Yes, We Have A Constitution

High Court Deals Blow to Bush's War on Terror [Reuters.com]. So today the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees can indeed challenge the constitutionality of their confinement, rejecting Bush Administration assertions that the Executive Branch is entitled unilaterally to lock up even suspected terrorists without legal recourse. Last December I compared one of these cases to the infamous 1944 Korematsu decision, in which the Court upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans in California concentration camps, with their property confiscated without any reasonable cause, merely because of their race, due to the "exigencies" of World War II.

Thank goodness those days are, at long last, gone. Today, the Court concluded that "it would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court" just because the President says he should be detained. "[A] state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens." Yes, we still have a constitution, and it works.

 Posted by glenn