THE BUSH administration has asked the Supreme Court to take a case it says needs to be decided quickly because it presents a serious threat to national security. The justices should grant the administration its wish, and promptly rule against it.
The case involves a challenge to a lower court’s ruling involving the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which were set up to decide whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay are being legally held as enemy combatants. Under the tribunal system, a government recorder is tasked with gathering information about a detainee from government and military databases, including exculpatory information that may argue against the detainee’s incarceration. The recorder then culls the information for the most relevant evidence and provides it to the tribunals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has the exclusive right under the Detainee Treatment Act to review the tribunals’ decisions.
In Gates v. Bismullah, a unanimous D.C. Circuit panel found last year that it could not properly rule on a case without seeing all of the information gathered by the recorder — not just what was forwarded to the tribunal. The administration decried the decision, saying it imposes an extraordinary burden on the government; the administration says it keeps records only of the information presented at a tribunal. Forcing government personnel to reconstruct the original record would squander resources necessary to the preservation of national security, the government claims. The D.C. Circuit gave the government a choice: Go back and re-collect all of the raw information or give detainees new tribunals. The administration filed its appeal with the Supreme Court on Thursday… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Washington Post>
The DC Circuit Court made the right decision. Considering the history of Bush and the GOP at cherry picking only the information they wanted while hiding clear evidence to the contrary while “fixing the intelligence around the policy” prior to Iraq, their Reich cannot bet trusted to have presented all the relevant evidence to the tribunal, especially exculpatory evidence. This case warrants watching.
Visualize for a moment, if you will that this case was coming before SCOTUS under a John McCain administration and that McCain had gotten to appoint just one more justice to the Court. Would there be any doubt about the decision then?
Cross posted from Politics Plus
Politics Plus 2 
February 19, 2008 at 6:10 am
[…] diariocolombia wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt THE BUSH administration has asked the Supreme Court to take a case it says needs to be decided quickly because it presents a serious threat to national security. The justices should grant the administration its wish, and promptly rule against it. The case involves a challenge to a lower court’s ruling involving the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which were set up to decide whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay are being legally held as enemy combatants. Under the tribunal system, a government recorder is tasked with gathering information about a detainee from government and military databases, including exculpatory information that may argue against the detainee’s incarceration. The recorder then culls the information for the most relevant evidence and provides it to the tribunals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has the exclusive right under the Detainee Treatment Act to review the tribunals’ decisions. In Gates v. Bismullah, a unanimous […] […]