Padilla is Not a Poster Boy for Liberals

Building on a comment I left at NewsHound (Yes, I know this is the laziest form of blogging) in response to another's comment to this article:

At the beginning of the discussion, Johnson told Mike Gallagher, subbing for Sean Hannity, that Judge Luttig, who wrote the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, denied the Bush Administration's request to transfer Padilla, "in the most activist way that you can imagine - 'we're not gonna honor that, we think you have political motives, we're not gonna do it. We're gonna defy your authority as the executive. We're gonna defy your war power authority as the president. And we're not going to do it.'"

The reaction to the latest on the Jose Padilla story made me write this:

Padilla is not a poster boy for Liberals. He is a test for whether the rule of law still functions post 9/11.

The law does not allow for guilt by association, nor past crimes when determining innocence or guilt. That comes later at the sentencing.

If anything, our system provides for leniency over supposed guilt. I know that drives conservatives crazy but the that's what the founding fathers wanted and is what makes America great.

Sad to say, there is a movement to reverse those fundemantal and progressive rights under the current administration.

I can accept that a guilty man goes free rather than an innocent man gets punished. It's the bedrock of our democracy and written into our legal system.

What makes this exceptional is that Luttig, who wrote the decision, was short listed as a Bush nomination to the Supreme Court. Not exactly an activist judge in my opinion.

(corrected some typos from the original comment)