Ah, The Supremes! You gotta love 'em. They may be a little long in the tooth but the harmonies are still there.
Last week we heard the quintet of Ruth, Anthony, John Paul, David and Steven deliver the sweetest sound we have heard since the last time the Liberty Bell was struck. I'm speaking, of course, of the Supreme Court decision in Boumediene vs. Bush which hopefully, results in the closing of the Guantanamo Gulag forever.
By establishing that a detainee can challenge in federal court the government's right to incarcerate him, the Supreme Court has forced the Bush administration to offer some proof that the people in jail in Cuba are guilty of something.
Naturally, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Scalia, Thomas (aka "Lil Antonin"), Roberts and Alito voted for the administration. Why not? Having put George the Lesser in power, they may as well back his play.
The fascinating aspect of the dissent was that there was virtually no mention of the law. Scalia bloviated about the body count that will result if the 275 or so prisoners in Gitmo are turned loose by the federal court system. At no time did we hear his famous rant about original intent. That's probably because the right to habeas corpus was critical to the Founding Fathers. A person's right to argue the reasons for his imprisonment is black letter law. Since when is Scalia a proponent of situational interpretation? I can understand Judge Antonin's concern. Having locked these people up and tortured them for six years, I'm not sure I want them loose either. They're probably a little steamed having missed six Super Bowls and the entire run of Dancing With the Stars.
Scalia's dissent presupposes several troubling issues. Is the most powerful country in the world really afraid of 275 guys? They must be pretty scary. Also, is the government's case against these folks so weak that federal judges around the country would laugh the prosecutors out of court? If there is no evidence to support even one conviction, why are they in jail?
The Administration's two-step regarding the prisoners at Guantanamo would take first prize at any Motown dance contest. They are enemy combatants but not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions because they don't wear uniforms nor belong to an organized army. Holding them in an offshore prison sidestepped the need to address habeas corpus. That was, until the Court stepped in.
The decision handed down last week is the third smack in the back of the head that the Court has inflicted on the Bush cabal since we started scooping up the world's citizens and renditioning them to hostile hostels around the world. The Court has repeatedly taken Lil George to the woodshed because he is apparently too dense to grasp the notion that 9-11 was not a blank check to torture, incarcerate and eliminate anyone with a dark complexion and a Middle Eastern accent.
We all know why Americans are oblivious to the treatment of Guantanamo's prisoners. If they were Irishmen or Frenchmen, if their skin was lighter or, if they were Christians, none of this would be happening. We should be ashamed. National Security is a perfectly good reason to deny a plane ticket to a shady character. Flying is not a constitutional right. We do not however, have the right to imprison Muslims who attend an anti -American mosque in Munich or run a printing press in Yemen that produces pro-Iranian pamphlets.
George Bush and John McCain are fond of regurgitating the fallacy that "if we withdraw, the terrorists win". Wake up, boys! If we continue to shred the Constitution for the sake of a vague notion of National Security, the terrorists have already won. If we persist in riding roughshod over the world because we think that 3,000 dead Americans in lower Manhattan gives us the right, the terrorists have already won. If America forgets that our strength comes from compassion and tolerance not from the point of a lance, the terrorists have already won. If four hijacked airplanes is all it takes to drive us into the arms of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, we may already be lost.
The upcoming election will be a referendum on American courage. Are we brave enough to defend the Constitution when it most needs defending or will we hide behind misguided leaders who "know what's best". Wake me on Nov 5th.
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