Supremes Slap Bush; Heads Explode

John O’Neill and Scott Shane report for the New York Times:

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.

In a 5-to-3 ruling, the justices also rejected an effort by Congress to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at the prison camp in GuantÃ¡namo Bay, Cuba.

And the court found that the plaintiff in the case, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, could not be tried on the conspiracy charge lodged against him because international military law requires that prosecutions focus on specific acts, not broad conspiracy charges.

Naturally, the three dissenters were Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. Roberts didn’t vote because he had ruled (in favor of the government) on the case as an appeals court judge last year.

“Noone ever elected Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter or Kennedy, nor should we want to let some number of aging inside the beltway lawyers assume the role of CIC,” says this rightie, in a fervent declaration of support for totalitarian rule. Another calls it “a huge political gift for President Bush” and predicts Bush and Congress will “override” the decision. I’m sure Republican operatives are cranking out “judicial activism” talking points even as I keyboard.

Other rightie reactions: “A victory for terrorists!“; “Can’t Try Them, So Fry Them!“; “Instrument of Surrender Signed by SCOTUS.”

And that’s without looking at Malkin, the nice doggie or the LGFers. I understand Malkin’s head spins around and vomits blood when these things happen.

For a more sober analysis, see Glenn Greenwald.

This decision illustrates just how critical is the current composition of the Supreme Court. The decision was really 5-4 (because Roberts already ruled in favor of the administration in the lower court). The Justice who wrote the majority opinion, John Paul Stevens, is 86 years old, and as Justice Blackmun once famously warned, he “cannot remain on this Court forever.” If the Bush administration is permitted to replace Stevens with yet another worshipper of executive power, the next challenge to the Bush administration’s theories of unchecked power could very easily result, by a 5-4 vote, in the opposite outcome.

Our nation hangs by a thread, and that thread is John Paul Stevens.

Further,

Congress can reverse almost every aspect of the decision as it specifically pertains to these military commissions. It could abrogate any treaties it wants. It could amend the UCMJ to allow military commissions with the rules established by the President. It has already stripped the Court of jurisdiction to hear future habeas corpus challenges by Guantanamo detainees, and could act to further strip the Court of jurisdiction in these areas. We will undoubtedly hear calls by Pat Roberts, John Cornyn, Jeff Sessions, Tom Coburn (and perhaps Joe Lieberman?) et al. for legislation which would accomplish exactly that.

Have I mentioned that it would be extremely beneficial to the nation if the Dems took back Congress this November?

Update: Just so you don’t have to click on the Nice Doggie’s site to see what he wrote, you can click here to see a screen capture.

Update update: See also Scott Lemieux on Hamdan and on the Myth of Conservative Judicial Restraint.

14 thoughts on “Supremes Slap Bush; Heads Explode”

Sings”GEORGIE GOT A SPANKING!”I think we should dust off the “political activism” line….there is nothing worse than activist congressmen who can’t do their own job , then butt in to the job of another branch of government …

Question:If the court has ruled America violated the geneva convention , does this open the door for a war crimes cases against the nation?

If the democrats want to say nothing fine…….but bloggers should be screaming” checks and balance” the phrase needs to be said over and over and over again a million times a day from now until Nov so that it sinks in …CHECKS AND BALANCE!!!!!!!!Lets make it a household phrase shall we???

Nice Doggie speaks:

The Supreme Whores are in dire need of Intervention by Lynch Mobâ„¢.

The next McVeigh will have many right-wing blogs bookmarked.

Why does the Supreme Court hate America!… 🙂

I thought that the Commander-in-Chief trumped all.

I am very relieved at the news that the Supreme Court laid out a decision based upon LAW.

Imagine being a captive passenger during a harrowing ride with a teenage driver who’d been zipping over the line recklessly to show off his macho…… then finally, the vehicle slows enough that an adult driver insists on taking the wheel…….it’s that kind of relief.

I may even find it in myself to forgive the Supremes for putting this teen-mind into office in 2000.

OT [maybe]. I was in my car late morning and caught on NPR the start of a live feed of Bush at a joint news conference with the Japanese leader. I burned anew with shame that Bush represents America to the world….geez, he made a number of gross mis-speaking farts in his first sentences, like: “America and the United States are great allies…”

I sincerely hope that ‘Nice Doggie’, frikin’ pooch don’t look so nice actually, will get a crippling case of mange.

Bush has HOPES of circumventing the Supreme Court decision… more power to him, if he can do it. But included in the Courts ruling was the illegality of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention..How in the world will Bush and his legion of legal contortionist get around that one?..I guess we could always just scrap that worthless piece of paper also.

I was going to comment on the combination of hate name-calling and eliminationist language combined in a single sentence in Nice Doggie’s blog ( which is supposed to be the sole prerogative of progressives, darn it!), but Steve M. beat me to it. Love the TM, by the way.
I was happy to hear that the Supreme Court is still ruling by law and sad to think that this might not last much longer.

I learned about this blog – which I’ll have to check out – from a Tom Maguire comment over at his place as Tom attacks the majority decision in the Hamdan case. Over at Angrybear, I’m with the majority on this one.

I have one small question for our host. Tom does not seem to like you which is OK as he and his guests really turned on me. Tom’s complaint with me is that Angrybear allegedly blocked his comments at one point, which I said was not true. Tom is now saying he never said that but never mind all of that. His excuse for going after me is that you folks blocked his comments. Not sure why (although I can imagine). What is the deal with Tom these days?

Now, I need to read your contribution to this important debate. Thanks for letting me vent.

Nice summary of the back and forth. The rightwing wants to make this a big campaign issue for 2006. Their slogan – assuming they are honest – is that the US can’t chew gum (have security) and walk (have liberty) at the same time. We Democrats should disagree as our America is a lot more capable than the National Review’s America (OK, you have to read my Angrybear post) to know what I mean by the latter. Cheers – PGL of Angrybear!

pgl — I don’t specifically remember banning Tom Maguire, but I make robust use of the twit filter here, so I don’t question that I did ban Tom Maguire.

I realized some time back that if I didn’t exercise editorial control of the comments threads I’d have to eliminate comments or stop blogging.

People get banned here for several reasons:

One, at least 80 percent of the comments righties leave here are juvenile personal insults of me or another commenter. That’s a banning offense. I rarely give commenters a second chance. Same thing with comments that are obvious flame bait or intended to cause thread disruption.

Two, I refuse to allow this blog to be a conduit of rightie propaganda. So if someone leaves misinformation, rightie talking points, and similar lies, and I don’t have time to correct the lies, I delete the post. Repeated attempts to leave such junk here results in a ban.

Sometimes if I do engage in discussion with a rightie, after a time he’ll just keep repeating the same arguments that I’ve already answered, which annoys the hell out of me. Banned.

Also, often righties come here from a right-wing site that links to one of my posts. But because the original right-wing site lied about what I wrote, they’ll come over here to argue about what they’ve been told I said without having read what I actually did write. If they refuse to accept correction and continue to argue with me about something I didn’t even say, they are outta here. You’d be amazed how often this happens, btw.

I have one rule that sometimes gets lefties banned — comments that promote the notion that the World Trade Center towers collapsed from controlled detonation instead of as a result of catastrophic structural failure resulting from terrorist attacks, or that link to sites promoting such nonsese, will be deleted, and repeated attempts to post such stuff here will get the poster banned. I don’t like to do it, but I was an eyewitness to the collapse of the towers and the controlled detonation thing pushes my buttons.

Finally, commenters who are eating too much of my time and energy get banned for any reason. If it’s between them and me posting on this blog, I choose me.

A lot of rightie bloggers complain, but you’d be amazed at how many rightie sites either don’t permit comments at all, or who permit only registered commenters to post — and registration has long been closed. Little Green Footballs is an example of the latter, not that I’d want to comment there. So let ’em complain, I say.

Maha – thanks. I made the mistake of going to Tom’s place to argue in favor of the Hamdan decision. He and his commentators said nothing back to me about the decision or the issues rather playing the flame bait game and hurling insults. I can see how an appropriate filter might apply to such behavior. But there was one good result – I finally decided to check out your blog. Thanks for indulging my little vent here. And keep up the good work.