Jay Reding.com

Somehow, if I were an astronaut about to launch on a shuttle mission, the fact that there are vultures circling the pad would not exactly be the most reassuring thought…

Recently in Bolivia, the government of Evo Morales has been coddling up to Stalinist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and trying to turn Bolivia into a mirror of Chavez’s authoritarian state. The residents of Santa Cruz, one of the most prosperous and industrious regions of Bolivia, have had enough and came out with massive protests aganst Morales’ interference in their affairs.

Not only did the rally attract nearly 100,000 protesting for freedom and autonomy, but let’s just say that this protest was rather easy on the eyes to boot:

Suddenly, I have this odd desire to visit Santa Cruz…

The Supreme Court handed down a 5-3 decision in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, finding that the government does not have the right to try al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay in military tribunals.

SCOTUSblog has has excerpts of the decision as well as this bombshell observation:

More importantly, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today’s ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,” and that “[t]o this end,” certain specified acts “are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”—including “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.

This is huge, as it very broadly grants privileges to al-Qaeda terrorists captured in the field. The particular language at stake here is contained in Article 3(1) of the Conventions:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

The Administration had said that the conflict with al-Qaeda doesn’t meet the terms of Article III because of this introductory language:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(Emphasis mine)

Justice Stevens (in the majority opinion) did not accept that argument:

The D. C. Circuit ruled Common Article 3 inapplicable to Hamdan because the conflict with al Qaeda is international in scope and thus not a “conflict not of an international character. ” That reasoning is erroneous. That the quoted phrase bears its literal meaning and is used here in contradistinction to a conflict between nations is demonstrated by Common Article 2, which limits its own application to any armed conflict between signatories and provides that signatories must abide by all terms of the Conventions even if another party to the conflict is a nonsignatory, so long as the nonsignatory “accepts and applies” those terms. Common Article 3, by contrast, affords some minimal protection, falling short of full protection under the Conventions, to individuals associated with neither a signatory nor even a nonsignatory who are involved in a conflict “in the territory of” a signatory. The latter kind of conflict does not involve a clash between nations (whether signatories or not). Pp. 65-68.

From my reading of this, Justice Stevens argues that a signatory to the Conventions cannot argue that Article 3 does not apply under any circumstances, and the intent of Article 3 was to provide a base-line rule for the treatment of prisoners, regardless of whether their forces are signatories to the treaty and apparently regardless of whether or not they actually follow the treaty.

The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that if that is true, what benefits are there to following the Conventions? A group like al-Qaeda loses almost nothing when they engage in barbaric actions such as beheading as they know that when they’re captured, they can’t even be called names under the Hamdan decision. If there’s no detriment to not following the Conventions, why would a belligerant party ever bother to follow them? They’re granted protections regardless of their actions, which essentially make the Conventions meaningless in terms of their enforcement of civilized warfare in an age of terrorism. There’s already a prima facie case that groups like al-Qaeda have absolutely no concern with international law and humanitarian treatment of prisoners – and yet they must now be treated with kid gloves.

Applying Article 3 protections to members of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda essentially rewards the breaking of the Geneva Conventions. It destroys any real differentiation between legal and illegal combatant, thereby conferring a horrible sense of legitimacy to terrorist actions. There’s now no downside to being a terrorist rather than a soldier who follows the Conventions as far as the US legal system is concerned.

Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas dissented. Justice Roberts recused himself, as he dealt with this case prior to becoming Chief Justice.

More as I have time to analyze the decision…

UPDATE: Pajamas Media has a large roundup of links on the case.

UPDATE: “Oak Leaf” at PoliPundit is calling this decision tantamount to surrender. I wouldn’t go nearly that far, although I think this decision will greatly harm the judiciary in the eyes of the American people. As Andrew McCarthy’s eerily prescient pre-mortem of Hamdan states:

Make no mistake: if this happens, the Supreme Court will have dictated that we now have a treaty with al Qaeda — which no President, no Senate, and no vote of the American people would ever countenance. (Compare this.) The Constitution consigns treaty-making to the political branches, not the courts, but a conclusion that Geneva protects Hamdan (and, by extension, his fellow savages) would ominously mean that the courts, under the conveniently malleable guise of “customary international law” can rewrite treaties to mean whatever they like them to mean.

It wasn’t unsuspected that the Court would strike down the military commissions, but the grant of protection to terrorists under Article 3 simply guts the whole point of Conventions as signed by the United States. If terrorists and regular soldiers are accorded identical levels of protection, there’s no downside to ignoring the Conventions. This decision may not be a document of surrender, but it is disturbingly close.

Dick Morris makes the argument that Joe Lieberman should drop out of the Democratic primary in Connecticut and run as an independent:

By insisting on running in Connecticut’s Democratic primary against anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, he is in a fight he won’t win and, in the process, destroying his chances in the general election, which he can win.

As my populist and liberal friend Bill Curry discovered when he defeated the Democratic Party establishment’s candidate for governor, Rep. John Larson, in the primary of 1994, primaries in Connecticut are notoriously polarized. The right dominates the GOP nominating process just as surely as the left controls that of the Democrats. This is no place for a centrist to thrive.

If Lieberman simply skips the primary and runs as an independent, forcing a three-way race, he will win overwhelmingly. The larger Connecticut electorate adores him and will happily desert either party to vote for his reelection.

But in an August Democratic primary, with its low turnout and ideologically skewed voters, he faces decapitation. As surely as an American soldier on patrol in Iraq, his very presence in the Democratic primary provides a tempting target for those who want to vent their frustration at American foreign policy.

Those who back Lieberman will stay home in a primary. Those who shine with passionate intensity against him will surely vote.

I’m thinking that Morris might be right on this one. The fact is that the radical leftists in the Democratic Party has sold Joe Lieberman out. Despite the fact that Senator Lieberman has a liberal rating of 90 from the ADA (while left-wing idol Jack Murtha scores significantly less), the radical netroots have turned him into a traitor – because he had the audacity to declare that putting partisan politics above the national interest was beyond the pale. For his heresy, the left hates Lieberman almost as much as they hate Bush, even arguing (falsely) that Liberman is the ideological match of the President.

If Lieberman ran as an independent, he’d win. If he stays in the Democratic primary, the anti-war empty suit Ned Lamont could suck enough air from his campaign to make the race wide open – even opening the possibility of the Republicans taking the seat. It would certainly make the race competitive, and the DSCC would have to decide whether or not to honor the results of the primary and back Lamont. The Democrats, once again, are finding themselves in a civil war between the radical “netroots” and the party establishment.

Lieberman won’t leave the Democratic Party, but it’s clear that the Democratic Party has left him. There’s no longer much room in the party for someone who argues that getting rid of the Butchers of Baghdad was a good thing, even if they think that the war was incompetently waged. The term “liberal” has been spun into meaning “anti-war”, and not much else. Lieberman is a patriot before a partisan, and his kind no longer seem welcome in the Democratic Party.

Instapundit notes Barack Obama’s stance on the Democrats and religion and how it infuriates the “netroots”:

BARACK OBAMA thinks that Democrats should engage evangelicals. This gets him a Bronx cheer from Firedoglake: “[T]his bullshit from Barack Obama is Bill Clinton’s fault. The greatest victory of the radical right wing has been to train Democratic politicians to disrespect, mischaracterize and run against their base in the progressive movement. And that is Bill Clinton’s fault.”

Never mind the fact that 60 million Americans are part of evangelical churches. Never mind the fact that the vast majority of Americans are religious. One can’t be part of the “progressive” movement and still respect people of faith. That apparently disrepects the “base”. Never mind that the progressive “base” seems to be secular, white, urban liberals who make up a small percentage of even the Democratic fold. The author of the Firedoglake piece has the audacity to argue that Democrats aren’t really hostile to religion, when it is clear from the results of recent elections that voters concerned with faith find the Democratic Party indifferent or even hostile to religion and values.

This is just more evidence of how the “netroots” are strangling the Democratic Party – I totally disagree with most everything Barack Obama says, but he’s right on the need for the Democrats to be taken seriously by people of faith and speak convincingly on matters of faith and values. And when he has to face down people who want to argue that there’s no problem, and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor to the cause, it makes it all the much harder.

When the Democrats accuse anyone who argues against abortion on a moral level of a theocrat, when evangelicals are accused of being radical “Christianists” and religious faith is frequently looked upon as a sign of ignorance, one can be pretty damned sure that the Democrats have a problem with being seen as hostile to faith. Given the fact that the “netroots” are trying to wrest an increasing amount of control in the Democratic Party, that problem is only going to get worse.