Michael Ratner

Almost one year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that "both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals seized as potential terrorists can challenge their treatment in U.S. courts."

At the time, MSNBC called it a "setback to the Bush administration."

"Steven Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU, called the rulings 'a strong repudiation of the administration's argument that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts.'"

As a result of the Court's ruling, lawyers rushed to Guantanamo, drooling over the thought of dealing blows to the Bush administration.

MSNBC wrote:

Lawyers for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. military base in Cuba plan to ask this week for access to their clients, armed with the Supreme Court ruling that the prisoners can fight their detention in court.

Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case to the high court, said they would seek access to their clients within the week.

“We will be asking for access to our clients and for information about their mental and physical health,” said attorney Joseph Margulies. “We will move very quickly to seek access to our clients, something that has been denied them from the beginning of this litigation.”

What is the Center for Constiutional Rights?

Rocco DiPippo tells the story of the CCR and "The Man Behind the Attack on Guantanamo," Michael Ratner.

He writes:

The general leading the force to free the captive enemy from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and inflict a humiliating defeat on the United States is so-called “civil rights” and “Constitutional” attorney Michael Ratner. It was Ratner who led the way in recruiting elite lawyers to defend the enemy combatants being interrogated at Gitmo. But Ratner is a long-time leader of two pro-Communist and anti-American organizations who have for decades have lent aid and comfort to America's enemies in the Cold War and beyond.

Michael Ratner is a lawyer who began his legal career in the late 1960s at the National Lawyers Guild, a Soviet created front group which still embraces its Communist heritage. He worked his way up through the NLG’s radical ranks to become its president, then moved on to hold the same position at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which share's the NLG's anti-American radicalism and was founded by pro-Castro lawyers Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler. Among its many outrages, the CCR has defended domestic and international terrorists, and has honored Ratner's NLG colleague and convicted terrorist enabler Lynne Stewart, a modern Legal Left idol. Since 9/11, Ratner and his comrades have attempted to extend undeserved “civil rights” on Islamist murderers with notable success. On this front, Ratner and the Legal Left have dealt America its few setbacks in the War on Terror.

...Never mind that almost all of the prisoners at Guantanamo were picked up by U.S. forces doing battle for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, or that many of them are, in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld words, “the worst of the worst.” Never mind that al-Qaeda members and close associates of Osama bin Laden fill their ranks, or that they’re trained to fabricate tales of abuse to erode their enemy’s morale. Although most of them are violent religious fanatics, and although they’ve been treated better than any captured combatants in world history, Michael Ratner and his lawyers want to provide them the chance to trumpet their “grievances” to a sympathetic press, exploit legal loopholes, and ultimately return to the battlefield.

After suffering a series of legal setbacks in his pro-terrorist legal crusade, Ratner won a major victory in Rasul v. Bush, a suit he brought seeking to grant Islamist terror suspects access to U.S. courts. That victory cleared the way for him to gain direct access to Guantanamo’s prisoners. With this, the trickle of queries from other law firms soon became a steady stream of volunteers to his cause.

Now it’s a torrent, and major U.S. firms including Clifford Chance; Dorsey & Whitney; Allen & Overy; Covington & Burling; and Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr – the last of which also does business with companies involved in the U.S. defense, national security, and government contracts sectors – have teamed up with Michael Ratner and CCR to provide legal services to terrorists and terrorist suspects. (Does the firm know Ratner’s background? If so, does the government know about its connection to Ratner?) Today, teams of lawyers fly to Guantanamo Bay to help people who, if given the chance, would kill all of them and make the Koran their only basis of law.

DiPoppo then gets into Ratner's George Soros connection. (When it comes to leftist nutjobs, doesn't it seem like there's always a Soros connection?)

Ratner’s CCR has almost always received modest funding, most of it from far-Left organizations and leftist-run foundations. But funding of CCR increased by leaps and bounds after Ratner adopted his post-9/11 high profile.

The George Soros-funded Open Society Institute, the Tides Foundation, and other leftist support groups began heavily funding Ratner and CCR’s anti-Bush, antiwar, anti-American agendas.

...Though the battle for Guantanamo’s prisoners is not yet over, but from the time the first plane-load of lawyers touched down in Cuba, two things became abundantly clear: Islamist psychopaths had won a major victory against America’s resolve to fight them.

And Michael Ratner, George Soros, and a host of prestigious American law firms helped them.

A year ago, the Supreme Court didn't deal a setback to the Bush Administration when it opened the floodgates for these fringe leftist lawyers. It dealt a setback to America.

Keep in mind George Soros' relationship with the Democrats. Remember Michael Ratner and his ties and his agenda the next time you consider casting a vote for a liberal.

THEN DON'T!