A new offensive against the courts - especially frightening

there is nothing this administration does that gives me the least bit of comfort or cause for optimism... each day is darker than the one before...

One big thing we’ve learned from watching President Bush’s assault on the balance of powers is that the federal courts are the only line of defense.

[...]

[I]t is especially frightening to see the administration use the debates over the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and domestic spying to mount a new offensive against the courts.

• Wiretapping ... the interception of Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail. ... the administration knows the Supreme Court is unlikely to endorse this nonsense. So it has agreed with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, on a bill that is a mockery of judicial process.

• Prisoners ... [The Supreme Court] rejected Mr. Bush’s notion that he could decide which people deserved civilized treatment and which did not. (Keep in mind that the majority of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are either low-level Taliban soldiers captured in Afghanistan or innocents turned over to American troops in return for money.)

The court said Congress had to draft a law covering the prisoners that conformed to American standards of justice and to international law. But Congress had barely started hearings before the White House began circulating its own bill, which would simply endorse what Mr. Bush did rather than trying to overcome the court’s objections.

the last bastion of defense against unobstructed executive power, and bushco is pulling out all the stops to render it impotent...

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