Here is the government\'s brief to the Ninth Circuit. 15 pages. in pdf format.

What caught my eye was the argument that federal courts have no business taking "the extraordinary step of second-guessing a formal national-security judgment made by the President himself pursuant to broad grants of statutory authority."

In fact, courts have routinely done so. The Supreme Court not long ago ruled on Holder v.Humanitarian Law Project[/i] , saying "national security and foreign relations do not warrant abdication of the judicial role."

And in [i]Rasul v. Bush (the case that held non-citizen detainees in Guantanamo had habeas corpus rights), the Court ruled that U.S. federal courts have jurisdiction to review "the legality of Executive detention of aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not 'ultimate sovereignty.'"

The Ninth Circuit is expected to rule in the temporary restraining order this week, but I've got five cyber bucks saying it's on a greased highway to the Supreme Court.

Onward and upward,
airforce