Supreme over-reach

In a scathing editorial entitled "President Kennedy," the WSJ editors rightly excoriate Justice Kennedy and the 4 liberal Justices who joined him in his crazy opinion that grants Habeus Corpus privileges to non-citizens detained in the amorphous war-zone of the struggle against radical Islam. Read the entire piece.

This is a precious legal heritage for American citizens and legal residents, and its extension to those who are our implacable foes makes a mockery of that heritage. In the process, as the WSJ editors point out, Kennedy has to ignore, among other laws and precedents, Johnson v. Eisentrager. If that decision was correct, the Supreme Court should have ruled differently this past week. If it was incorrect, they should have overturned it.

As every opponent of bad Supreme Court decisions from Dred Scott to Roe v. Wade will agree, the Supreme Court has the right to overturn previous precedents that it feels were incorrectly decided. It is very telling that Kennedy, et al chose not to overturn previous decisions that would have backed up the administration's position on the detainees at Gitmo. They knew that they didn't have the legal chops to do anything of the kind, so they just chose to ignore it.

Should these indefinite detentions continue? No. Should the Supreme Court decide how they end rather than the elected branches of government? Definitely not. No-where in the Constitution is there anything stated or implied that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over the conduct of war. That is a matter for the President and the Congress to decide.

The fact that Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts were on the other side from Kennedy and the usual lefty suspects on the Supreme Court is evidence enough that Kennedy's opinion is not based in the Constitution. Scalia and Thomas in particular have been vigilant defenders of things like the right to a jury trial, opponents of confiscation laws in the drug wars, etc. They support due process even when "law and order" types might not like the results.

The first thing to do in a case like this is to see where the originalists line up. If none of them break ranks to join the "liberals," then it it pretty safe to say that the latter are just making up law from the bench as they go along.

Tim Russert, RIP

While there are always ways to find fault with the press (we've been known to engage in a little criticism ourselves,) there are some journalists who genuinely seem to want to just get the story right as best they can.

Tim Russert was one of those. Having him die at such a young age is a shock. He will be missed.