JUDGE WENDELL GRIFFEN

  • JUDGE WENDELL GRIFFEN

Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen has written in Ethics Daily about the new law providing for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens who are terrorism suspects. He’s complimentary of neither the law nor President Obama, who signed it.

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If you think that smacks of tyranny, you’re right.

If you think Obama is smart enough to know better than to sign such a measure, you’re right.

If you hoped Obama would demonstrate the fortitude to carry out his publicized threat to veto the legislation if this offensive provision wasn’t removed, you’re badly disappointed.

Count me among the badly disappointed people who know tyranny when we see it.

Count me among the people who take no consolation in Obama’s signing statement that his administration won’t use the power he signed into law.

This is the kind of foolishness that produced the 1944 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States that upheld the forced detention of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry based on xenophobic and racist hysteria after Pearl Harbor.

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