Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Well, this is refreshing. The Supreme Court has decided to issue Bush & Co. a sound spanking on the issue of habeas corpus:

The Bush administration keeps insisting it can ignore the law when it comes to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. And the Supreme Court keeps saying the Bush administration is wrong.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

The five-justice majority included Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens. Predictably, the minority was made of the four-vote conservative bloc: Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia. (I mention this in part because a McCain administration would tilt the high court in the other direction, and rulings like this one would go the other way.)

The court has ruled twice previously that people held at Guantanamo without charges can go into civilian courts to ask that the government justify their continued detention. Each time, the administration and Congress, then controlled by Republicans, changed the law to try to close the courthouse doors to the detainees.

The court specifically struck down a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that denies Guantanamo detainees the right to file petition of habeas corpus.

“The Supreme Court has finally brought an end to one of our nation’s most egregious injustices,” said Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “By granting the writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court recognizes a rule of law established hundreds of years ago and essential to American jurisprudence since our nation’s founding.”

One wonders if there should be a "three strikes and your out" rule for Presidential fuckery. Of course, we could always plump for impeachment, instead.

Of course, the GOP fuckwits are wroth over their paddling. Sen. Lindsay Graham is positively rabid:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) vowed Thursday to do everything in his power to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying that, “if necessary,” he would push for a constitutional amendment to modify the decision.

A former military prosecutor, Graham blasted the decision as “irresponsible and outrageous,” echoing the sentiments of many congressional Republicans and President Bush.

They act this way every time someone tells them "no." I shan't be surprised if we see some chips in the White House floor where their little fists have been pounding. I've never seen a political party more prone to temper tantrums than the Republicons. It's fascinating. It's like they never grew up beyond age 2. Someone should do a study to find out what the actual mental age of your average right-wing fucktard is - I doubt they're anywhere close to what you might call "mature."

No one this fantasy prone could possibly be considered an adult:

With Democrats and environmentalists opposed to oil drilling off the coast of Florida, Dick Cheney has decided to push the rhetorical envelope a bit.

With gas topping $4 a gallon, some Republicans are pointing to Cuba once again to bolster their case that the U.S. should be drilling along Florida’s coastline.

The claim: China has Cuban leases to drill for oil — miles from the Florida shore.

Even Vice President Dick Cheney got into the mix Wednesday, telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that “oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We’re not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.

“Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,” he added. “Yet Congress has said . . . no to drilling off Florida.”

I especially liked the “even the communists” line, as if those who oppose drilling are even worse.

Cute, isn't it, the way Republicons are so fixated on oil, as if there's an endless supply just waiting to be drilled and it's those silly environmentalists who're keeping us from Cheap Oil Forever!!11!!!1! Problem is, "even the communists" aren't drilling off the coast of Florida:

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba’s shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is “akin to urban legend,” said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

“China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period,” said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon’s research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Heh heh heh whoops. Not that a little detail like cold hard fact has ever stopped a Republicon talking point before. If it sounds good and feels good to them, well, reality be damned: they run with it. I don't expect this will be any different.

Maybe it's time we return to an era in which children were meant to be seen, but not heard. The adults should really take control back from these overgrown infants.