NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

So, all people are not endowed with certain inalienable rights by their Creator?

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Yes they are. But not all people live in countries that respect such rights. And unless something dramatic has happened this morning that I missed, there is no world government that can effectively enforce such rights for all world citizens. And as long as large swaths of people in this world live in countrys that don't effectively protect their people's rights, and are bent on destroying such rights for US citizens and other people in the world, then the US can only be responsible for protecting such rights in its own jurisdiction and among its own citizens. In order to protect the rights of US citizens we can't protect the rights of all world citizens as long as other citizens are under the perview of other governments that don't respect such rights.

It would be nice if all governments of the world (and all people of the world) recognized that the citizens under their control have inaliable rights, but until that day arrives, it is absurd for the US government to pretend that they do.

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Dems don't believe in a Creator*

See Party Platform plank #17


[unless when talking about Al "He brought you the Internet, now he's a weatherman" Gore]

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

It's all in how you read those words "own jurisdiction" and whether you stick and "and" or an "or" between them and citizens. We're talking the government trying people without informing them of the evidence against them. The US can indeed be, and is, responsible for its actions. Should they be held to a standard?

But, don't worry, the S.Ct. holding is not that the Government can't do it under the constitution, but rather that they chose to do it in a way that violates the Geneva Convention and the rules of warfare. They will find a way to alienate the inalienable rights.

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Care to join me for Mass on Sunday?

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Hamdan
 

Reactions from an old ConLaw professor:

• Hamdan is simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.
  
  The court has rejected the central constitutional claim of this presidency: that no president is bound to comply with laws passed by the United States Congress if those laws limit any exercise of an astonishingly broad category they call "inherent Presidential power."
  
  ***
  
  Yes, I know, actions have been taken in secret—prisons, torture, wiretapping, God knows what else. But many? most? of those actions have—to the extent of our knowledge—been approved by legal opinions from the Department of Justice and the White House counsel. Those legal opinions have seemed to very many lawyers to be fundamentally wrong in their assertions of sweeping unilateral presidential power to act in defiance of clearly valid laws. But, right or wrong, those legal opinions, signed and sealed on official government stationery, were a reality that gave substantial legal protection to government officers and agents who acted in compliance with what the lawyers found to be valid presidential directives.
  
  No more. A lot of those legal opinions are inoperative as of 10 a.m. this morning. And without the cover of the now-discredited theory of sweeping unilateral executive power, the criminal law of the United States again controls.
  
  Today the court holds that common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to the conflict against al-Qaida. As Justice Kennedy expressly notes in his (controlling) concurring opinion, Section 2441 of the U.S. Criminal Code defines a "war crime" as including any conduct "which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva." And the statute makes any "war crime"—when committed by any member of the U.S. Armed Forces, or against any member of the U.S. Armed Forces, or against a U.S. national—punishable by life imprisonment, or in certain cases, by death. Now that the fig leaf of untenable legal opinions has been stripped away, there will be great resistance by covered officials to complying with directives that may violate such a serious federal criminal statute.
  
  In order to understand the larger significance of today's Hamdan decision it is important to be clear about exactly how this presidency departed from fundamental legal principles. But that's a complicated but extraordinarily important point, so I'll come back to it in a new posting shortly.

Gattigap

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all about you and your Franciscan Catholic piety. Bully for you.

Now go onto Huff Post or walk into any college faculty lounge or any UFT meeting and tell me how long it takes before the first anti-Christian missive is launched.

My guess is 30 seconds.

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

"Journalists reporting on high-profile legal or political controversies cannot function effectively without offering some measure of confidentiality to their sources. Their ability to do so yields substantial benefits to the public in the form of stories that might otherwise never be written about corruption, misfeasance and abuse of power. A person with information about wrongdoing is often vulnerable to retaliation if exposed as an informant."

-- Terrorist loving, commie sympathizer Ted Olson

Hamdan
 

So - our military is further restricted and many Americans will die at the hands of the enemy - via nothing more than judicial fiat.

The Supes expand the protections of a treaty to unidentifiable non-soldiers of no country in particular, who neither signed the treaty nor have intention of abiding by it.

I imagine now that the Marines will be taking far fewer prisoners into custody. Who manufactures bodybags and shovels - I want to buy some stock?

Oh, and you do realize that this decision just won the GOP the 2006 - and possibly the 2008 - election, right?

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Funny though, how all these folks who wanted Karl Rove frogmarched out in handcuffs are all of sudden remembering that whole "anonymous source" thing.

Hamdan
 

Good point. I can't wait for the bumper stickers this fall:

Down With the Reasoning
Of the 117-page Hamdan
Decision, Esp. Making Us
Adhere to Geneva per p.95!!

It fucking SINGS, Slave. It's electoral gold.

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Oh, certainly. Sure, this result doesn't give one the same adrenaline thrill of watching Keller beheaded in Times Square, say, but I suppose this mild satisfaction will have to do.

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

Watching the stock tank as ad revenue plummets and readership dwindles to nothing following the "Great Times Select" mistake is more than enough to satisfy one's bloodlust.

NYT - time for a complete boycott
 

People who had previously subscribed to the NYT, or purchased it regularly, are actually stopping? It seems like you and Spanky weren't customers anyway. It'd be like me boycotting the All Fish, No Crustaceans restaurant.