Bush appointees buck Obama's executive authority

By GottaLaff

Where were they when Boy Georgie was swaggering around with his red holster and spinning his little pretend pearl-handled six-guns?

President Barack Obama’s claims of broad executive authority to carry out the war on terror are drawing fire from an unexpected source: federal judges nominated by President George W. Bush, who asserted the sweeping powers in the first place.

In recent weeks, three different Bush appointees considering cases relating to war-on-terror detainees have rejected arguments from Obama’s Justice Department, which adopted virtually unchanged the positions the Bush administration had staked out.

In each case, the Bush-appointed judge said the executive branch was overstepping its authority and claiming more powers than the law allowed.

“It took a while for the courts to turn on George Bush. Obama’s not getting that same period,” said Jonathan Turley, a liberal legal analyst at The George Washington University. “The fact that these are Republican appointees tends to add an exclamation point to their decisions.”

“Even Republican judges are seeing through the arguments and the idea that the war on terror justified depriving prisoners of constitutional protections,” said Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civl Liberties Union.[...]

For seven years, the Bush administration, in tandem with Congress, were able to stop any judge from actually looking at the evidence” in detainee cases, Hafetz said. “They’re finding that the emperor has no clothes and the detentions lack evidentiary support.”[...]

Even after the stinging defeats, the Obama Justice Department is continuing to fight at least two of the rulings. Government lawyers requested and received a stay of Bates’s decision on habeas rights at Bagram.

H/t: Cody