Mary2:50PMJun 13th 2008

The United States is better than the rest of the frick'n world, so we should prove that we are inhabited by higher life forms than those who would seek to do us harm by proving it in every way possible,including the way our courts prosecute terrorists. We need to start being the nation that once again leads by example of good, not being a nation who everyone shuns as a being a horrible example like third world dictatorships. There is a difference.

Wendell3:24PMJun 13th 2008

America is fast forgetting how to win wars. We are also fast forgetting that we have historically treated enemy soldiers and combatants differently than we treat U.S. Civilians. The recent Supreme Court Decision basically makes every war-time president a tyrant because prisoners of war during their administrations didn't have access to civilian courts either. This recent ruling makes our POW system a revolving door, releasing our sworn enemies back to the battlefield to kill our soldiers. The Nuremburg criminals didn't have access to our courts, why should non uniformed terrorists in our custody have more rights than they?

Sasha3:29PMJun 13th 2008

It figures Washington D.C. said yes. It is full of criminals.

Wendell3:30PMJun 13th 2008

I totally reject Mary's assertion that we resemble some dictatorships in the way we are handling terror suspects captured overseas. GITMO is a health spa compared to our own Federal Prison system. Our military tribunals are far more competent than most nations civilian courts. Can any thinking person draw a valid comparison between the way we treat terrorists and the way terrorists treat our captured soldiers? America doesn't have to release dangerous criminals back to the battlefield in order to prove our moral superiority to terrorists. We don't have to commit national suicide to prove we are a worthy nation.

Sandee3:32PMJun 13th 2008

Michelle Obama is Barack's baby mama right?

Wendell3:38PMJun 13th 2008

The uncontrollable laughter you hear coming from the East is that of Al-Queda chieftains celebrating another triumph over a naive American Judiciary. Yesterdays devastating decision by the Supreme Court grants access and rights that NONE of our captured enemies have enjoyed in the past. How do you prosecute a war when you have to expose security information in order to hold POW's? Do we have to pull troops out of combat to have them testify as to the circumstances of capture and the identity of every prisoner? In every conflict we have dealt with POW's outside our civilian courts. That is why they are called civilian courts. Can you imagine Adolf Hitler with a Columbia Law graduate challenging his capture in a civilian court? We are turning history upside down and making it nearly impossible to prosecute wars in the future.

Robyn3:39PMJun 13th 2008

My grandparents had the great depression and Pearl Harbor/WWII as their generation’s ‘defining moment’. My generation has 9-11/Afganistan/Iraq and a rapidly declining economy. I think this generation stacks up pitifully. In the coming months and yrs. I just can’t see Obama having the ability to ‘change’ anything for the better. (Ask the British how Chamberlain’s approach worked.) And don’t forget that he’ll have to have a Dem. congress to help him with his pie in the sky promises. I’ll sit back with my gas/food ration stamps and ride it out.

Ben4:14PMJun 13th 2008

Wow Im disapointed with Vermont and Washington DC. Are those Liberal or ACLU areas?

rick5:13PMJun 13th 2008

this question is what is means to mislead the public on the issues of today. most of the people in guantanamo bay, cuba where detained on weak suspitions. this question misleads the public by asking"Should TERRORISTS captured overseas have the right to pursue litigation in the federal court system?" an estimatated 95% of the detainees are innocent. do not turn MY COUNTRY into a killing machine!

whiteyma115:23PMJun 13th 2008

Wow......the map says it all....DC is the ONLY place on the map that agreed that Terrorists had the same constitutionals rights as US Citizens??????? something is wrong with this pictures. Goes to show how out of touch they are with the rest of us!!

David Brown5:30PMJun 13th 2008

Wow, I can't believe this is even a question or that it actually got a supreme court ruling. Why don't we ask the people that jumped from the top of the trade center because they couldn't decide which would be a better way to die, burning to death or splattering on the sidewalk, whether or not terrorist deserve to have rights?! Why don't we ask Dennis Pearlman if terrorists should have rights. I can't believe how ridiculously liberal this country has become. We can't even wipe out a third world threat anymore. The problem with liberalism, is that it tries to please everyone. When you try to please everybody, the good of the nation as a whole becomes seriously jeopardized. And then you find yourself being criticized for treating terrorists inhumanely for all of the millions of INNOCENT lives they've destroyed. Wow, with the way our policy makers are thinking now, terrorism will only get worse and more innocent American lives will be lost. And when that happens, I hope that we catch the terrorist and make sure that we treat them with dignity, humanity and make sure that their rights are protected so that the rest of the world can see what an example we are, an example of impotence. Please policy makers, grow a set before its too late.

larry fox5:38PMJun 13th 2008

We can't have it both ways. The prisoners, who by the way do not have the rights of prisoners of war, are undeer US control. Even though the land technically belongs to Cuba, the court decided the Constitution applied. If they had ruled otherwise Mc Cain would not be able to run for president as he was born in Panama. The Constitution states a person must be born in the US to be eligible for president. Congress agreed, since where he was born was under US rule he is eligible. The decision was correct.

Lee5:47PMJun 13th 2008

Friday, June 13, 2008

To: Friends & Supporters

From: Gary L. Bauer


Liberalism Gone Wild – Americans Will Die

The shockingly bad 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision yesterday to award the right of “habeas corpus” to enemy combatants is a glimpse of what our future will look like if Barack Obama wins in November and if the political Left increases its majorities in Congress.

Habeas corpus is the right we have as American citizens to challenge detention by the government. The five justice liberal majority yesterday extended that right to jihadists captured abroad. The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay will now be able to demand in federal court the same right that you have. The government will be required to present evidence to justify their continued detention.

What evidence? The battlefield is not a crime scene. Soldiers don’t read the enemy their Miranda rights. Fingerprints are not taken in war. The court’s liberal majority has written an absurd opinion that appears to be totally divorced from reality. Justice Scalia, one of the four dissenting conservatives, predicted that the majority’s decision will result in Americans dying. He is right.

In World War II, we held 400,000 prisoners of war on U.S. soil. Even though they were held here, they were not given the right just awarded to the terrorist allies of the thugs who killed 3,000 of on 9/11. And if the Guantanamo prisoners have these rights, then it is only a matter of time before the jihadist prisoners being held in Iraq and Afghanistan will be granted them, too.

Our Founding Fathers would be shocked to see what has been done to the document they created. Notice that the decision was five-to-four. A narrow one-vote majority has turned our effort to defeat Islamic terror upside down. The Constitution our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are defending can now be used as a weapon against them.

Of the five justices responsible for this fiasco, one, of them, Justice Stevens, is 88-years-old and another, Justice Ginsburg is 75. If a President McCain gets the opportunity to replace either of them, this obscene ruling could be overturned. If a President Barack Obama, after consulting with his friends at the ACLU and MoveOn.org, puts two new young liberals on the court to replace them, we will get more self-destructive rulings for decades. And don’t forget that this isn’t the only 5-to-4 vote we are facing on fundamental questions of values and national security.

I’d like to see President Bush fight back. Just say, “No,” Mr. President. Send new legislation to Capitol Hill outlining how the jihadist thugs will be handled. Remind the court that the Constitution specifies only one commander-in-chief during war – you. And to my friend Senator McCain – Barack Obama embraced this decision yesterday with no hesitation. Take him on, and show the American people why this foolishness will endanger our country – and do it now!


A Very Thin Resume

My friends, you’ve got a choice to make. It’s your job to choose between the candidates for one of the most demanding jobs in the world – President of the United States. You’ve got just a little over four months to evaluate the character of these two men and examine their resumes.

In my Human Events column this week, I focus on the latter issue – experience. I realize it didn’t do Hillary Clinton much good, but the dynamics of a general election are vastly different from a Democrat primary and there really wasn’t much difference. However, the contrast between Obama and John McCain is striking. Here’s a pop quiz: True or False -- Barack Obama has served longer in the United States Senate than John McCain spent in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. To learn the answer, read my column at www.humanevents.com. Thank you.
* * * * *




Please feel free to share this report with family and friends.

If you are interested in receiving Mr. Bauer’s daily report by e-mail, please visit SIGN UP FOR GARY BAUER’S "END OF DAY REPORT".

Lee5:48PMJun 13th 2008

Thursday, June 12, 2008

To: Friends & Supporters

From: Gary L. Bauer


What’s Important

During an interview yesterday morning with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Senator McCain was asked if he knew when troops might start coming home from Iraq. Senator McCain began his response this way, “No, but that’s not too important.” Democrats pounced and attacked Senator McCain as insensitive to the concerns of military families and out of touch with the American people. Senator John Kerry was all over the news last night leading the charge and probably got more press than anytime since losing the 2004 election.

My good friend Bill Bennett reacted to this outrageous charge by writing, “Bring it on!” He added, “…do the Democrats really want to try to lecture family McCain on how they should feel about returning home and being in the battlefield? …Do they really want to tell a man who turned down early release and spent five and a half years in a POW camp that he is insensitive to the desires of returning home? … Do they really want to tell a man whose own son has signed up and fought in Iraq about the importance of coming back home?”

But that wasn’t all Senator McCain said in his interview with Matt Lauer. Here’s the rest of his statement, which the Left and Big Media ignored:


“What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are [able to come home].

“But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way. That way, they will be safe, and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama’s proposal would have done. I’m proud of them. And they’re doing a great job. And we are succeeding and it’s fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn’t realize that.”

Victory, my friends, is what is most important, and Senator McCain understands that. The liberals who are, as Senator Lieberman said, “emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat,” just don’t get it. It is incomprehensible to me that any potential commander-in-chief should desire America’s humiliation as Barack Obama evidently does. But here’s why it is so important that we win this war and why it is so important that a defeatist like Obama not win this election.

Yesterday, the Washington Times reported that the number of homicide bombings in Iraq is down by more than 50%. The drop in homicide bombings is partly attributed to the success of the surge, which “has made it more difficult for Al Qaeda in Iraq to facilitate the secret movement of foreigners from the Syrian border to safe houses where they are trained and assigned a target.”

An equally encouraging explanation is that many intelligence officials believe that Al Qaeda’s call for mass murder may be losing its appeal among Muslim youths throughout the Middle East, especially as the United States and its allies are seen prevailing in the war. This is a very crucial point, my friends.

After a series of strikes and attacks against American interests during the 1990s, Western weakness convinced Osama bin Laden that America was soft and unwilling to fight. Our humiliation in Somalia rallied radical Islamists to bin Laden’s jihadist cause. Referring to America’s hasty retreat after the barbaric attack in Mogadishu, Osama bin Laden said, “…our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. After a few blows, they ran in defeat…”

Bin Laden would later say in a video gloating about the 9/11 attacks, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” After Somalia, after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, after the bombing of the Khobar Towers, after the attack on the USS Cole and after 9/11, jihadists saw America as the “weak horse,” and bin Laden was convinced that if only he could just “bloody our nose” a bit in Iraq, America would again run like “a paper tiger after a few blows.”

But in spite of the non-stop negative press coverage and the defeatism of Harry “We lost” Reid and Barack “I give up” Obama, America didn’t run. Thanks to John McCain’s leadership in demanding a new course of action, President Bush sent in reinforcements, and America fought back. America’s commitment to be the “strong horse” changed hearts and minds in Iraq. Seeing that America would not run, Sunnis in Al Anbar province turned against Al Qaeda. As America succeeds, jihad appears to be losing its luster.

The lesson here is clear: weakness and appeasement invite aggression. Our resolve to defeat the evil of Islamofascism will make us safer. Sadly, Barack Obama and too many liberals on Capitol Hill just don’t get it. And, in my opinion, that ought to immediately disqualify them from leadership. The defense of this country is the most fundamental obligation of our government. This political action committee will do everything possible to get these defeatists out of Washington, D.C., by electing more conservatives who will defend our country and our values!



* * * * *

Jeff6:31PMJun 13th 2008

It has to do with responsibility for ones actions. Any person being detained anywhere by our country against their will, especially indefinetely without charges, should be able to challenge that detention by our rules.

DeDe6:33PMJun 13th 2008

This interest in change and the focus of attention on Presidential canidates to provide it is misguided at best we (American Voters) should be focused on Congress if we want change. We keep electing the same old do nothing career politicians who care nothing about this country or the people in it, only about there own ambitions, political and financial this country is facing monumental problems econimcaly and it dosn't take a PHD in Economics to figure out why yet Congress does nothing but pass meaningless bills, they are concerned only with blocking anything and everything that might help if they think the other party might get credit for something, so nothing gets done and we the American people sit here and do nothing as well until of course there is a disaster, if the American people don't take the bull by the horns and stop putting these career politicans in office time after time we need term limits.
If your canadate has been in office more than two terms don't vote for him/her again lets really make changes.

Jeff6:36PMJun 13th 2008

Mr. Bauer,

You may tell a lie forever but that still doesn't make it true.

Steven Gray6:46PMJun 13th 2008

This poll is invalid since these are not terrorists but are suspected terrorists.

Warren7:12PMJun 13th 2008

I'm voting Republican
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiQJ9Xp0xxU

mechanicguy617:30PMJun 13th 2008

You notice where the votes for came from don't you? D.C. That ought to tell us all we need to know about why this got allowed.