A Stitch in Haste

Consider the following hypothetical:

Father tells Child, "You will not get dessert until you clean your room." Child cleans room. Child then approaches Mother and says, "I have cleaned my room -- may I now have dessert?" Mother agrees and provides dessert, and one dollar, to Child.

Would it be appropriate to describe this mini-drama thus: "Mother delivered a sharp rebuke to Father, who had attempted to to take control over eating policy in the family?"

No? Then what the heck is perpetual Bush apologist John Yoo talking about?

The Military Commissions Act represents the agreement of the president and Congress, the political branches charged by our Constitution to conduct war, on anti-terrorism policies ranging from detention to interrogation. While the act fulfills Congress' oversight role, it explicitly acknowledges that decisions about how to conduct war are reserved for the commander in chief.

Just as importantly, the act was a sharp rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had attempted to take control over anti-terrorism policy in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006).

Same Yoo, different day. He is saying nothing that he hasn't said -- and that I haven't rebutted -- previously:

Here is the reality-based version of what happened regarding military tribunals and limitless detention pursuant to the War on Terror: The President was engaging in A (detention with no due process), without legislative authorization or judicial sanction. The Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, No. 05-184 (June 29, 2006), said no, you can't do A, but you could do B (detention with some due process), if Congress authorized it.

The President went, hat in hand, tail between legs and precisely as the Supreme Court said he must, to Congress -- which, recall, [was] controlled by a mixture of blind Bush acolytes (e.g., Frist, Allen) and spineless lapdogs (e.g., Specter, McCain) -- and asked, pretty please, for B.

Congress, after some vacuous grandstanding, gave him B -- and C (suspension of habeas corpus), which had not been addressed by the Supreme Court and which all objective observers (and even some Bush apologists) insist is itself unconstitutional, will certainly be challenged in court and very likely struck down.

This is what Yoo calls "a direct reversal of Hamdan" (which, he insists, was a "power grab" by the Court). Again, Hamdan said the President must go to Congress; the President went to Congress. If that's a "direct reversal," then I want my law school tuition back, because I apparently didn't learn anything there.

More woo from Yoo:

Thoughtful critics point out that because the enemy fights covertly, the risk of detaining the innocent is great. But so is the risk of releasing the dangerous, and perhaps that risk is more of a threat to our national security.

So much for the classic saying, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."* Apparently "classic" is now synonymous with "obsolete."

The terrorists seek to destroy our way of life. With the help of collaborators like John Yoo, they are succeeding.

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*William Blackstone, Commentaries, Book IV, c. 27 (1765-1769).