by Damozel | The Guantanamo decision, illustrating that certain principles on which the Bill of Rights is based are hanging by a thread, may well become a 'hot button' issue in the election. The GOP is apparently planning to make it a 'rallying point' in its campaign. Democrats, on the other hand, will point out --- as indeed I've already done --- that the bare 5-4 majority indicates that civil liberties are hanging by a thread, and that we must not allow Republicans, including --- or especially --- John McCain, to pick any more judges.
As always, Scalia was supplied plenty of grist to the GOP political mill:
Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion....called the decision “disastrous,” “devastating” and tragic...In his dissent in the Guantánamo case, Justice Scalia accused the majority of harboring the “ultimate, unexpressed goal” of extending the ruling far beyond the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to give courts “the power to review the confinement of enemy prisoners held by the Executive anywhere in the world....[C]ritics of the decision quickly picked up on Justice Scalia’s words, warning, as the editorial in The Wall Street Journal did, that prisoners at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in Iraq would soon have access to federal courts — a proposition that would be unlikely to get any votes, let alone five, from the current justices..” (NYT).
Right. Never mind that Kennedy's majority opinion clearly limited the decision to Guantánamo 'by the special nature of the American installation there as well as by the remoteness of the base from any zone of hostilities.' (NYT) What price any sort of reality check when Scalia is in the vein of rhetoric and the Republicans are desperate to awaken their disaffected members' ever-ready capacity for fear and anger?
McCain has made his erroneous position clear.
A New York Times editorial called 'Justice 5, Brutality 4' sets out the opposite ---i.e., correct --- response, the response that treats America as something more than a nation of fearful self-serving cowards who value the principles of democracy only as and when it doesn't get in the way of their need to feel safe at all costs.
If we betray our values and become like our enemies, we lose everything that America stands for.
For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats in Congress, President Bush has denied the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to label “unlawful enemy combatants” and throw into never-ending detention.
Twice the Supreme Court swatted back his imperial overreaching, and twice Congress helped Mr. Bush try to open a gaping loophole in the Constitution. On Thursday, the court turned back the most recent effort to subvert justice with a stirring defense of habeas corpus, the right of anyone being held by the government to challenge his confinement before a judge.
The court ruled that the detainees being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have that cherished right, and that the process for them to challenge their confinement is inadequate. It was a very good day for people who value freedom and abhor Mr. Bush’s attempts to turn Guantánamo Bay into a constitutional-rights-free zone....
It was disturbing that four justices dissented from this eminently reasonable decision. The lead dissent, by Chief Justice John Roberts, dismisses habeas as “most fundamentally a procedural right.” Chief Justice Roberts thinks the detainees receive such “generous” protections at their hearings that the majority should not have worried about whether they had habeas rights.
There is an enormous gulf between the substance and tone of the majority opinion, with its rich appreciation of the liberties that the founders wrote into the Constitution, and the what-is-all-the-fuss-about dissent.
This is exactly correct and --- I'll say it again --- a crucial reason why no Democrat should fail to vote for the Democratic candidate in November. Hillary and Bill Clinton wouldn't want it otherwise. What's at stake is way more important than anyone's personal feelings about which Democrat gets the job. Our nation's standing in the world, and the integrity of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, are riding on our doing the right thing. Don't kid yourself that it doesn't make a difference which party controls the presidency during the next four years.
By a thread, people.
Memeorandum has blogger discussion.
RECENT BN-POLITICS POSTINGS
Prison Break in Afghanistan Frees Hundreds of Militant Taliban Members; 4 Marines Killed in Road Bomb Attack
McCain Weighs in on Bush's Failed Detainee Policy
Comments