Here is what Michelle Malkin had to say about last week’s Senate vote that prevented terrorists from challenging their detention:
Sen. Lindsay Graham has been irksome of late, but the amendment he sponsored to rein in the ridiculous panoply of legal rights granted to foreign enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay is a welcome dose of sanity. The Senate approved the amendment to a military budget bill, 49-42, last night:
If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, which has not yet considered the measure but where passage is considered likely, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantánamo Bay had a right to challenge their detentions in court.
Nearly 200 of roughly 500 detainees there have already filed habeas corpus motions, which are making their way up through the federal court system. As written, the amendment would void any suits pending at the time the law was passed.
Take special note of these wayward Republicans and surprisingly reality-grounded Democrats and their votes on the measure:
In addition to [Sen. Arlen] Specter, Republicans voting against the bill were Senators John E. Sununu of New Hampshire, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. The five Democrats voting for the bill were Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Note that Tim Johnson was not among the 5 sane Democrats to vote for the amendment. Note the five Democrats included two from midwestern red states… Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Tim Johnson not only decided to go soft on the terrorists, he voted to grant them a victory in Iraq. Here are the details from the AP:
The Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday easily defeated a Democratic effort to pressure President Bush to outline a timetable for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It then overwhelmingly endorsed a weaker statement calling on the administration to explain its Iraq policy.
Senators also overwhelmingly voted to endorse the Bush administration's military tribunals for prosecuting suspected foreign terrorists held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but to allow detainees to appeal their status and punishments to a federal court.
On the question of a timetable for troop withdrawal, senators rejected the Democrats' measure by 58-40. Democratic leaders had advanced the timetable measure in the wake of declining public support for a conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 U.S. lives and cost more than $200 billion.
Again, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota voted against the surrender. But Tim Johnson decided his anti-war Democrat colleagues were more important than the majority of his constituents back in South Dakota.
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