The reactions to the SCOTUS decision to give Gitmo detainees due process is being met with apocalytpic anger from commentators on the right. This is one of the many reasons that what passes today as conservatism doesn’t make any sense to me anymore. It doesn’t look at all like conservatism.
There are conservatives who applaud the decision (I’m one of them). There are lots of complexities to the matter, to be sure, but if you wonder why there are conservatives who think the SCOTUS decision was both a morally correct and conservative decision, read Kelley Vlahos’s article from The American Conservative blog.
The right wing talkers have wedded the very idea of a Democratic presidency — particularly an Obama one — with the loss of limitless executive power, thus the unusual desperation in their attacks. When Limbaugh headlines his online rant, “The Last Days of the United States,” one has to ask just whose country is he talking about?
2 responses so far ↓
1 lonelypilgrim // Jun 15, 2008 at 1:23 am
The more decisions the SCOTUS hands down the more my respect for Justice Kennedy goes up.
I have long thought it would be nice to be President and take Hannity, Limbaugh, Savage, Beck, Boortz, Ingraham, Coulter, Krauthammer, Kristol, O’Reilly, etc. and lock them up as illegal enemy combatants, and if anyone complained about it just say “Look, I’m the President and in a time of war you can’t question the President’s decisions. I’ve determined that these people are a threat to national security, so they will remain in detention until I decide that the threat has passed. Of course should congress pass a bill that says the President does not have the unilateral authority to decide who is and who is not an illegal enemy combatant, but that it is a decision for the courts to decide, then I will sign such a bill into law and release these men and women so that they may have due process of law that they do not believe should exist.” That would be poetic justice indeed.
But, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
2 lonelypilgrim // Jun 26, 2008 at 4:14 pm
To my comment about my respect for Justice Kennedy going up…….today’s decision about gun control adds to that respect.
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