Webloggin » Snakes on the Court

Regular listeners to the Teri O’Brien Show know that ever since I went on the air at WLS in 2002, there have been two issues that we have considered more important than any of the hundreds of issues we discuss. No, not Celebrity Fit Club, or “Snakes on a Plane,” although as usual, we were way ahead of this whole “Snakes on a Plane” thing. We discussed it on the show on April 16, 2006, so much like the whole Connie Chung chanteuse routine, you heard it here first, and now you’ll hear it everywhere else.

The two issues that I consider absolutely crucial to the future of our country, and the ones we discuss so often that some of your may get sick of hearing me blather on about them, are the appointment of federal judges and the war against the head-chopping, bomb-exploding, dirty-rag-wearing, backward murderous thugs who are determined to plunge the world into darkness. Today the two issues have converged in the form of Hamdan decision. I haven’t read the whole opinion yet. It’s nearly 100 pages long, but I did note one interesting little gem from Justice Steven “if I can’t find anything in the Constitution to justify the desired result, I’ll check out the statutes in Zimbabwe” Breyer. First, Justice Breyer sniffs that “The Court’s conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a ‘blank check,’ Breyer wrote. “Indeed, Congress has denied the president the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.” In other words, let’s make the administration jump through a pointless, silly hoop during a time of war. Then, as the WaPo reports, [h]e argued that far from weakening “our nation’s ability to deal with danger,” judicial insistence upon consultation with Congress “strengthens the nation’s ability to determine — through democratic means — how best to do so.” Since when is this lib so concerned about “democratic means?” You mean as in Roe v. Wade, Judge?

As we like to say on the show, the rationale of this opinion is as phony as a Chappaquiddick neckbrace. Consultation with Congress? Congress has been involved all along, beginning with the resolution passed September 14, 2001 and with the Detainee Treatment Act, passed in December, and which stripped the courts of any jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions or “other actions against any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention by the Department of Defense of an alien at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” who is in custody and who has been determined to be an enemy combatant under procedures established by the Department of Defense.

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