I thought of was when Lincoln did exactly that during the Civil War - by suspending Habeas Corpus AND ignoring the Supreme Court when they ruled it invalid.

You do grasp the import of the "during the Civil War" part of that, don't you?

It is extremely important to understand just WHY habeas was abrogated for "enemy combatants." And if this has already been covered in these posts, my apologies.

Jack Hitt made it crystal clear in the "This American Life" show that won a Peabody this year. The reason the Bush administration suspended habeas for enemy combatants was NEVER to "keep us safe." The sole reason, and the ongoing reason, is because people inside the Administration and the CIA and the Pentagon realized that nearly everyone in Guatanamo was innocent of anything. And the Administration wanted to hide that fact by sequestering these prisoners so no-one could demonstrate the clear criminality of keeping them locked up.

This is why the administration never repatriates innocents from Guantanamo to the US. They don't want those people appearing on US television, giving the total lie to everything Cheney and Bush have been saying about the place, and the people in it.

In short , suspending habeas was nothing more than the lowest form of sleazy cover-your-ass-baby. And it's nothing more than that now. If the American people could actually SEE and HEAR the people now in Guantanamo, they would know the utter depths of their government's evil. And that's no exaggeration.

The Administration could not afford to have these people put on trial; nearly every one of them would have been found innocent, and nearly every case would have been thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Many have been abused, or even tortured, for no reason. The full-scale of the fuck-up down there was not realized until it was too late, and many innocents had been tortured. God knows, the Administration doesn't want THAT pretty fact made public.

So, Bush and Cheney decided to abrogate a 1000 year old tradition of law, to protect themselves, and for no other reason.

How much more reason do we need to impeach these motherfuckers, and convict them, and throw them in JAIL?

Nancy, are you listening? How much more are you going to take?

I'm struck by the similarity between your argument and that of those that say criticizing our government reflects a "blame America first" attitude.

One of the hallmarks of the progressive side, in my view, is a willingness to hold ourselves to a higher standard - and also, the view that we should attend first to the speck in our own eye, as Scripture says.

The fact that the other side may manipulatively use similar-sounding arguments:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/08/AR2007050801838.html

is not, in my view, a reason to eschew healthy self-criticism.

Sometimes you have to make a choice - and the simple one here is: "War or Police Action?"

If it is the latter - then give Habeas Corpus to all of the guys in Guantanamo and let the Zakarias Mousawi type trial circus begin for all of these men. That should tie up the Federal Bench for a few years. Of course, there will be few trials because when the defendants start finding out who their accusers are (especially the ones overseas) they will be killed and their testimony made invalid. This is one of the reasons you never saw trials of spies during the cold war too - you risked losing your sources.

But if it is a war - then pass a law to have some kind of military trials with enhanced evidence rules. But don't pretend that this is just a normal case for the bench.

I agree that Habeas Corpus is the foundation of criminal law - but I think that on this one - you are in a grey area that no one really knows how best to proceed. Because no one really has figured out how to fight a non governmental organization that can do damage equivalent to the military capabilities of most 3rd world states. And add to that the suicide guided bomb factor and you really have a situation that requires a little more than the usual criminal justice system. RICO was not made to handle this situation.

I don't think the Democrats are craven - I think they are also genuinely torn between how to handle this situation. And no right is ever absolute either - you can't yell fire in a theater and claim freedom of speech. It is nice to be for principles - but it is also not an excuse to commit suicide.

A few days ago, you were complaining about the article where it was suggested that a President had to act decisively "above the law" in some situations. The first thing I thought of was when Lincoln did exactly that during the Civil War - by suspending Habeas Corpus AND ignoring the Supreme Court when they ruled it invalid. We are not even to that point yet (and probably won't be until at least potentially after the next election). And that act was pointed at "disloyalty" as much as rebellion.

Sorry Glen, this is a grey patch that needs some creative thinking by BOTH sides to resolve. The problem is that it is also a political minefield - like it or not. MCA may be flawed - but your suggestion will open just as many cans of worms as MCA attempts to close.

Ben, I wouldn't limit the partisanship to the left, in fact the right leaning blogs I see are distinctly more likely to do so.

There's certainly as much, if not more, groupthink on the right of the blogosphere as on the left. But I believe that the left of the blogosphere is more institutionally tied to the Democratic Party than the right of the blogosphere is to the GOP.

I say this in part on the basis of a 2005 study done for the New Politics Institute by two prominent progressive bloggers, Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers. Entitled "The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A New Force in American Politics," the study concluded that one of the differences between the right and the left of the blogosphere was that the left was more partisan. Stoller and Bowers saw this as an advantage:

Progressive blogs are far more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than conservative bloggers are to identify with the Republican Party. This leads to greater contact between progressive bloggers and the Democratic Party than conservative bloggers have with the Republican Party. It also means more influence.

As I've already indicated, while agreeing about the importance of the ties between prominent left bloggers and the Democratic Party, I don't think this ultimately is an advantage for the left of the blogosphere.

("The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere" can be downloaded here: http://www.newpolitics.net/files/The-Emergence-of-the-Progressive-Blogosphere.pdf )