Adnoto

You're smarter than this. -- omooex

Apparently I am not because I don't see how you can possibly defend your post. We aren't talking about ancient history here. This isn't some god-damned academic exercise. We are talking about the here and now and it does not take a culture clash in the form of "war" where one side loses 5000 and the other 1,000,000 for there to ultimately be positive outcomes between peoples/cultures.

Habeas corpus is like the Democratic superdelegate system. Nobody in the US remembered it existed, let alone why, until all of a sudden it became an issue of huge importance. Heck, habeas corpus has been "under attack" (I say "evolving") for decades now and everyone (except the ACL-get-a-clue, ha ha) was perfectly happy with that state of affairs.

Don't you people understand that the law that the Supreme Court overturned so short-sightedly was only there to be used on terrorists? Are any of you terrorists? No? Well, then, what do you have to worry about? If liberal critics really cared about civil liberties, you'd think they wouldn't just be discovering all this stuff now.

Only fork-tongued lawyers with their bleating about "precedent" and "tradition of law" and all these arcane Latin terms actually seem to care about any of it, and it's probably just because that's how they make their living. Jaw, jaw, jaw. Blah, blah, blah. Tyranny, tyranny, tyranny.

What's almost worse, though, is these despicable Tories. What a bunch of cowardly, two-faced p.c.-addled losers they are, opposing the extension of emergency detention in the UK to 42 days.

Back when it was their turn, they didn't hesitate — not one moment, didn't even blink — in creating the original "seven day rule." That and that alone broke the IRA, after all.

(Some unorthodox views hold that major shifts in domestic policy, the unstemmable rise in a general tide of self-determination, intervention by the United States, and the increasingly sickened rejection of violence by the people of Northern Ireland themselves may have played some tiny minuscule part as well — but only liberal losers would somehow think to claim that the 7 day rule only appeared to give the state a useful tool without ever leading to the kind of breakthrough that its Conservative supporters kept promising.)

But now these self-same pioneers of innovation in techniques for furthering the power of the state to keep its people safe are backpedaling furiously when it comes to Labor and the 42 day rule. What are they so ashamed of? They should be the ones advocating 63 days, not mocking it!

Yes, it's tough when Labor already has the 28 day thing under their belt. They could learn from us here in the US — the left-wing socialist loser party always has an important role to play in the national political discourse: to help the people forget all about any of this troublesome stuff and let them focus on the simple, clear choices that the people of a democracy deserve.

In other words, forget this fancy talk about Latin terms that nobody even cared about 4 years ago. The choices are simple: does American want to be the kind of country where we imprison and torture extrajudicial political prisoners until they die in anonymity, or instead one where we round them up illegally and then gun them down in cold blood?

These are choices with decades, even centuries of long-standing tradition backing them up, and we all should be proud, proud I tell you, of an opportunity to be part of the historic advance of those ideals into a new era.

Since 9/11, I have been surprised over and over by this contradictory stance taken by these conservatives. Thanks for analysing it superbly by comparing it to Brit conservatives.

For those who would like to find out more about preventive detention, there has been a great article on Foreign Affairs by Kenneth Roth, "After Guantánamo".

Sorry, you're right. You're not smarter than this. Otherwise, you would have read my original post. I never advocated the Iraq war. How ridiculous.

Ron Pauliac = LWM

"Ron Pauliac" is just another handle LWM uses when LWM is doing LWM's usually "thing", i.e. behaving "normally", i.e. LWM showing LWM's hate and contempt for GG and GG's blog by behaving in a way that LWM has been asked not refrain from many many many many many times already, i.e. at least once a week.

LWM can't help it, LWM just can't seem to control LWM's behavior and respect Mr. Greenwald. LWM has some seriously cereal mental issues.

Wall Street Journal is in high dudgeon...

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't known for his judicial modesty. But for sheer willfulness, yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush may earn him a historic place among the likes of Harry Blackmun. In a stroke, he and four other unelected Justices [!] have declared their war-making supremacy over both Congress and the White House.

Boumediene concerns habeas corpus – the right of Americans [!] to challenge detention by the government. Justice Kennedy has now extended that right to non-American enemy combatants captured abroad trying to kill Americans in the war on terror. We can say with confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result.

All this, and so much more hilarity at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121331916222970351.html

It is curious that all of a sudden, Wall Street Journal has learned that many of our judges are not elected. I've seen this slant several times now--we're faulting Supreme Court justices for being appointed, as if this somehow makes them unfit for office, or got into office by pulling a fast one. The article does not mention that the dissenting justices were also "unelected".

Kennedy was appointed by Reagan, 1988.

Glenn, would you please comment about the McCain statement discussed here:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/127021.html#comments

John McCain is calling yesterday's Boumediene v. Bush Supreme Court ruling "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Quote:

We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material.

I just want to know what you think about the fact that we have a sitting Senator and major party Presidential candidate, a guy who gets to vote to confirm Supreme Court justices and who might one day [shudder] appoint them, who thinks that a writ of habeus corpus is used to complain about the food in prison. Or to ask for more magazines.

How in the holy hell can you serve in our government as long as McCain has and make basic errors like this?