I am outraged by the editorial in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune titled, "American justice confirmed".

As Justice Antonin Scalia states, "The nation will live to regret what the court has done today." Five unelected members of the Supreme Court of the United States overnight gave legal status to radical Islamists that have and are trying to kill us. Abraham Lincoln said that the constitution is not a suicide pact. Five members of the Supreme Court made it just that.

According to Justice Scalia,"Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspen­sion [of habeas corpus] Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation­-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable 'func­tional' test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misde­scribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragi­cally, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."

What does this mean in plain language? Ronald Kessler of NewsMax.com explains, "By this reasoning, illegal aliens should be given access to the federal civilian courts to contest their expulsion from the country. Nazi soldiers taken prisoner during World War II and held on American soil should have been allowed to argue their cases in federal court. Instead of shooting terrorists on the battlefield, American soldiers should read them their rights and ship them off to American jails."

"The level of due process they [the federal courts] require," said David B. Rivkin, a lawyer who served in the Justice Department in the Reagan administration, "will be impossible to meet and therefore will result in the release of a substantial number of enemy combatants." Kessler points out, "In fact, under the majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, suspected terrorists are given more rights than our own soldiers are afforded when charged with crimes. Their cases are restricted to the military courts."

So where do our two Presidential candidates stand on this critical issue?

According to Boston.com, Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said in a statement that the ruling validating detainees' rights "ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values."

The Boston Globe points out, "Obama has long advocated ending the justice system specially created for Guantanamo Bay. He said the detainees should be brought to trial in US courts or in military courts-martial, a proposal the Supreme Court ruling does not affect."

"The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," said Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, at a town hall meeting near McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

As PowerLine Blog points out, "[what] the Court's majority overturned was not a decree by the Bush administration, it was a statute that was passed by large majorities in both the House and the Senate in 2006. The Military Commissions Act passed the Senate on a 65-34 vote, with Democratic Senators Carper, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Menendez, Nelson (Neb.), Nelson (Fla.), Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar and Stabenow voting with the Republicans. Likewise, in the House 34 Democrats joined with 219 Republicans to pass the statute."

As former Senator Fred Thomson said in his article "A Supreme Error", "Upon reading the opinion in Boumediene v Bush, one must conclude that the majority knew where they wanted to go and simply had to figure out how to get there. The trip was not a pretty one. How could it be when the justices seemingly wrote a map based on ideas cherry picked from over 400 years of established law and backfilled with justifications to create a new right for alien combatants that Americans themselves do not enjoy?

They could have saved us all a lot of time if they’d told us what was clearly on their minds.

They don’t trust military tribunals to deal with those accused of being enemy combatants, even if the tribunals are following guidelines established by Congress.

That the government has probably detained some prisoners at Guantanamo for longer than they should have.

And that Guantanamo should just be closed.

Though they are willing to give it lip service, they don’t really believe we are at war … at least not a “real” war.

Therefore, they should create a new right for our nation’s enemies commiserate with the displeasure that they and the rest of the “enlightened” people have with this “war,” Guantanamo and the Bush Administration."

What may be the reality of this decision? If you are a soldier in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the over 100 countries we have our troops and you capture an enemy combatant what do you do? Do you have the evidence needed to convict this radical Islamist killer in a U.S. Court? Are you as a soldier prepared to be called as a witness in a public trial, like our police officers, and testify that yes this enemy combatant tried to or did kill your fellow soldiers? Can you prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt? What do you do?

Putting our troops in this situation is both repulsive and outrageous. More importantly it is deadly. For you see our enemy understands what the Supreme Court just did and they will take full advantage of it.

"Detainees will be able to call witnesses and demand to see classified information, putting a tremendous strain on the court system and the Justice Department. They will shop for liberal jurisdictions to bring their cases. When capturing terrorists, our own soldiers will be burdened with accumulating the amount of evidence required by law enforcement." according to Kessler.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Quds Forces, the Mahdi Army, and the 20 other radical Islamist terror organizations world wide now have a friend in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Senator Obama.

They have an enemy in Senator McCain. You decide who is right and who is wrong. While you are our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be paying the price in blood as they decide "What to do".