The Hamdan decision rejects this fast-and-loose attitude to the Separation of Powers. It endorses careful scrutiny of the precise powers delegated by Congress to the executive branch. The Court thus properly rejected Justice Thomas's extraordinary idea that the "structural advantages attendant to the Executive Branch" in war-time--aspects of executive power that make that branch the "most dangerous" to individual liberty today--merit a hands-off approach by the courts. (Ironically, Justice Thomas refers to Justice Stevens' "unfamiliarity with the realities of warfare"; but Stevens served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. Thomas's official bio, by contrast, contains no experience of military service.
From Aziz Huq, Associate Counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, via
ACSBlog.
Ok, so it's cheap sensationalism (and probably bad form for riffing on a quote Kos had on the front page a short while ago - apologies for that) for me to quote one tiny paragraph (from a well worth reading assesment of today's
Hamdan decision) highlighting yet another conservative wimp-bitch yodeling the battle cry of the pussy. But man, the conservative wimp-bitches just keep on going out there, in
public, and yodeling their battle cry of the pussy. So I feel obliged to showcase said pussy battle-cries.
Of course, Justice Thomas' idiotic, wimp-bitch criticism of Justice Stevens is not the most important part of today's landmark decision; today five men and women said "NO" to this administration's raw power grab. These five said "NO" to the undermining of our constitution. These five said "NO" to a president who wants to govern unconstrained by law. They said yes to sanity.
The Court ruled that when Congress speaks, the president must listen. They ruled that war is no excuse (absent imminent emergency) to turn the Constitution into toilet paper. They ruled that we are indeed a government of checks and balances, and the Executive Branch is subject to those checks whether Bush likes it or not.
If the Court had ruled otherwise, if Scalia and Alito and Thomas and Roberts (had Roberts been allowed to vote he surely would have sided, as he did as a Circuit Judge, with the Bush Administration) had carried the majority, America, as the founders envisioned it, would be dead.
Think about that. America would be dead. More surely than if Al-Qaeda high-jacked 100 planes, America would be dead had the Court ruled otherwise. Because any other decision would have said the president can do what he wants, to whomever he wants, for whatever reason he wants. Surely there is no more unAmerican approach than that. We would be a nation where liberty was a note in a history book; where the random whim of a man over-ruled the carefull protections of a system of law. The America that was a shining city on the hill would have been replaced by an America that no longer guarded against "the tyranny of the majority." Yup. Today's decision was that big a deal.
Instead of ushering in that dark, mocking parody of America that the Bush administration was arguing for, the Court forced us to take a step back from the brink. And while the President can (and probably will) circumvent the holding of this decision by getting a pliant Congress to simply authorize the tribunals the Court struck down today, he must do so within the framework of our government, laid out almost 220 years ago. Republican Senators and Congressman will have to put their asses on the line to vote for authorization. And hopefully, those very same politicians will be asked by some intrepid reporter: "Hey, why do you think it is a good idea to imprison people for four years, with no charges, no trial, and no access to evidence? Don't you know Americans are being kidnapped, beheaded and killed? Don't you think we should be setting a better example of how to treat prisoners?"
Ah, if only there was an intrepid reporter out there. If only there were someone is this Republican government willing to answer the question honestly.