What can you expect from people who can argue that the word and "has a disjunctive rather than a conjuctive" meaning, [and therefore that the UN resolution 1441 didn't mean what it said it meant] as Yoo did in his opinion to Addington:

December 7, 2002-Memo from OLC [Yoo] to Addington, [Counsel for Cheney] “You have asked whether the Government of Iraq will have committed a “further material breach” […] in SCR 1441 if it makes false statements or omissions in the declaration […] of WMD programs. Paragraph 4 finds that false statements or omissions in Iraq's paragraph 3 declaration and failure by Iraq to comply and cooperate with UNSCR 1441 would constitute a further material breach. We conclude that false statements or omissions by themselves represent a material breach of the Security Council resolution […because the word "and" in paragraph 4 has a disjunctive, rather than a conjunctive, meaning.]

http://judiciary.senate.gov/resources/documents/upload/010509OLCDoc-FurtherMaterialBreach.pdf

I am constantly reminded of the words of H. Dumpty:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.’

On June 12, 2008 the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush struck down a provision in the Military Commissions Act, ruling that the denial of the right to petition for habeas corpus is unconstitutional.

Some of the majority opinion:

Officials charged with daily operational responsibility for our security may consider a judicial discourse on the history of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 and like matters to be far removed from the Nation's present, urgent concerns. Established legal doctrine, however, must be consulted for its teaching. Remote in time it may be; irrelevant to the present it is not. Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives. […]

We hold that petitioners may invoke the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus. The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.

The determination by the Court of Appeals that the Suspension Clause and its protections are inapplicable to petitioners was in error. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.

The link:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=06-1195

Of course Thomas Tamm should be granted retroactive immunity by an Act of Congress.

Those comments speak very well of you, zoltan. You really ought to block your website before you make comments like that. It's pretty obvious what women will do to get away from you. Apparently no sacrifice is too extreme.

BTW, I read your poem. Were you married to a woman, or a mountain range? How did you navigate her "peaks" and "deep damp wet places"? Use GPS? I'm not really sure what a "poetry slam is, but I sure know where the poetry slum is. Right over there at the zoltanberryblog.

And not a single comment, either, in several years!

And I congratulate you on your self control and smooth social interaction. You must make friends and influence people wherever you go.

Zoltan, you should have bought the Revere Ware, and kept away from that cheap aluminum cookware.

The idea that communications providers, from AT&T to the kid running a mail server in their dorm, somehow have less fourth amendment protections, because they provide communications services, is pernicious and ass backwards.

Businesses are under different rules. Period. For instance, business records are open to subpoena, while your personal papers are not.

If we replace "voice communications" with "hunting knife", the idea of a warrant that didn't specify the place to be searched would be absurd. It would be a blank check to search every house.

Even traditional searches are a bit weird (at least according to customary 4thAm law). In the warrant is for a stolen refrigerator, they may still search your drawers. I don't agree but that's the law.

Cheers,

Yea, Boumediene! If pushed, the Supreme Court only has to connect the dots now for Afghanistan. They ruled already that Common Article 3 applies always (Hamdan), and in Boumediene they said any court that could not free a prisoner was not a valid judicial venue for habeas corpus pleas.

All that's left is to rule that the judicial review guaranteed in CA3 and Article 5 includes habeas corpus.

CA3 prohibits: "(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

And Article 5 requires: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

There's ample defense for the program from the FISA Review Court in 2002, In Re Sealed Case, suggesting that the President's program was entirely legal.

That's a pile'o'horse'puckey. In re: Sealed Case held no such thing.

Cheers,

So, Arnie, Paisano! Yer a lawyer and at 500 bucks an hour, you got plenty time to drop in around here.

No.

So, I asks you, didn't dear Jamie Gorelick make it awfully hard for that FBI gal to blow a 3000+ lives saving whistle?

No.

Didn't her subordinate enforce Gorelick's rules?

What "rules"?

Do you know about the Gorelick rules, or is it inconvenient for you to comment 'bout that, cause you are part of Gwenn's lynch mob ' round here?

I keep hearing about Gorelick's "rules" ... from foaming RWers that haven't a clue. See above.

You want the skinny of the intelligence (and management) failures that did happen, read Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars" and get back tome when you're done.

Cheers,