Saturday, June 14, 2008

dissenting opinions: blog entries of the supreme court

I must have somehow slept through it, but the Supreme Court managed to get something right on Thursday when they actually interpreted the laws and ideals of this country by restoring the right of habeas corpus to the "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay.


Certainly you'd think that an administration that has been telling us since it declared war on terror that "they hate us for our freedom" would applaud a court ruling that affirmed that there are freedoms to hate. You would think that, in what has been characterized as a war of ideology, at Supreme Court ruling that made sure we held on to the ideals we had before "9/11 changed everything" would signify a victory.

You'd be wrong.

On Thursday, President Bush said, "We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it."


Of course Antonin Scalia, just possibly the worst person in the history of anything, has declared that the decision is "going to get more Americans killed" and tossed around all manner of doomsday scenario in his dissenting opinion, causing him to sound more like one of the current presidential administration's mouthpieces than a man appointed to rule on cases in an impartial fashion based on the law as written in the constitution.

The New York Times seems to think that this decision is going to make the Supreme Court a hot topic in the presidential election. I say that would be fantastic. I've been wrong about this sort of thing before, but I suspect that McCain's backing of the Bush administrations stance on the ruling puts him firmly in a minority. This is, of course, assuming that enough people care about habeas corpus.

If no one cares and McCain wants to keep harping on it? I suppose that will work just fine for me, too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

antonin scalia is a pompous ass.

-emily =)