that would deprive them of any constitutional rights to which they are entitled. Some are suggesting that aliens are entitled to constitutional rights, including trial by jury; so to try terrorists without juries would be unconstitutional. It is true that resident aliens have some rights under our Constitution, though fewer than citizens. Even illegal aliens and foreigners have some constitutional protections. All of this misses the point, though, because the United States Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue, and its decision did not turn on the citizenship status of the defendants. During World War II, eight men were trained by the German Reich at a sabotage school near Berlin. In mid-June, 1942, they boarded two German submarines in pairs of four and were transported in the dead of night to our shores in New York and Florida. They immediately ditched their infantry uniforms, donned civilian dress and proceeded to various points in the United States carrying explosives, fuses, and incendiary and timing devices. They were on a mission from the German High Command to destroy war industries and facilities when the FBI apprehended them. President Roosevelt, on July 2, 1942, appointed a Military Commission and directed it to try the defendants for offenses against the law of war and the Articles of War. Their trial commenced within days, and, while in process, the defendants brought a habeas corpus proceeding in federal court (ending up in the Supreme Court) challenging the validity, including the constitutionality, of the trial by military tribunal. The Supreme Court rendered its decision on July 31, 1942, in Ex Parte Quirin, holding that military tribunals -- which had been part of our heritage since the Revolutionary War -- may be constituted to try enemies of war, including U.S. citizens, for capital crimes. In fact, one of the defendants (Haupt) was allegedly a citizen of the United States. The question was whether the defendants were unlawful combatants within the meaning of the Hague Convention. If so, they could be tried by military tribunal. Unlawful combatants include those spies or enemy combatants who infiltrate their enemy's society in disguise (wearing civilian clothes) to wage war by destroying life or property. The defendants pleaded that Article III and the 5th and 6th Amendments to the Constitution entitled them to a civilian jury trial. The Court rejected their argument, saying that these constitutional provisions guaranteed the right to jury trial in all cases for which a jury had been guaranteed at common law, but did not enlarge the right to other cases. Since common law did not require a jury trial for trials by military commission or for offenses against the law of war, neither Article III nor the Amendments required it. Bush's detractors are reduced to arguing form over substance, saying that military tribunals can only be established when there is a formal declaration of war. That is specious for at least three reasons: 1) Congress passed a joint resolution clearly authorizing the president to use his war powers as Commander-in-Chief to defeat the terrorists and their sovereign sponsors; 2) The terrorists have declared war against America in furtherance of which they've already committed repeated acts of war dating back to 1993 and continuing to the present; and 3) look at the Court's description of an unlawful combatant, and tell me with a straight face that al Qaeda and other terrorists don't fit it perfectly. No one of sound mind genuinely disputes that we are at war. Some argue that to try terrorists before military tribunals would be "inconsistent with the cause of freedom." Nonsense. Assuming some terrorists survive and require a trial, the surest way to compromise our freedoms would be to place them in our laboriously slow civilian criminal justice system, removing any prospect of swift justice and deterrence. Now is not the time to be proving that we are sweet, wonderful people, but that we are deadly serious about exacting justice from those who attacked us without provocation or justification. newsandopinion.com

To: calgal who wrote (20935)	12/3/2001 8:15:06 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

George Will The truth about our economic 'woes' newsandopinion.com -- THE official certifiers have certified that since March the economy, after a 10-year expansion, the longest in U.S. history, has been in a recession, the 10th since 1945. So let us relearn the two laws that make economic news intelligible. Law One: All news is economic news. Law Two: All economic news is bad news. Terrorists attack. U.S. forces advance. Katie Couric is in love. Or not. All this is economic news? Indeed. Consumer spending is three-quarters of all economic activity, so anything that affects their sense of well-being is economic news. The prices of gasoline and heating oil are down about 25 percent from this point last year. The average price of a gallon of gas ($1.12) is less than what it was in 1985. The decline of energy prices is the stimulative equivalent of a $100-billion tax cut. But is it good news? Yes, but it contributes to what appears to be bad news: Gas and heating oil sales are factored into calculations of retail sales and hence helped produce the news that retail sales figures, aside from those for automobiles, seem weak. But surely surging auto sales are good news? Up to a point. Just eight days after the terrorist attacks, General Motors launched zero percent financing. Other automakers followed, more vehicles were sold in October than in any month ever, and 2001 may be the second- or third-best sales year in Detroit's history. How can this be bad news? Here is how. The financing effectively meant a 4.7 percent drop in the prices manufacturers were charging for cars, so profit margins are now minuscule. Furthermore, what an analyst calls "profitless prosperity" is cannibalizing future sales, which probably will plummet when normal financing resumes. See? Record sales can be seen as depressing news. But every sign of economic anemia (this may be advertising's worst year since 1938) can be matched by a sign of vitality (Internet traffic quadrupled between 2000 and 2001). And the real economic story is the economy's resilience. Consider: Since the bursting of the tech bubble in March 2000, when the stock market swiftly shed $5 trillion in value -- more than the GDPs of Britain, France and Italy combined -- employers have pruned 900,000 jobs. Then terrorism provoked an immediate loss of another $1.4 trillion. Even after all this, the recession is not as severe as might have been expected. The portion of September after the attacks constituted 22 percent of the third quarter, and in that quarter GDP was down 1.1 percent. And one estimate is that the economy will shrink 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter. However, the number of workers filing for new unemployment benefits recently declined for four consecutive weeks. Alan Abelson of Barron's reports that consumer installment debt as a percentage of personal income is 21 percent, near the record high and substantially higher than what is normal (under 16 percent) at the bottom of recessions. While that will limit the boost consumers can give to the recovery, the values of most families' most valuable assets, their homes, are still rising. That should help consumers feel good. So would rising stock portfolios. As recently as 1990 individuals had only 22 percent of their assets in the stock market. Today they have almost 50 percent. This reflects the recent flood of assets into equity mutual funds that crested in 2000 with investors putting a net $305 billion into such funds. This year they have put in just $12 billion. Perhaps they are tired of turbulence, something completely new to the tens of millions of Americans who did not start investing in the stock market until after the convulsion of 1987. But the rapidity with which the market climbed back to its Sept. 10 level indicates that investors are not so risk-averse that the market, which partly reflects and partly determines the nation's sense of well-being, must stagnate. Finally, it is wonderful to hear worries about deflation. Not that deflation -- a protracted general decline in prices -- is desirable. But just 20 years ago the fear was that inflation would always be the systemic disease of democracy -- that democracies, by fiscal profligacy and monetary policies determined by the public's low pain threshold, could not help but ignite inflation and could not stomach the measures to extinguish it. Well, Barron's Randall Forsyth noticed that in the eventful month of September 2001, little attention was given to the retirement of some Treasury bonds issued in 1981. Because of high inflation then, and expectations of more, those bonds carried the highest interest rate the government ever paid on long-term borrowing -- 15.75 percent. The fact that we have nothing like that today refutes Law Two. newsandopinion.com