Supreme Arrogance leads to stupid decision

Peter Mulhern has a great piece on the bizarre Hamdan decision:

For decades presidents of both parties have failed to take action as the attacks on our way of life have grown ever more outrageous. Presidential passivity makes the perpetrators bolder and more dangerous. It also atrophies our capacity to change course and take effective action.

No, I’m not talking about terrorists this time. I have the federal courts in mind. The Supreme Court issued a decision yesterday in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld which may have finally superceded Roe v. Wade as the most arrogant and unprincipled judicial assertion of power since Hammurabi promulgated his code.

No jurisdiction to rule and no justification for its ruling -- what a pathetic abomination!

Mulhern reminds of Lincoln's decision to ignore the Court when it ruled he could not suspend the writ of habeus corpus and the Court's upholding of FDR's authority during war to place thousands of American citizens in internment camps on the off chance that they might be a problem during war.

I agree with him that Bush should ignore the Court. Just as state authorities should ignore the federal courts when they rule that a state's taxes must by raised and spending mandated for education. When the federal judiciary has clearly gone far beyond its power, the other branches of government must impose discipline.

Ronald Cass describes the contortions of logic in the opinion.