What exactly would it say?

"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it, or when the president says we should. If he's a Republican."

Brilliant.

Moron.

I've been reading your blog for the last half-year or so, and sometimes I can barely take it anymore. The fact that we have *any* actual elected leaders, much less a whole political party, who thinks these simple human rights demands are totally unreasonable, is just killing me. And I used to vote for some of them.

At least yesterday's ruling gave you a chance to have a positive blog. Hopefully we'll see more of those with the coming election of Obama.

That is all that yesterday's Supreme Court ruling required -- not that detainees be released, but that their guilt be proven in a fair proceeding.

With all due respect, Glenn, it didn't even require that. All that it requires is a proceeding before a federal judge to test the legality of the detention; the Court specifically declined to say anything about what would make that detention legal. It's quite possible that "proof of guilt" (of something) will not be found to be a requirement.

I say this only to point out just how basic the ruling was yesterday. That it should be at all controversial, much less provoke the apocalyptic and paranoid ramblings that emanated from the dissent, is stunning. And sad.

This skepticism of Government power -- which lies not only at the heart of most key British reforms over the last 8 centuries but also at the heart of the American Founding -- is precisely what has been missing almost completely from the American Right, for which there is now no federal government power too great or too unlimited to embrace.

Oh, there are plenty of powers "conservatives" in the US think the federal government can't be trusted with -- market regulation, providing economic safety nets, protecting our environment, single-payer universal health care, etc, etc.

...increased nastiness isn't a measure of success. These folks, for all their ambition, have no idea how to govern. In the end, corruption and propaganda will be all they'll have left.

I agree, but add one more thing that they will have: a giant military machine. The degree of their desperation will be a measure of the loss to everyone.

Wasn't this the same party (slightly different leadership admittedly) that once advocated forced quarantining all AIDs patients in the UK?

Funny how being out of power and public favor makes them conscious and oppositional of "government overreach".

I really wonder whether the difference you're pointing out between the Tories in the UK and the Republicans here isn't that the Tories are in the opposition, and the Republicans are not. I.e., Republicans are all for executive power when they hold it, as they do now. Don't you imagine that their fervor for unchecked executive authority is going to vanish in an instant once President Obama is inaugurated? Just like the Tories will all pipe down once Gordon Brown is no longer PM? I think you're attributing far too much principle to both groups.

In the last thread. WT commented that Obama need not be the solution, just a first step toward a possible solution---at least, perhaps, a step away from the problem. This is exactly how I feel about his campaign.

And I want to comment that the Wall, mentioned here today, was not brought down by an enormously competent, shrewd, educated radical raised outside the system (and no, I'm not describing Reagan). It was brought down by a bumbling bureaucrat whose primary characteristic was his fundamental decency. Gorbachev had no idea that his glasnostic reforms would do what they did. He was in that sense the worst premier the USSR ever had---but at the same time the best.

As Glenn remarks, it matters what politicians do, not what they believe in. Experience within the system, lack of experience, lack of convictions---all the slings and arrows cast in Obama's direction from left and right---don't matter. What matters is whether we can hold him accountable in a way previous presidents have not been, and McCain never would be, and make sure he does what needs to be done.

In the WaPo's editorial they make the following comment:

"The court wisely limited its holding only to detainees at Guantanamo; it left open the question of whether noncitizens held elsewhere outside the United States were entitled to such protections"

In the Court's opinion they talk about Guantanamo not being a transient possession of the U.S.

Is it possible that if Bush moved all the prisoners at Guantanamo to a location where the U.S. only has a transient possession of the facility that it would allow Bush to get around habeas?

GG wrote:

If Conservatives are only opposing these detention powers as a means of undermining Brown, that's fine with me. That's exactly the kind of adversarial check on the ruling party that has been so tragically missing in our country. That's how it should be -- the opposition party should be a check on efforts by the ruling party to seize more power. Whether they're doing it out of base political motive or principle doesn't much matter.

Which reminds us what a failure the Democrats have been and how utterly shameful it is that our only realistic option in the 2008 elections is to vote for yet more Democrats. We can't risk another rightwing authoritarian ideologue on the Supreme Court, and that is why we have to vote for a Democratic President and Senate; and yet the Democratic Senate (even more so than Congress) is fully complicit in the rightwing stomping of the Constitution.

I think one of the big failures we had was in the Lamont/Liebermann contest - it confirmed to the Democratic Senators that kowtowing to Bush was politically viable.

I really wonder whether the difference you're pointing out between the Tories in the UK and the Republicans here isn't that the Tories are in the opposition, and the Republicans are not. I.e., Republicans are all for executive power when they hold it, as they do now. Don't you imagine that their fervor for unchecked executive authority is going to vanish in an instant once President Obama is inaugurated?

That might be. Part of what are supposed to be checks on government power is the opposition party. I want Republicans to be a check of that sort if there is a President Obama. Part of what has made the Democrats so disgraceful over the last 7 years is that, as an entity, they have failed to do that.

The Founders were very clear on this. They didn't expect checks and limits on power to be created by conflicts of pure motives and principles. They expected that various factions -- in different branches of government and in different parties -- would struggle for power with one another, and from that struggle would arise limits on any one faction securing too much.

The Congress, the Democrats and -- largely -- the Courts have instead ceded that power to the President over the last 7 years. I don`t want to see that repeated no matter what party the next President is in.

Just like the Tories will all pipe down once Gordon Brown is no longer PM? I think you're attributing far too much principle to both groups.

Do you think the Democrats are pure on these issues? Go read what they said about executive privilege of Clinton and what they say now. I have no doubt that one`s view on the propriety of government power is driven by whether one is currently in power or out -- though I think you go too far in insisting that people like John Major and David Davis (who is resigning his seat in order to make a political point) are completely devoid of principle.

But as I said earlier, I really don't much care why a political official takes the right position or does the right thing -- only that they do it.

If you're looking for purity of motives in your political leaders, I think you're looking for the wrong thing.