Supreme Court Restores Habeus Corpus

Big news today:

The Supreme Court today rebuked the Bush administration for a third time for its handling of the rights of terrorism detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying those in custody there have a constitutional right to challenge their captivity in federal courts.

By a 5 to 4 vote that brought strongly worded and remorseful dissents from the court's conservative justices, the majority held that an alternative procedure designed by the administration and Congress was inadequate to insure that the detainees, some of whom have been imprisoned for six years without a hearing, receive their day in court.

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote. "Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law."

If John McCain is elected, he will replace one or two of those liberal judges with conservative hard-liners. Such a court would overrule today's decision, setting up a system whereby the government can arrest anyone for terrorist crimes, ship them overseas, and never let them see the light of day.

This is yet another reason why we really, really need to beat McCain in this election.

So what did McCain's favorite judge, Scalia, have to say on this topic?

"America is at war with radical Islamists," Scalia wrote, adding that the decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

What kind of cretin thinks that our Constitution should be suspended during wartime, especially a war as phony and amorphous as the "War on Terror"? Did Scalia make these same arguments during the Cold War, when we were in much greater danger? Does he think habeus corpus should be suspended in drug cases, since we are in a "War on Drugs"?

And I'd really like to know how a fair trial in the United States puts American lives at risk. Seems to me that trashing the reputation of America does much more damage to our interests and our security. Scalia and his right wing pals must be fans of the justice systems in Third World dictatorships, where the military is all-powerful and you have zero rights.

Let's not mince words here. Scalia is a scumbag. If we could somehow yank him off the Supreme Court for his extremist views, we should. At the very least we should pass a Constitutional amendment limiting Supreme Court terms to 25 years.