Writing at NRO today, my friend Andy McCarthy casts his legal-eagle eye over last week's little-noticed DC Court of Appeals ruling on al Odah v. United States and explains in clear, unmistakable terms how, with this disastrous verdict, the Federal Courts have declared our war on jihadist Islam over.

The case has to do with the process of discovery. A three-judge panel ruled that the US government, in trying alien enemy combatants, must surrender anything during the process of discovery that might possibly be helpful to their court cases--even sensitive military intelligence.

As Andy explains:

This court has given alien enemy combatants — who have no constitutional entitlement to the due-process protections accorded to American citizens at trial — discovery rights superior to those the Supreme Court requires in the domestic criminal context.

"Insane" is not the word to describe the ruling because "insane" implies unreason. This ruling is completely logical. It just goes against our national interest. It is "insane" only if one assumes these judges consider our national interest of paramount concern. I submit they do not.

Andy writes:

The courts no longer see themselves as part of the U.S. government. The U.S. government, like the American people, is at war — or at least it has been. The courts are not part of that effort. They are spectator turned critic turned detached manager. Their self-perception is that of a shadow outside and above the U.S. government, serving not a Constitution of limited powers but “the law” — an ever-evolving, all-encompassing corpus of cosmic justice. The courts are not a forum to which Americans come to vindicate their rights against government; they are an overlord available to humanity to lodge its grievances against the American people and their government.

Alas, overlords for humanity ill-serve and ill-use the people every time.