9/11 conspirator spared death penalty; Gitmo inmates in IL?; Another radical judge

And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson 1) First US trial of 9/11 case was full of surprises …Prosecutors were surprised when they failed to get the death penalty — by the vote of one juror. …Moussaoui was charged in December 2001 with conspiracy for his role. The case churned through years of pretrial hearings and appeals as judges sought to balance national security with Moussaoui's constitutional rights, often over what evidence could be used. Constitutional rights? What idiot wrote this story? Only citizens have constitutional rights, not prisoners of war! …Documents later introduced at trial showed Moussaoui and Mohammed were well acquainted and Mohammed told interrogators he planned to use Moussaoui as a pilot for a second wave of hijacked jetliner attacks — plans that were eventually aborted. …Eventually, in 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Under the complex rules for federal death penalty cases, a separate sentencing trial was held in 2006 to determine whether Moussaoui would lose his life or spend the rest of it in prison. In the first phase, jurors concluded Moussaoui's actions were eligible for the death penalty, but in the second phase they spared his life — thanks to a lone holdout juror. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/ap_on_re_us/us_terror_trial_lessons 1a) Holder's Hidden Agenda …Today's announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets. Let's take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs' execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today. Moreover, KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out. So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us (emphasis mine). See: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTVkN2ZhMTU0NzcwYWVmYTNmODI1ZTJjMTA1ZDFiODQ 1b) How Obama is Bringing Martial Law to America Until the Obama administration overturned two centuries of precedence, America had two systems of justice, the civil and the military. The military system played a very small and focused role. It served rough justice in the chaos of war and in places like the open sea in which no nation’s law governed. …For over two hundred years we were careful to keep a firewall between civil and martial law. We did so because civil and martial law are polar opposites. Civil law is focused on protecting the rights of the accused against the overwhelming power of the state. When there is doubt, the accused walks free. Martial law is focused on imposing a minimal order on bloody chaos. It was focused on allowing the military to complete its mission and win wars. When there is doubt, the accused is presumed guilty. …Our system of justice relies on precedent and equality of procedure. The same rules apply to every civil trail. We can’t say that it’s okay to deny the right against self-incrimination in one person’s trial while saying it’s okay in another. If the courts overturn the rights of one individual accused, it must overturn the rights of all of them. Nothing good will come of this trial. If it is conducted outside the bounds of normal civil law, it will be nothing but a corrupt show trial whose outcome was preordained by politicians. Instead of showing the world that America is a land of laws in which even our enemies receive fair treatment, it will show the world the opposite. If it is conducted within the bounds of normal civil law, then it will force the courts to choose between letting a mass murdering terrorist walk free and setting dangerous legal precedents that will undermine the basic civil rights of all Americans. Obama has unleashed something in America far, far more dangerous than any excesses Bush might have committed. He has taken all the horrible compromises we must make in war and driven them into the heart of the civil legal system. If the courts do not set Khalid Sheikh Mohammed free, the cancer of martial law will metastasize into the entire justice system. See: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/10193.html 2) Official: Illinois prison eyed for Gitmo inmates CHICAGO – The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural northwestern Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday. The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has not been made. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091115/ap_on_re_us/us_illinois_prison_obama 3) Another Radical Judge Federal Bench: Yet another judicial nominee seeks to impose the "empathy" standard on the courts. He thinks judges should base rulings on a plaintiff's status, legislate from the bench and amend the Constitution. Indiana federal judge David Hamilton stands poised to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals serving Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. He's a former fundraiser for Acorn and a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also another in a series of activist judges who believe the U.S. Constitution is not etched in stone but made of clay, ready to be molded into anything they want. He shares the beliefs of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Edward Chen, nominee for the Northern District of California, that laws can be made from the bench and that empathy, not original intent, should be a judge's guide. "Part of our job here as judges is to write a series of footnotes to the Constitution," Hamilton says. "We all do that every year in cases large and small." …After Hamilton blocked the enforcement of Indiana's informed consent abortion law, the Seventh Circuit disagreed, saying: "No court anywhere in the country ... has held any similar law invalid in the years since (the Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood vs.) Casey. Indiana is entitled to put the law into effect and have that law judged by its own consequences." …Judges such as Hamilton, Chen and Sotomayor believe the courts should be used as instruments of social justice and not to discern the intent of those who wrote the U.S. Constitution. They believe their "life experience" should be the final arbiter of justice. We don't believe Hamilton deserves a promotion any more than Chen does or Sotomayor did. See: http://www.marklevinshow.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=512030 3a) Reid speeds confirmation of anti-Jesus, pro-abortion judge Obama nominee claimed primary job to 'write footnotes in the Constitution' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced his plans to move forward as early as Monday with a confirmation vote on the pro-abortion appeals court nominee who ruled against praying "in Jesus' name" on the floor of the Indiana Legislature. Reid said he plans to pursue a cloture process that would force a Senate vote on U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit if 60 senators vote for cloture. Republicans have attempted to block a vote on Hamilton's nomination. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., called for a filibuster in April and May. Sessions recently sent a letter to several Republican legislators in opposition to Hamilton, warning that in more than a few instances, he "has used his position as a district court judge to drive a political agenda." Sessions said Hamilton declared in a 2003 speech that a judge's primary job is "write footnotes in the Constitution" and said he believes "empathy" should sway a judge's decisions. See: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115858 4) UN: Once-secret Iran nuke plant to start in 2011 VIENNA – Iranian construction of a previously secret uranium enrichment site is at an advanced stage, with high-tech equipment already in place at the fortified facility ahead of its 2011 startup, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report Monday. The revelation of the existence of the underground plant known as Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, has heightened concerns of other possible undeclared Iranian facilities that are not subject to IAEA oversight and therefore could be used for military purposes. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear 5) White House: Israeli housing plans dismaying WASHINGTON – The White House rebuked Israel with heavy criticism Tuesday after the Jerusalem city government moved toward the construction of 900 additional housing units in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim for the capital of their future state. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_israel 5a) Obama green-lights Arab land grab But Israel threatens retaliation if U.N. approves Palestinian state TEL AVIV – A top Palestinian Authority negotiator told WND that the Obama administration won't stand in the way of a Palestinian threat to unilaterally ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state outside of negotiations with Israel. Despite widespread assumptions the U.S. would veto any such U.N. Security Council resolution, the PA negotiator said that in initial discussions, the Obama administration did not threaten to veto their conceptual unilateral resolution. "The U.S. told us that they prefer a negotiated settlement with Israel, but if we (Palestinians) insist on a resolution, the Americans will not necessarily reject it," the PA negotiator said. "The U.S. has a history of never before vetoing any UN move to create a new state," the negotiator pointed out. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said yesterday the Palestinians had decided to turn to the U.N. Security Council to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. See: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116154