The Constitutional Crisis and the Security Crisis by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online

The Constitutional Crisis and the Security Crisis by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online

‘We do not want a situation where the executive is defying the courts,” a senior Obama administration official told the Washington Post. The spokesman was rationalizing the administration’s release of jihadist detainees, who are returning to the jihad and targeting Americans. Such defiance, said the official, would be “a recipe for a constitutional crisis.” Evidently, the president doesn’t appreciate that we already have a constitutional crisis. The administration claims that it simply had to send six detainees from lockup in Guantanamo Bay to al-Qaeda Central in Yemen. A federal judge had found that there was insufficient evidence to hold one of them as an enemy combatant. Deducing that the cases against the other five were equally weak or worse, the Justice Department decided that all six should be sprung. Those were just the Yemenis. White House officials did not comment to the Post on the administration’s equally indefensible decision to send another half-dozen detainees to Afghanistan and Somaliland — which, like dumping jihadists in Yemen, is tantamount to sending them back to al-Qaeda.

These are not just bad decisions. They amount to a scandal. Let’s count the ways.