Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The terrorist trial and the Constitution

Excerpts-Congress Must Stop the Trial in New York City by Phyllis Schlafly

The U.S. Constitution can rescue us from the Obama administration's latest push toward "remaking America." Our Constitution is on the people's side to stop Obama from turning the judiciary into a platform for America's sworn enemies to spread their propaganda and even use our own laws against us.

Our Constitution's framers foresaw the probability that power-hungry men would try to take over the judiciary. So, they gave us the tools to maintain a government based on the separation of powers

The Constitution gives Congress the power to override this Obama-Holder outrage. Congress can and should prevent this travesty, and the sooner the better.

We don't need any 2,000-page legislation -- a single sentence will suffice. "Federal district courts shall have no jurisdiction over any case involving unlawful enemy combatants, as that term is defined in the United States Code (Title 10, Section 948a)."

Constitutional authority is clear. Article III, Section I, states, "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

Nothing is new or irregular about Congress prescribing or limiting the kinds of cases that federal courts are permitted to hear. A long historical record conclusively proves that Congress has the power to regulate and limit court jurisdiction, that Congress has used this power repeatedly, and the courts have accepted it.

The great Chief Justice John Marshall asserted in an 1807 Supreme Court case that "courts which are created by written law, and whose jurisdiction is defined by written law, cannot transcend that jurisdiction."

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