Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

Margaret Talev at McClatchy Newspapers writes about Boumediene v. Bush [Caution: 70-page pdf].

^{McCain rebuffed, Obama vindicated by court's Guantanamo ruling}

Obama applauded the ruling, saying it was a repudiation of "yet another failed policy supported by John McCain."

Although both senators have opposed the use of torture in military interrogations of detainees and advocated closing the Guantanamo Bay facility, they've taken different stances when it comes to detainees' legal rights.

McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who survived torture, helped shape the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It established a military-commission trial system as an alternative to civilian courts and said that federal courts couldn't consider habeas corpus petitions of detainees at Guantanamo; that is, detainees couldn't challenge in U.S. civilian courts the grounds on which they were being held.

McCain voted for it and Obama voted against it. ...

One of Obama's campaign-speech lines has been that if he's elected president, "I will restore habeas corpus" to detainees.

Obama, who has a law degree and taught constitutional law, said Thursday's opinion undercut President Bush's views on executive power, raised questions about McCain's judgment and was "an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."

"Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy," he said. ...

McCain noted at a press conference in Boston that he had not yet read the decision but that Chief Justice John G. Roberts' dissent was worthy of attention. Having not read the decision, he knew this how?

Three times in four years, the Supreme Court has ruled against the Cheney-Bush administration's shameless detention of terrorist suspects at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, the 45-square-mile area wrenched from Spain in 1898 and effectively stolen from Cuba in 1903 with a coerced treaty. From the White House's point of view, Guantánamo was perfect, neither Cuba nor the United States, a jurisdictionless no-man's-land where the rule of law could be ignored and the precepts of civilized behavior violated on a daily basis without the prying eyes of bleeding-heart terror-symps or the other two branches of government that the Founders chose to provide as limiters of executive power.

This third decision, like the previous ones - Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - doesn't mean Gitmo will be shut down or the prisoners there (who haven't been already released or transferred to places like Bagram in Afghanistan) will go free any time soon. But the ruling is another major smackdown for the royalist approach Mister Bush and his legal theorists have tried to impose on the nation at the point of a bayonet labeled "9/11."

As Human Rights Watch's Legal and Policy Director James Ross writes in Salon:

^{Supreme Court to Bush: You're not above the law}

In the end, Boumediene says that the U.S. president cannot be a law unto himself. It says that anyone held in what is de facto U.S. territory -- no matter what crimes he may have committed or where he is from -- is entitled to challenge his detention. And that's something really worth celebrating.

From Italy, President Bush said Thursday that he disagreed with the ruling but "we will abide by the court's decision" -- as if he believes the administration has a choice in the matter. In the past, the administration has shown an incredible tenacity for seeking to undermine the rule of law. But then again, maybe President Bush will come to realize that his Guantánamo approach hasn't worked. That detaining hundreds of people who were later released without charge causes more harm than good. That trying people before ad hoc military commissions is a doomed process -- and that the federal courts can competently prosecute people for acts of terrorism, as they already do regularly. And that making the U.S. safe against acts of terrorism can be achieved with the help of the law, rather than by riding roughshod over it.

Don't hold your breath.

Indeed. Don't hold your breath. There are still 220 days until January 20.

Obama's Baby Mama

Back in the day – you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white – news organizations called potential First Ladies “wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it’s basically fine for Fox News to use “Baby Mama” for Michelle Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, “some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can’t stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they’re all relaxed about that shit, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it’s not Fox News that’s calling Michelle Obama “Baby Mama,” it’s outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn’t want to use the term “Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

Meanwhile, over at her personal site, Michelle “Fox News’ Ethnic Shield” Malkin defends Fox News’ use of the “Baby Mama” phrase by essentially making two arguments. First, Michelle Obama once called Barack Obama her “baby’s daddy,” and as we all know, a married woman factually and correctly calling her husband her child’s father is exactly the same as a major news organization calling a potential First Lady some chick what got knocked up on a fling. Second, the term “baby-daddy” has gone out into the common culture; heck, even Tom Cruise was called Katie Holmes’ baby-daddy, you know, when he impregnated her and she subsequently gave birth while the two were not married, which is exactly like what happened between Michelle and Barack Obama, who were married in 1992 and whose first child was born six years later.

So by Malkin’s reasoning it’s perfectly fine for Fox News to call Michelle Obama the unmarried mother of Barack Obama’s children because an entirely different phrase has to her mind entered the common culture, and there was this one time that Michelle Obama once uttered something that sounded like that entirely different phrase, which is not the phrase that Fox News used. But wait! Malkin also points to someone in her comment thread saying that one time, Michelle Obama actually used the phrase “baby daddy”! No apostrophe! It’s in a comment thread, so it must be true. Therefore, Michelle Obama apocryphally using a piece of urban slang makes it perfectly okay for Fox News to use an entirely different piece of urban slang. And that’s why, you see, it won’t be a problem for Bill O’Reilly to refer to Barack Obama as “my nigga” on the next O’Reilly Factor.

I doubt this ridiculousness could've been mocked any better.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, PaintyKat, Bent Liberal, dadanation, Avila, and joyful, with shayera as editor and with an assist from joyful as well.

• DrSteveB discusses the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia 1967 Supreme Court decision, offers a lovely tribute in memory of Barack Obama's parents, and wishes you a Happy Loving Day. (Avila)
• howardpark suggests one of the costs of war has been driving business capital from once vibrant US cities back to Europe or the old world in The Real Price of War and the Takeover of Anheuser-Busch/St. Louis. (PaintyKat)
• The always excellent iampunha (have you subscribed to this diarist yet?) contemplates Medgar Evers's legacy and its new meanings in the present day with June 12, 1963: They killed the man, but the movement lived on. (Avila)
• A sobering reminder of the importance of the recent SCOTUS decision regarding Guantanamo, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse details the abuse one individual suffered at the hands of his American captors in Genital Torture of Guantanamo Prisoner? (dadanation)
• How effective is one so-called "weapon" often used in the "war on drugs?" xerxes3 argues in Random Student Drug Testing Ineffective, Invasive that this will do more harm than good. (Louisiana 1976)
• rustydude critiques content on political blogs post primary and suggests bloggers taking a break before the conventions might improve political content in A gentle critique of political bloggers. (PaintyKat)
• Liberal Youth reports on California counties refusing to marry anyone after the recent court decision striking down marriage discrimination. No Ceremony for Those Who Marry in Kings, Kern, and Butte. (BentLiberal)
• Another telling diary about the insanity of our nation's health care system (or lack thereof) can be found in Helenann's Our Health Insurance House is Burning Down. (dadanation)
• Planning a vacation in Minnesota? Mark27 not only describes several intriguing destinations but also informs Kossacks of how complex that state's small-town politics really are in My 50 Favorite Towns in Minnesota #20-11. He also tells of his experiences in these communities. (Louisiana 1976)
• The Cult of Virginity, by Karen Hedwig Backman, is a tragic, disturbing and important must-read. (dadanation)
• truong son traveler writes of a new cluster bomb treaty and takes us on a sober tour of Laos - where too many of the 2,000,000 tons of bombs dropped by the U.S. remain unexploded: UXO - Still Killing After All These Years. (BentLiberal)
• Dougie's diary You think You Have Problems explains that the proposal in Britain to suspend habeas corpus and other civil liberties for those alleged to be involved with terrorism is being challenged by one of the U.K.'s Conservative Party member in Parliament. (dadanation)

Add your favorite diaries from the past 24 hours and use as an open thread.

More fallout from NRCC embezzlement scandal

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