I love this guy (Tribe).
http://www.spectator.org/special/special.htm
Thank You, Mr. Tribe
by Byron York
For days, conservatives have been listening to the statements of Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, Eric Holder, and others justifying the raid that seized Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives' home.
On Saturday morning, just hours after the raid, the president said "there was no alternative but to enforce the decision of the INS and a federal court that Juan Miguel Gonzalez should have custody of his son. The law has been upheld, and that was the right thing to do."
In the days that followed, Clinton, Reno, Holder, et al, repeatedly cited a federal court as the authority for their action. It's not us, they said -- it's the law.
Virtually the entire press corps accepted those statements at face value. But some conservatives read the original decision of judge K. Michael Moore of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida -- the decision that supported Reno's refusal to consider any asylum request from Elian or his Miami relatives. They found that the ruling contained no order or suggestion that Elian be seized.
And then those conservatives read the decision from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals which reversed the District Court decision. In that one, the Justice Department specifically asked the Eleventh Circuit judges to order Lazaro Gonzalez to give up Elian.
"The INS said it would consent to an injunction requiring the INS to bar Elian's departure from the United States if this Court also entered an order directing Lazaro Gonzalez to present Elian to the INS, as directed by the INS, for transfer of care to Elian's father," the judges wrote. "We decline to proceed in this manner."
In other words...No. It could not have been more clear: The court would not order the Miami family to give up Elian. There was no order from any court allowing the Justice Department and INS to do what they clearly wanted to do, which was seize the child.
Clinton, Reno, Holder, et al, were making it up. (But it was exceedingly generous of them to offer to obey the Court's injunction -- if the Court did what they wanted.)
So the conservatives tried to make a simple point. There was no order, they said. And nobody listened. And then they said it louder -- THERE WAS NO ORDER! And nobody listened.
But now, a liberal with actual standing in the press has made the point in a way that will be difficult -- although not impossible -- for the wise men and women of the media to ignore. "Where did the attorney general derive the legal authority to invade that Miami home in order to seize the child?" asks Harvard professor Laurence Tribe in Tuesday morning's New York Times.
"No judge or neutral magistrate had issued the type of warrant or other authority needed for the executive branch to break into the home and seize the child. The agency had no more right to do so than any parent who has been awarded custody would have a right to break and enter for such a purpose."
As for the warrant produced by INS chief Doris Meissner, Tribe writes: "It was not a warrant to seize the child. Elian was not lost, and it is a semantic sleight of hand to compare his forcible removal to the seizure of evidence, which is what a search warrant is for."
So in the end it is clear that the Clinton administration raided the house because the Clinton administration wanted to raid the house -- and not because any judge considered the evidence and ordered that such action be taken.
As for all those in the press who seemed determined to believe otherwise, the message is this: Ignore Tom DeLay if you want to. Laugh at him. Call him a Clinton-hater. But please read Laurence Tribe.
Byron York is senior writer for TAS.
Copyright © 2000 The American Spectator.
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The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
[This message has been edited by Oatka (edited April 25, 2000).]
