Salim Ahmed Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's chauffeur. He was captured during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan along with more than 500 other suspected Al Qaeda terrorists.
A former member of the terror group Islamic Jihad before hooking up with Osama, Hamdan was designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. He was slated to stand trial before a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
That is, until U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson recently intervened.
The activist judge, whom former President Bill Clinton appointed in 1994, declared that President Bush overstepped his constitutional authority in declaring Osama's chauffeur an enemy combatant.
He ruled that Hamdan and his fellow Al Qaeda terrorists must be accorded "prisoner of war" status, must be afforded protections under the Geneva Conventions.
It is, of course, outrageous to treat terrorists--who fight under no nation's flag, who wear no nation's military uniform--as prisoners of war.
It is absurd to give Osama's mass murderers protections under the Geneva Conventions, which apply to nations during time of war, not to terror organizations like Al Qaeda.
Indeed, as Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo stated, "By conferring legal status under the Geneva Conventions on members of Al Qaeda, the judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war."
That's why it is so dangerous to have activist judges like Robertson on the federal bench. That's why it is so important that President Bush nominate judges who recognize that their role is to faithfully interpret existing law, not to create new law.
During the next four years, the president will have an opportunity to leave a lasting imprint on the federal judiciary. He not only will nominate hundreds of district and appeals court judges, he also likely will choose one or two, or as many as three or four, Supreme Court justices.
Of course, the Democratic Senate minority is going to make it as torturous as possible for Bush to get his judicial nominees confirmed. Particularly nominees whose legal views do not pass Democrat litmus tests on such contentious issues as church and state, abortion on demand, racial quotas, environmental regulations and the putative rights of terrorists.
Senate Democrats succeeded during the past two years in blocking the confirmation of 10 of the president's appeals court nominees, by employing filibusters to prevent those nominees from receiving up-or-down Senate floor votes.
And the Democratic minority is threatening to resort to the same tactics for the next two to four years unless Bush nominates judges whose legal views are closer to, say, James Robertson than Antonin Scalia.
But Democrats ignore the outcome of the last election. The American people returned Bush to the Oval Office, returned a larger Republican majority to the Senate, knowing full well that the next president, the next Senate, would leave a lasting mark on the federal judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down.
Sen. George Allen, the Virginia Republican, had a warning for his colleagues across the aisle, who plan to continue to obstruct the president's judicial nominees.
"I think that they saw what happened to their leader," he told Fox News, referring to Sen. Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat, who was turned out of office by voters in the Coyote State.
"If Democrats continue with that line of petty partisan obstructionism and filibustering," said Allen, "they do so at their own risk."
Indeed, the party of Daschle has corrupted the process by which judicial nominees are vetted.
Under the Constitution, the president appoints judges by and with the Senate's "advice and consent." Nowhere is it written that a president's judicial nominee must secure a super-majority of Senate votes to win confirmation.
That's why President Bush and the Senate Republican majority should to go to the constitutional mat with Senate Democrats over judicial nominations.
If the Democrats continue to filibuster the president's nominees, then Republicans should rewrite the rules that allow such obstructionist tactics.
They should request a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian making filibusters on judicial nominations illegal (as it is for budget resolutions and reconciliation bills). And the ruling could be upheld by a simple majority of senators.
Democrats and Republicans alike refer to such a move as the "nuclear option," wary that it will trigger a long and uncivil war in the upper chamber.
But the way to avoid such a war is for the recalcitrant Democrats to stop usurping the president's constitutional prerogative and allow his judicial nominees to get an up and/or down vote on the Senate floor.
Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at Joseph.Perkins@UnionTrib.com.