Especially funny/sad was the plethora of facebook/twitter/etc comments from the Left saying stuff like "Trump wants the New York killer thrown in Guantanamo, but he didn't say that about the Vegas killer! RACIST!" .... what's the point of imprisoning a corpse?
It's hard to say what Trump was thinking. Technically I believe the law has changed so that we can't just throw someone into Gitmo and suspend the right to habeas corpus. I think the Supreme Court ruled on that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush
"On June 12, 2008, Justice
Kennedy delivered the opinion for the 5–4 majority, holding that the prisoners had a right to the writ of
habeas corpus under the
United States Constitution and that the
Military Commissions Act of 2006 was an unconstitutional suspension of that right. The Court applied the
Insular Cases, by the fact that the United States, by virtue of its complete jurisdiction and control, maintains
de factosovereignty over this territory, while
Cuba retained ultimate sovereignty over the territory, to hold that the aliens detained as enemy combatants on that territory were entitled to the writ of habeas corpus protected in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. The lower court had expressly indicated that no constitutional rights (not merely the right to habeas) extend to the Guantanamo detainees, rejecting petitioners' arguments, but the Supreme Court held that fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution extend to the Guantanamo detainees as well.
[6][7]Invoking
Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Court concluded: "The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say 'what the law is'."
To me, the New York Terrorist was clearly in the category of an unlawful combatant which in my layman eyes is a soldier representing a nation-state or other clear and present danger that is waging war upon us such as Al Queda or ISIS. I believe what he did violates International Law and the Geneva Convention Protocols. I believe he should be held and tried by a military tribunal because he did not wear a uniform which I believe is one of the conditions of being eligible for safe harbor as a prisoner of war or "lawful combatant."
We don't know anything yet about the Las Vegas shooter (not to mention that he's dead). If it were true that he was a member of ISIS (declared) then his actions would be treasonous and subject to death. But would he be in the same category as an unlawful combatant? I would say so.
