Quotes & Philosophy

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Sir Winston Churchill

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administration’s handling of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.”

Justice Kennedy declared: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

'Habeas corpus' (Latin: [We command] that you have the body) is the name of a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention of themselves or another person. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.  read more »

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Presidential candidate Ron Paul is planning a rally during the Republican National Convention to show what his party stands for.

The Texas congressman has tentatively reserved the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, the second day of the Republican convention.

"We plan on having a large rally. We want it to be a celebration of Republican values and what the Republican Party has traditionally stood for," said Paul spokesman Jesse

Benton on Tuesday. Benton also said that Paul wants to send a message to the Republicans 'that we need to return to our roots' of limited government and personal responsibility.

Paul's campaign picked up substantial steam during the GOP primaries, when the libertarian leaning Texan raised about $35 million almost entirely online and garnered more than a million votes.

Paul secured at least 35 convention delegates, but Republican Party big-wigs are denying him a speaking slot and he has decided to stage his own convention.

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(This is a rush transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto," June 10, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.)

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Well, the Republican National Convention just got some competition, not from the Democrats, but from another Republican — Ron Paul just announcing he's holding a convention of his own. It will be the same day and in the same city as the RNC Convention.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul joins me now.

What are you — what are you up to, Congressman?

REP. RON PAUL (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I don't know whether we'll call it a convention. We're certainly going to have a meeting.

But we're sort of following up on what happened early in the presidential primary races. As you recall, early on, I was excluded from a forum out in Iowa. It happened to be a tax group. And I have no idea why I was singled out and excluded. But we went and had a rally next door. We didn't crash the party. We didn't try to cause any problems. We just went next door. And our rally was a lot bigger than the presidential forum was.

So, at the national convention, we believe, since we won't have very much of a role to play there, that we will see what kind of numbers that we have, where Republicans could come together to remind the party of its promises for limited government.

That's the roots of the Republican Party, and I still think there are still a lot of Republicans that believe that government ought to be small and balanced budgets and free markets and all these principles that, for so long now, we have been neglecting.  read more »

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.
- George Bernard Shaw

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