Bob's Links and Rants

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Friday, January 09, 2004

Supremes to hear Hamdi case
The Supreme Court stepped squarely into a momentous debate over national security and personal liberty today by agreeing to consider the case of a man who has been held without charges by the United States military since he was captured in the fighting in Afghanistan.

The justices agreed to hear the appeal of the captive, Yaser Esam Hamdi, who is believed to hold both American and Saudi citizenship and who is in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

The Bush administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear the Hamdi case, so the announcement today represented a sharp rebuff to the president, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other architects of administration policy.
-- NY Times

Recent Supreme Court decisions, including this one, seem to suggest that the two somewhat non-whacko Reagan appointees who in turn helped appoint aWol have been having buyer's remorse. Kennedy and O'Connor have been voting for things like affirmative action, repealing sodomy laws, and campaign finance reform lately. Hopefully they'll stand tall on this issue and toss Bush, Ashcroft and Ted Olson out on their fascist ears.

One thing that intrigues me is the reports that we heard after the 2000 election fiasco that Sandra Day O'Connor wanted Bush to win so that she could retire from the court knowing that her replacement would be appointed by a Republican. Well, she's still there, and I'm wondering if maybe now she's hoping to outlast Bush. Conservative is one thing; fascist is another. There's no hope for Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, but with O'Connor and Kennedy there may be, even though they gave us our worst president ever.