McCAIN WAS AS BAD A STUDENT AS BUSH-- AND HE SURELY NEVER LEARNED ABOUT THE GREAT WRIT OF LIBERTY

This morning, even conservative Establishment columnist George Will is wondering about McCain's fitness for office. "In Marbury v. Madison (1803), which launched and validated judicial supervision of America's democratic government, Chief Justice John Marshall asked: 'To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?' Those are pertinent questions for McCain, who aspires to take the presidential oath to defend the Constitution."

Indeed they are. And we saw the answer, as Will mentions, this week when McCain got his panties all in a bunch over the Supreme Court's habeas corpus ruling. It's conceivable that McCain, like Bush, doesn't understand what habeas corpus is or how much blood has been shed by our ancestors to win it and defend it. Will:

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution, which limits Congress's power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion. Is it, as McCain suggests, indefensible to conclude that Congress exceeded its authority when, with the Military Commissions Act (2006), it withdrew any federal court jurisdiction over the detainees' habeas claims?

As the conservative and libertarian Cato Institute argued in its amicus brief in support of the petitioning detainees, habeas, in the context of U.S. constitutional law, "is a separation of powers principle" involving the judicial and executive branches. The latter cannot be the only judge of its own judgment.

McCain, without reading the 126 pages that make up the decision, immediately smelled blood in the water and, not realizing it was his own, ran-- with asswipes Lieberman and Lindsey Graham-- to his trusted stooges in the media screeching that the ruling was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Will certainly swings right-- often far right-- but he knows a line of desperate malarkey when he hears it. "One of the worst decisions in the history of this country?" He doesn't think so. In fact, he seems to think it was on the scores of lobbyists who persuaded McCain that this was an opportunity to show right-wingers-- knee-jerk dumb ones brainwashed by Hate Talk Radio, not intellectual ones who may actually revere the Constitution and restrained government-- that he'll pick more ideological and extremist judges like Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?

...The purpose of a writ of habeas corpus is to cause a government to release a prisoner or show through due process why the prisoner should be held. Of Guantanamo's approximately 270 detainees, many certainly are dangerous "enemy combatants." Some probably are not. None will be released by the court's decision, which does not even guarantee a right to a hearing. Rather, it guarantees only a right to request a hearing. Courts retain considerable discretion regarding such requests.

As such, the Supreme Court's ruling only begins marking a boundary against government's otherwise boundless power to detain people indefinitely, treating Guantanamo as (in Barack Obama's characterization) "a legal black hole." And public habeas hearings might benefit the Bush administration by reminding Americans how bad its worst enemies are.

Over at Salon today Gary Kamiya suggests the rule of mercy be implemented to "avoid humiliating a once-great party and subjecting America to more painful glimpses of McCain's ideas and teeth." He suggests we just forgo the election formalities and let McCain and the rest of the Bush rubber stamps slink off the national stage with whatever shred of dignity they can manage to muster.

It isn't reasonable to expect the GOP to bounce right back after being led for eight years by a destructive nonentity like Bush. The father of modern American conservatism, the late William F. Buckley, remarked before he died that Bushian conservatism had failed to "take into account reality" and that the movement had become "slothful." Well, my fellow Americans, I submit that a reality-avoiding sloth may be an attraction at the zoo, but it is not a creature that deserves a place on the ballots of this great nation.

Actually, a reality-averse sloth would be far more competitive than the pathetic team the hapless GOP is trotting out to play for the championship. If allowed to proceed, a McCain-Obama matchup will be a hideous reenactment of one of those 105-to-16 games between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals, or another one of those interchangeable teams of slow, dorky white guys who stumble around missing set shots while Meadowlark Lemon and his chortling teammates spin the ball on the tips of their fingers, bounce it off their opponents' heads, and soar in with big grins on their faces for uncontested layups.

If you appreciate sports analogies and mildly scatological humor, I recommend you read the rest of Kamiya's hilarious post.