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skin of the teeth
Jun. 14th, 2008 12:33 amOkay, so everybody knows by now that, by the barest of margins (5-4), the US Supreme Court upheld the right of habeas corpus, or, put plainly, the right to have a day in court. it's a direct rejection of Chief Executive Bush's claims of the power to indefinitely hold anyone, including US citizens on US soil, without charge or appeal. That it was upheld is good; that it was 5-4 is insanely bad, with both of Mr. Bush's appointees and Justices Scalia and Rerun Thomas forming an authoritarian wing against the plain language of the US Constitution and 900 years of Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. Similarly, by ruling that you can't create a special territory immune to Constitutional law, the Court separately - again, 5-4 only - upheld 500 years of Anglo-Saxon legal tradition to the same effect.
The reaction from the authoritarians is predictable outrage. Senator McCain, who has repeatedly promised to appoint more authoritarian-wing judges such as Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, condemned the ruling as "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," showing his increasingly strident authoritarian colours. Glenn Greenwald discusses the repercussions of this fact here, and separately discusses authoritarian US "conservatism" in contrast with British conservative rejection of much lesser abuses in the UK.
Senator Linsey Graham (R-SC) - co-author of the Military Commissions Act the court struck down - condemned the ruling, calling for a Constitutional amendment to reduce or eliminate habeas corpus rights, claiming (falsely and with both great stupidity and ignorance) that "legal rights given to al Qaida members today... exceed those provided to the Nazis during World War II." The "the Supreme Court has no right ruling laws unconstitutional at all" canard, with rightist authoritarians pretending the Court invented that wholecloth and calling for the reversal of Malbury v. Madison (1803), is back, demonstrating the complainers' complete lack of comprehension of the concept of enforceable Constitutional limits or limited government, the history of Anglo-Saxon derived law, the history of American Constitutional jurisprudence and debate, the writings of the founders and the Federalist papers - or, well, demonstrating their authoritarianism and the lengths to which they will go to further it. Pick one or more.
Interestingly - and relatedly, given that authoritarianism in this case is well tied to attempts to build a much more formal Empire - protests in Iraq against the colonial agreement the US has attempted to impose on the country (including 50-odd permanent military bases, immunity from Iraqi law, and so on as previously discussed) have succeeded, with the terms the US demanded being so unacceptable that even PM al-Maliki walked away. That, at least, is good.
In election news, you've probably already seen this, but Fox News referred to Senator Obama's wife of sixteen years as his "baby mama," a term well known to mean the woman with whom a man has no relationship other than her being the mother of your child out of wedlock. It was bluntly, tho' not quite admittedly, racist; as John Scazi put it, Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment To Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan’s Festering, Baby-Eating Soul. Fox News being the house organ of the authoritarian GOP, we can expect a great deal more of this sort of thing - really, it's all they've got.
Finally, a reminder of one of the reasons for all this: global crude oil production dropped in 2007 despite record prices. Moreoever, conventional crude continued its post-2005 decline.
The reaction from the authoritarians is predictable outrage. Senator McCain, who has repeatedly promised to appoint more authoritarian-wing judges such as Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, condemned the ruling as "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," showing his increasingly strident authoritarian colours. Glenn Greenwald discusses the repercussions of this fact here, and separately discusses authoritarian US "conservatism" in contrast with British conservative rejection of much lesser abuses in the UK.
Senator Linsey Graham (R-SC) - co-author of the Military Commissions Act the court struck down - condemned the ruling, calling for a Constitutional amendment to reduce or eliminate habeas corpus rights, claiming (falsely and with both great stupidity and ignorance) that "legal rights given to al Qaida members today... exceed those provided to the Nazis during World War II." The "the Supreme Court has no right ruling laws unconstitutional at all" canard, with rightist authoritarians pretending the Court invented that wholecloth and calling for the reversal of Malbury v. Madison (1803), is back, demonstrating the complainers' complete lack of comprehension of the concept of enforceable Constitutional limits or limited government, the history of Anglo-Saxon derived law, the history of American Constitutional jurisprudence and debate, the writings of the founders and the Federalist papers - or, well, demonstrating their authoritarianism and the lengths to which they will go to further it. Pick one or more.
Interestingly - and relatedly, given that authoritarianism in this case is well tied to attempts to build a much more formal Empire - protests in Iraq against the colonial agreement the US has attempted to impose on the country (including 50-odd permanent military bases, immunity from Iraqi law, and so on as previously discussed) have succeeded, with the terms the US demanded being so unacceptable that even PM al-Maliki walked away. That, at least, is good.
In election news, you've probably already seen this, but Fox News referred to Senator Obama's wife of sixteen years as his "baby mama," a term well known to mean the woman with whom a man has no relationship other than her being the mother of your child out of wedlock. It was bluntly, tho' not quite admittedly, racist; as John Scazi put it, Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment To Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan’s Festering, Baby-Eating Soul. Fox News being the house organ of the authoritarian GOP, we can expect a great deal more of this sort of thing - really, it's all they've got.
Finally, a reminder of one of the reasons for all this: global crude oil production dropped in 2007 despite record prices. Moreoever, conventional crude continued its post-2005 decline.
