Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for 6 powerful years leading the Judiciary Committee. The Supreme Court created a mess and hurt the Global War on Terror with its unnecessary and unconstitutional opinion in the Hamdan case. The Supreme Court had no authority to hear the Hamdan case. The Detainee Treatment Act gave the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit exclusive jurisdiction over the validity of any final decision of an enemy combatant status review tribunal. The Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ignored the provision of the DTA and a longstanding line of its own precedents which stood for the principle that Congress can limit jurisdiction in pending as well as future cases. The DTA provided that: no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay. The plain language of this statute clearly applies to cases pending at the date of enactment. The Supreme Court should have reached this conclusion, relying on their own precedent, but they failed to do so. In response, this legislation, H.R. 6166, has been carefully drafted so that the Court can fully understand that it applies to both pending and later filed cases.”