Spencer Cox: “we are playing a dangerous game here. If the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) had written an amendment that dealt…”

“we are playing a dangerous game here. If the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) had written an amendment that dealt with how U.S. citizens are treated, whether they can be found to be enemy combatants and detained, we might have had an interesting discussion. There has been, for example, discussion of the Jose Padilla case during this debate. But that is not the amendment that he wrote. The amendment that he wrote does not even apply strictly to terrorism. It applies to conventional warfare. So that if Adolph Hitler's Panzer Division were to land here in America, every single one of the Nazi troops would have to be sent through the judicial system. We could not deal with them as an enemy force. If Kim Jong-il sends his million-man army to land on America's shores, if they were to arrive in amphibious vehicles and roll tanks through our streets, every single one of those millions would have to be treated as a litigant in court under this amendment. We have never done this before. Least of all should we be doing this in an appropriations bill. These sorts of novel concepts that strip the Commander in Chief of his authority to conduct war for the United States of America that I would say that go so far as to completely upend the legal right of the United States to defend itself should not be written on the back of an envelope and attached as authorizing language essentially in an appropriations bill.”