What do "enemy combatants" and French fries have in common? (John Roberts' track record on civil liberties.)

Last Friday, the court on which Roberts now serves decided a case that supports the Bush administration's plans to use secretive military tribunals in the war on terror, which have provoked an international outcry from civil libertarians and human rights advocates. The three-judge panel, including Roberts, ruled unanimously that tribunals set up to try terrorism suspects for war crimes, in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, were authorized under federal law. And it found that any rights accorded by the Geneva Convention to prisoners of war did not apply to suspected al-Qaida members or so-called enemy combatants. The two lawyers representing Hamdan in the case called the decision "contrary to 200 years of constitutional law." It was the first major opinion in which Roberts concurred -- and, ironically, could be tested in the Supreme Court during its next term. Quoted from the Salon

John Roberts is also known for his firm commitment to law enforcement:

Another, much-noted accomplishment also has to do with civil liberties. In 2004, Roberts upheld the arrest of a 12-year-old girl who was handcuffed by transit police on the Washington Metro system for eating a single French fry. "No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," he wrote. Yet, he determined that the cops didn't violate the girl's rights under the Constitution's Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches.

And many Republicans know him as a man of integrity and is highly regarded among his colleagues as having a keen intellect, as well as being a "nice person."  And his position on a woman's right to choose is also crystal clear:

In Rust v. Sullivan, the then-deputy solicitor general coauthored a brief in support of regulations prohibiting U.S. family planning programs, which get federal aid, from giving any abortion-related counseling. In that brief, he wrote: "We continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled ... The Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion ... finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."

God Bless you John Roberts.  God Bless us all.

Comments

[another]

This guy's been accepted by the media already; it sickens me, and also makes me suspect there's something even worse in store for after Reinquist. One-step, two-step.

[anonymous]

http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2005/07/wikipedia-is-amazing.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002039.html