This is HUGE, folks - Supremes not only slap down Bush, they slap

down Alberto Gonzales as well.

The Supreme Court's ruling today was not a narrow one of declaring Bush's trial by military commissions unconstitutional and violative of international law and of the code of military justice, it is sweeping in its condemnation of Gonzales' outrageous notion that this administration can sidestep Geneva Conventions which regulate treatment of prisoners of war simply by relabeling them "enemy combatants".

See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900928.html (the best article I've found so far on this ruling).

There appear to be a core of 5 justices on the SC who are willing to uphold priciples of constitutional law (which also requires that the executive honor all treaty obligations including the Geneva Conventions).

The four America haters on the bench have proven to be Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts (Roberts recused himself in this case because he had previously sided with Bush on these issues as an Appellate justice).

This is the only piece of really good news to come out of Washington D.C. in 5 years. After hundreds of giant steps backwards under the Bush regime, this represent one huge giant step forward.

But don't start counting any chickens yet: what do you want to bet that Bushco will simply ignore this ruling and continue to violate every law known to man. After all, he fancies himself the "decider", above the law, the courts, and acts of Congress.

what do you want to bet that Bushco will simply ignore this ruling and continue to violate every law known to man.

Impeach Impeach Impeach

Then Impeach Dick

Lather Rinse Repeat

:thumbsup:

Good news about the Supremes today

Hekate

rest assured, he'd NOT have recused himself!

to recuse himself?

I don't know if it applies or not.

http://www.petitiononline.com/senate/petition.html

if there's a conflict of interest, I believe but I am not sure there is disciplinary action
if they refuse, I don't think they can be disbarred, but I do think it is the ethical thing
to do. I find Bush v Gore absurd, I am waiting for that to be exposed for the charade it was.

Please don't hold your breath. Peace

declared the unlimited executive power null and void, so I don't think the congress will
rubber stamp warantless wiretapping now.

will overturn what happened today. It will take time but the Presidick will take it to the rubber stamp Congress and change the rules in the UCMJ. I hope not, but that will be another reason it will be so important for us to take back the House or Senate. If they do it real fast the coward Dems better learn what it means to filibuster. WE HAVE TO WIN IN "06! :thumbsup:

but now that the stonewall and get what I want theory has been shot down, I don't think
they will get out of the box they have made for themselves, they have to meet the world
standards not just the GOP (meaningless, torture is okay when we do it rules).

...these people have to be stopped! :kick:

look at his failed corporations, now he's going to be able to waltz up to congress while he's
polling in the 30s and say follow me and everyone will love you, throw money your way and
re-elect me/no, I meant re-elect you, not I meant re-elect Jeb, no, I meant re-elect ????

"There's an expression us Texas folks are fond of: Fool me once, sh.. shame on... you? Fool me, uh, er, twice... uh... um... hmmm... uh... can't fool me again."

He'll do what he damn well pleases.

Roberts
Alito
Thomas
Scalia

That's all we need to know to remember them by.

NEO-RATS

It was obvious I didn't even see it.

rats, very supreme rats.

Roberts
Alito
Thomas
Scalia

He's the guy who has mis-interpreted the Constitution in favor of *. Right after Sept. 11, 2001 he came out with the infamous memo which said * has unrestricted power when it comes to defense of the country.

He is the worst kind of traitor. He makes me sick. He is the author of what these conspiring war criminals needed, a permission slip to torture. He and Gonzalez were the intellectual master minds of the whole Rumsfeld Doctrine of anything short of organ failure isn't torture. He knew, he must have known that he was writing the defense for war crimes and yet he used his intelligence and skill to help them acheive their evil goals. How much suffering has happened because of the words of John Yoo? :grr: Lock them all in the Hague. And then the world can work for peace again

Some of those boats should have SANK.

These asshats are far worse than Hitler's gangs.

that contains the link to Jane Mayer's article "The Memo."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1533050&mesg_id=1534217

of completely subverting the constitution.

One justice, and RvW goes away. One justice, and torture is legal. One justice, and habeus corpus is a memory.

He's got to go, before he gets his last justice in place.

:scared: :scared: :scared:

might be up to. I think they operate something like the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. They throw us a relatively meaningless sop to democracy--saying that indefinite detention and military tribunals are illegal (I mean, come on!), meanwhile KILLING campaign finance reform and creating a bunch of subterranean rulings that cement the global corporate predators' lock on our government.

I can't say I'm unhappy to hear of judges upholding the Constitution, even if it's fake, and the damage to the tortured prisoners in Guantanamo long ago permanently inflicted, as well as the damage to the honest people in our military and to the international and national rule of law. The Supreme Court had opportunities to stop this long ago. Coming now, it feels like a political ploy to put people to sleep--to make them THINK that we still have "balance of power" in our government. A puppet show, maybe. On the other hand, the SC has taken a drubbing in legal circles for their unprecedented interference in the 2000 election--and maybe are trying to earn some Brownie points. Who knows with these people? But one thing is clear: the "justice" in our "justice system" took a hike a long time ago--or rather got tarred and feathered and run out of town.

I can't wait to hear what they have to say about Bushite corporations "counting" all our votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code (if it ever gets there). No doubt, they'll say that private corporate "property rights" are inviolable and SACRED and the foundation of our democracy and Constitutionally protected--even when (or especially when) the "trade secret" is how they're "counting" our votes--and then they'll hit some poor county elections official or brave secretary of state with zillions of dollars in damages to Diebold and ES&S.

Nothing we can do about the Supreme Court--or anything else--until we RESTORE our right to vote.* THEN we have a lot of options. (--"packing the court" with liberals; invalidating the appointments of the RATS, due to the illegitimate election of the Appointer and his "pod people" in the Diebold Congress; placing term limits upon them (2 years!); making them electable; putting a special prosecutor on them, to investigate their every hunting party; impeaching them, etc.) (Contrary to popular understanding, FDR's effort to "pack the court" actually worked--it put pressure on the court that saved several New Deal programs including Social Security, when one justice--name of Roberts, as a matter of fact--began voting the other way.) (The number of justices is STILL unspecified by the Constitution and CAN still be increased. Let's hope the junta doesn't use this power to DECREASE it. Just had that harrowing thought...)

-------------

*(Don't wait around for the Diebold Congress to do it. You'll be waiting a lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong time! Centuries. Go down to your local board of elections or county registrar's office and demand VISIBLE VOTE COUNTING. It's still possible to achieve this at the state/local level. A lot of corruption there, but ordinary people still have some influence at the state/local level, where decisions about voting systems are still made.

about the Supreme Court. They have never behaved like war profiteers.

I think this decision marks a turning point because those same 5 justices have been voting together since Alito got appointed, and that's a hopeful sign. It's also an extremely important set of issues. BTW, the Supremes can't just rule about something when they want to - there has to be a case before it which is ripe for decision. They did not have this opportunity a long time ago - this case with these issues just presented itself for the first time. The Bush administration has stalled these kinds of cases all along the way - blame them, not the Supremes for the delay.

there are five members of the Supreme Court who resent sitting on the bench with four bush whores

unlawfully detained prisoners in Guantanamo Bay had a right to know the charges against them and a right to a fair trial. They should have slapped the junta with some sort of writ for violating their ruling long ago. The military tribunals are OBVIOUSLY a subversion of their previous ruling. Instead, they languished. They WAITED, in their lazybutt, collusive way, for the matter to be brought back before them by struggling defense lawyers. Meanwhile, not only have prisoners in Guantanamo gone insane and committed suicide and engaged in hunger strikes, but also this horrendous scandal is obviously a worldwide phenomenon, not limited to that one horror chamber. There are OTHER US prisons, and OTHER unlawfully detained prisoners--and torture, and rendition. Secret prisons. Black flights taking anonymous prisoners to secret torture dungeons in middle Europe and points east. It is OUT OF CONTROL. And the SC LET THIS HAPPEN, by not insisting on obedience to its first ruling.

It only decides issues of constitutional law on a case-by-case basis, and then only issues legal opinions where its rules and holdings are set forth for each case.

It is not a trial court.

It has no jurisdiction to issue orders beyond directing how the lower courts should apply in the future the rules of law it just decided.

It has NO "enforcement" powers. Trial courts issue enforcement orders, not appellate courts - an appellate court can issue a writ to a lower trial court to apply one rule over another, but only trial courts issue orders to parties to the lawsuit. If Bush violated a former Supreme Court ruling, it's up to the trial court, not the Supreme Court, to enforce it by finding Bush in contempt.

The Supreme Court did not "wait". It decided the prior case. This is an entirely new and different case, although some of the issues appear to overlap. The Supreme Court can only act once a case is brought before it on appeal from a lower court.

Think back to U.S. vs. Nixon as an illustration. The trial court judge, Judge Sirica, had ordered Nixon to turn over a bunch of tapes, pursuant to a request by the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Nixon appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled on a narrow issue of law, holding that any executive privilege which may or may not exist, as asserted by Nixon, must give way to the need for evidence in a criminal trial. That decision affirmed the lower appellate court's ruling that Sirica's order to turn over the tapes was constitutional and enforceable. Sirica, armed with the Supreme Court's opinion, then threatened to enforce the subpoena against Nixon, who instead voluntarily gave up the tapes. The Supreme Court doesn't "slap" anyone with orders (or "writs", as you mistakenly use the term). Only trial courts do that.

The Supreme Court thus cannot "insist on obedience". They decide the law, the trial courts enforce it.

I'm not trying to be hard on you, I'm just trying to help. I understand that the esoteric workings of our court system can appear pretty strange to the average layperson.

influential in what gets talked about in legal circles--what is possible legally, what is likely, what cases are moving up, and so on--they read the news like every body else, and give speeches that are read like entrails for what they are thinking, and how they might rule. They told the lower court that the prisoners must have real trials. The Bush junta ignored it. They did highly irregular, illegal, unconstitutional military tribunals INSTEAD--with the prisoners meanwhile going insane with indefinite detention, and disclosures all over the place of OTHER secret prisoners. You can't tell me that they could not influence that blatant lawbreaking to come right back before them. The junta DEFIED their ruling.

It's TOO LATE for some of the prisoners. Some are dead. Some are mad. Even those in best shape will be scarred for life. It is absolutely outrageous that this has happened with no intervention by the courts. They're all scared--is the most likely reason (those who aren't corrupt). The courts should have shut down Guantanamo long ago! It's an open and shut case of an out-of-control, criminal executive.

And that's just what they COULD do--if they had wanted to--within the bounds of the existing Constitutional and court structure. There is SOMETHING ELSE they could have done--if they cared one bit about the prisoners OR the Constitution--and that is to make a public statement that the junta is defying their ruling and running an ILLEGAL prison (and now prisonS).

We've come to accept that these largely Reagan-Bush appointed federal courts, including the Supreme Court, are corporate toadies (--and the Bush junta is, bar none, the most corporate toady government we have ever had.) But why should we accept that? Why shouldn't we hold them to highest standards of what the courts and the judicial system should be? Why shouldn't we expect them to speak out for JUSTICE? There has never been such an egregious injustice perpetrated by the President of the United States in the modern era. These are TORTURE CHAMBERS! This is something out of the Middle Ages. It is absolutely off the charts, as to injustice. It rivals the "experiments" in Hitler's death camps.

There are no excuses for this! And the SC sitting back and hiding behind the rules and the structure is not okay. The damage is DONE. They could have prevented much of it and they did NOTHING. They have prestige. They have jawboning of their own they can do. They are highly influential. They have all sorts of ways they can craft and direct the law. They are just like the Democrats in Congress. Too attached to their perks. Too scared. I have some compassion for fear. I have none for people who are in a position to do something about it, and who sit back and let the Bushites torture people because they are too damned corrupt themselves to care a goddamn what the Bushites do. The Supreme Court is the court of last resort for justice. They utterly failed to stop the worst injustice we have ever seen by a President--not a mistake, not a policy quagmire, no confusion about it: cold-blooded, vicious, deliberate, unconscionable infliction of mental and physical torture on HELPLESS victims, an outrageous violation of national and international law, and utter defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on it.

The SC could have stopped it. They didn't bother to. You can't convince me otherwise. There is ALWAYS a way.

demonize the Supreme Court and imbue it with supernatural and superlegal powers it simply does not now nor ever has possessed.

For things to work the way your wishfulfillment fantasy has it, the Constitution would have to be amended to give the Supreme Court far greater powers than it possesses by law, and by charging that court with an obligation to legally and physically enforce its own rulings, there would never be enough time to review half of the cases it already does.

Your emoting is in some ways admirable, but in this instance, misplaced.

And Sandra Day O'Connor, one of that gang, is gone. Ditto Rhenquist.

siding with the liberals on the court in this and other recent cases:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/57c39e64-0861-11db-b9b2-0000779e2340.html

might consider joining the secessionist movement. I've thought it unrealistic until now--and also, I don't think we should concede this nation to the Bush junta, while we have any chance of restoring democracy--as with the state/local fight for transparent elections. But when a junta-appointed court starts un-writing the Constitution, then we have to ask: What is the federal government worth WITHOUT a Constitution? It ain't worth much. It is then just an ALBATROSS on our backs, and a very, very, very dangerous one. It's close to being that now. If we lose habeas corpus, and the right not to be tortured, and women's rights and the right to privacy--by the SC confirming extra-constitutional executive powers and ripping up the Bill of Rights--then we really need to ask: What are we paying federal taxes for? Why are we supporting this union? It drains us of money and destroys our rights. It's already clear that it won't protect our physical safety--from "terrorists," or in natural disasters. It has turned Congress into a rubber stamp, and when Congress exercises any of its co-equal branch power, Bush simply writes a coda (on 750 laws!) that laws passed by Congress don't apply to HIM and his junta. If the SC chimes in with CONFIRMATION of imperial power, then what good is our union--under a federal junta? It's something to think about.

It might be that the combined power of several states could act to curtail the junta. That occurred to me when the Illinois legislator discovered the rule in Jefferson's Manual that an individual state can submit a privileged bill of impeachment, to Congress, against the President and Vice President--and several states got such bills submitted to state legislatures, recently. If the state legislatures can be pressured to do it, and especially if several work together to do it, then we may yet see American Revolution II. We do have a history of states' rights, for good and for ill. NOBODY wants another civil war or bloody revolution (nobody in their right mind). So the power of the states might yet serve the interests of democracy. But, really, we've just about reached the limit of evil and crime that an out-of-control federal junta can inflict, without raising this question: WHO and WHAT are we being loyal to? IS it America? Or has it become a vampire shadow of its former self that needs to be rejected and cast off, as the blood-sucking ghoul that it is quickly becoming?

Another hesitation I would have--about secession (besides the potential collective power of the states in dealing with this junta)--is: What will become of the blood-sucking global corporate predators who are running things, if the union were to break up? I read a series in the New Yorker about 30 years ago (--don't remember by whom) which laid out the Corporate Plan for taking over the world, and its first and foremost plank was to BREAK the power of OUR federal government to regulate and curtail them, and the power of other sovereign peoples as well. This, of course, is WHY they have taken away our right to vote (with these Bushite-controlled electronic voting systems, with their TRADE SECRET programming), and why they spend trillions and trillions of dollars propagandizing us. They understand our potential power as the sovereign people of the United States. That power includes dismantling their corporate cabals and seizing their assets for the public good. So I would hesitate to abandon that potential power to the enemy. They might well consider it a win.

Still, habeas corpus, torture and the rest truly stirs the fires of rebellion. It's OUR money. It's OUR government (theoretically). Who the hell do they think they are, to commit these crimes? And why should we be loyal to THEM or consent to be governed by them? It's a real question. And the SC could tip the balance on the answer. If we have NO ONE protecting our rights, what good is this federal structure? If we have no Constitution, WHAT are we consenting to?

Henry was crying on the local right wing radio this am.
* will have to give him a cabinet post. Henry is toast now in drought country.

You know he's not going to follow the ruling. It is merely a "suggestion" to him.

He now knows that even the Supreme Court that he has helped shape does not consider him "king". History is already beginning to stare down on this pathetic little chickenhawk AWOL coward negatively. He's going to take the bait and ignore the law at his own peril.

Bring it on, Chimpy. We have the trap all nice and ready.

while they're still in office, and there's no way the Repukes and DLC Dems in Congress will ever enforce the law against them, regardless of what happens in the November elections.

Of course, after they leave office, either by expiration of their term, or by impeachment, they may be prosecuted and/or privately sued, so I imagine they're counting on the friends of theirs that became super, super-rich thanks to them to hide them away in splendor in some obscure corner of the world where there's no extradition treaty either with the U.S. Government or the Hague.

Since I see no chance of Congress behaving responsibly prior to 2008 at the very earliest, I cling to the dream of seeing them hounded by judicial process wherever they go for the rest of their rotten lives after they slink away from office.

But don't start counting any chickens yet: what do you want to bet that Bushco will simply ignore this ruling and continue to violate every law known to man. After all, he fancies himself the "decider", above the law, the courts, and acts of Congress.

If he thinks Congress has no power over him, why would he care what the Supreme Court says?

I only hope the other five stay healthy and everyone in their families stays healthy.

Do you believe that The New York Times, L.A. Times and The Wall Street Journal SWIFT reports put at risk our national security?

http://www.cnn.com/lou

Thanks larissa. :hi:

here

-Hoot

have committed WAR CRIMES??? Violating the Geneva Conventions is a WAR CRIME.

Isn't that the jist of it?

Instead, the Repukes in Congress will gang up and pass a new law which basically says that when *this* President commits a war crime, it's not a war crime, and he can establish illegal tribunals all he wants and ignore the constitution, UCMC and international law all he wants with impunity.

Didn't you immediately think that he sounded like a Nazi referring to international law as "quaint"?

I know I did.

The Bush admin expressed the same level of disdain and haughtiness towards international law as Hitler's little group of henchmen did back in 1936.

the Founding Fathers.

Just got this in my e-mail inbox - from the ABA Journal, an initial report:

http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/jn30hamden.html:

ABA President Michael S. Greco says he applauds the decision, which he calls a "significant victory for the rule of law and our cherished constitutional protections."

A longtime critic of the tribunals, the ABA has recommended since February 2002 that the tribunals comply with the rules of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and conform to any relevant United States international treaty obligations.

In light of the ruling, Greco urged President Bush to "comply immediately" with the court’s decision....

...Samp says that beyond this case, the decision is "tremendously significant" and sends a message that the court is unwilling to defer to the commander in chief and instead will itself "determine how wars should be run."

In other words, Shrub, the SCOTUS you packed with two right-wingnut scumbags is saying you're NOT above the law!