Rick Siegel Prespectives on Freedom and Liberty

Why The Majority Was Wrong

The recent decision to stretch some form of Habeas Corpus to military captives held as “illegal combatants” has a wonderful lesson in our Constitution and the government that holds the nation captive.

One has to understand the dissent to appreciate how they are correct under the Constitution first. Scalia explained it stating, “It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad.” So at issue here is the reality that Washington, DC is not a state and neither are the possessions it holds.

The possessions are forts and ports as well as the empire it has built abroad like Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and many other locations. Under the Constitution these possessions do not fall under the rules of the Constitution. They are strictly ruled, as the government wants. It could be a totalitarian state for all that. It can be, as the base in Cuba, a torture chamber of horrors that are repugnant to the Constitution but the Constitution has never had a reach to these places. The Constitution is for the states and their subjects not the territories ruled by the Federal agents.

So the majority moved otherwise and brought the fall of this divide. They reached out and brought the Constitution to bear where it was not designed. So both dissenting judges saw this.

While it may be morally commendable for the Supreme Court majority to break the Constitution because of the immorality of the Federal government, in ruling so it extends the Constitution to the possessions of the Government and they have clearly overstepped the Constitution. It shows how two wrongs still do not make anything right.

The problem is having a government out of control from the people who gave them some limited power. The USA needs regime change and a restoration of the Constitution and our unalienable rights.