The Daily Background

The Supremes
As everybody knows by now, in a 5 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) yesterday delivered a serious blow to the Bush Administration, deciding that the type of “trials” being given to Guantanamo Bay detainees were not only unconstitutional, but also in violation of international law (the Geneva convention was among the international statues violated). Frankly, if we didn’t have a lapdog Republican-dominated Congress right now, the President ought to be censured over this alone. The fact that the White House Administration has violated the geneva convention in instances that have effected hundreds of people over a span of several years (knowingly), would be enough to censure them under any sane Congress. Unfortunately, we don’t have one of those. Fingers crossed for November of course.

The fact that SCOTUS made this ruling was made at all is very important though. Here’s why. In six years, President Bush has appointed two of his boys to the court, which made people like us awfully nervous (cough, cough, South Dakota, anyone?). Some of us had pretty much resigned ourself to the court being pretty adverse to us (us being the majority of Americans) because of these two appointments, which the media was so busy telling us would ‘tip the balance’ of the court for years to come (or at least until Clarance Thomas dies).

Conservative-moderate Justice Kennedy (the closest the court has to a swing vote after O’Conner retired) sided against the White House, and Justice Souter is generally liberal, as is Justice Stevens (and naturally Ginsburg and Breyer are as well, both appointed by Clinton), so this left only Alito, Scalia and Thomas siding with the Administration. It would have been a 5-4 decision, but Chief Justice Roberts recused himself because he had already presided over the case less than a year ago on a lower court. NYT has a pretty chart of the Justice’s faces by the way.

The fact that Roberts had already sided with the Administration is actually a great thing, and here’s why. If he hadn’t already judged the case (which was appealed to SCOTUS), he wouldn’t hvae to recuse himself and it would have been a 5-4, as I said earlier. So what, you might think; the Administration still would have lost. Well yes, but it isn’t that simple. SCOTUS in the past has been fairly respectful of precedent regarding previous rulings set by earlier SCOTUS’s. With the major exception that a 5-4 decision is considered fair game to reconsider in that it was so close that a single justice would have tipped the balance (the obvious exception is Roe v Wade which was originally decided by 7-2, but later upheld by a 5-4 margin, making it vulnerable for future reconsiderations).

The point here is that it wasn’t a 5-4 decision, which makes it less likely to be overturned in the future. So that’s good. Glenn Greenwald has some better points than I do on this, so you should read his analysis if you’re interested in a more in-depth legal perspective. I’m not a lawyer; he is.

Florida Terror Raids
Raw Story has more doubts on how dangerous the ‘cell’ was. I’ve been a skeptic from ever since the story broke, and I previously raised doubts about the danger posed by the ‘cell’ here and here.

Several community groups are raising concerns about double standards being applied by law enforcement in the case, a local CBS affil reports.

The Miami Herald reports that the government claims it has a witness.

Stolen data
Reuters reported yesterday that the FBI has recovered the laptop and external hard drive that contained the personal data of more than 26 million active duty and retired military personnel.

No details were given about how the data was recovered, but strangely enough the U.S. Park Police was credited with the find. The data is not immediately believed to have been accessed by identity theives.

Abramoff fallout
Following the resounding guilty verdict of White House official David Safavian recently, another Bush Administration official has been charged with corrupt connections to convicted Republican mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The new guy’s name is lost all of his senior staff, most likely signalling that the ship is sinking in terms of avoiding an Abramoff-related indictment(s), TPM writes.

In other news…
… Apparently wearing flip-flops is a no-no this summer.

… Japan’s PM really does have awesome hair.

… Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas is kind of a hypocrite.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog