Stuart Taylor, Jr. Is a Psychotic Creep
Stuart Taylor, Jr., attacks the judges who ruled against the Bush administration in the al-Marri case. If there is time to assemble a SWAT team to make a raid, there is time to get a warrant. Judges have telephones, and they answer them.
Most people who salivate at the thought of torture and construct "ticking bomb" hypotheticals to make it seem reasonable work a little bit harder than Taylor to keep their hypotheticals from being completely and transparently silly. Not Stuart Taylor, Jr.:
OPENING ARGUMENT: A Judicial Overreaction To Bush Abuses? (06/18/2007): [T]heir additional, broader holding... that Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri and other suspected Qaeda terrorists arrested in the United States cannot be detained at all, no matter how dangerous, unless the government brings criminal charges against them within a week of arrest or is unable to deport them.... Judge Motz (joined by Judge Roger Gregory).... Motz's suggestion that the criminal-justice system can safely deal with such people is unconvincing... [the] system is ill-equipped to handle any future waves of Qaeda attacks on American soil.... [H]ow will the Motz ruling look in hindsight if and when Americans are mass-murdered by the thousands again, or if -- as seems all too possible -- Islamist terrorists get their hands on a nuclear device or lethal germs?
Suppose, for example, that after a series of bombings in Chicago, Washington, and Los Angeles, an anonymous tipster tells the FBI that five Saudi biology students have assembled a large supply of lethal anthrax in two New York City apartments and are planning a massive attack.... With no time to get a warrant, FBI agents break into the apartment, arrest two Saudis, and find lots of anthrax and Qaeda literature.
Under Judge Motz's logic, both men would have to be released or deported unless criminally charged within a week -- but they could not be criminally charged because the warrantless search would clearly have been illegal. And... [Miranda warnings] would torpedo any hope of using aggressive interrogation... before they launch an anthrax attack....
Dissenting Judge Henry Hudson... countered that al-Marri "is the type of stealth warrior used by Al Qaeda to perpetrate terrorist acts against the United States," and thus was a target of Congress's September 2001 authorization for the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against "nations, organizations, and persons" involved in the 9/11 attacks...
I have no idea why the National Journal and other outlets that wish to be thought reputable continue to burn their reputations by printing Stuart Taylor, best known for on February 4, 2002 denouncing our NATO allies:
Opening Argument (02/04/2002): already in an overwrought tizzy about the supposed mistreatment of the 158 detainees at Guantanamo Bay...
