Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Fatuous Judge

Michael Billok nails the foolishness of the judge seeking to free Jose Padilla:

Instead, much like a certain presidential candidate, Judge Floyd believes that "this is a law enforcement matter, not a military matter." Indeed, the judge views detention of enemy combatants as punishment and not, as the Supreme Court plurality held last summer in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a "fundamental and accepted" part of war. Captured enemy combatants must be detained until the end of hostilities, because though initial attacks may be thwarted, combatants and terrorists will try again if freed. Should Judge Floyd still disagree, he could meet with the terrorists who, after signing peace pledges, were set free from Guantanamo Bay only to wage terrorism and face recapture. Or better still, he could rent "Saving Private Ryan" and watch Tom Hanks' character suffer death at the hands of an enemy soldier he had set free earlier in the film. War is more serious than, and should not be confused with, mere criminal activity.
Finally, the court completely ignored Supreme Court precedent. During World War II, U.S. citizen Herbert Haupt was captured while trying to blow up bridges, railroads and manufacturing plants for Nazi Germany. The Supreme Court held in its "Ex parte Quirin" decision that Haupt could be tried by military tribunal, and he was subsequently executed. Haupt and Padilla were both United States citizens; both planned acts of destruction on behalf of an enemy of the United States; and both were captured on U.S. soil, oddly enough, in Chicago. Yet the court practically dismissed Quirin out of hand, even stating that "Quirin involved a war that had a definite ending date. The present war on terrorism does not."
Enter Encyclopedia Brown. The boy detective creation of Donald Sobol, Brown could solve any mystery over dinner and before dessert. He once examined a sword that was supposedly inscribed and presented "at the First Battle of Bull Run" in 1861 and immediately classified it a hoax. How so? In 1861, there hadn't yet been a Second Battle of Bull Run, so nobody could know the 1861 battle was the "first," and not simply the only, battle.
So, a question for the judiciary: How did the Supreme Court know in 1942, the year Quirin was decided, that World War II would have "a definite ending date" in 1945? Do presidents in wars with known ending dates have more discretion to fight the enemy than presidents in wars where the conclusion is unknown? What's the matter? You haven't touched your dessert.

This is why the people who man the judiciary matter.

This is why Senator Frist needs to get his act together.