The Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 4 has just handed down a ruling that prisoners at Guantanamo do have a right under the U.S. Constitution, and in particular, the ruling restores habeas corpus to them, giving them the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. It does not specifically invalidate the entirety of the odious MCA as far as I can tell.

Need I tell you who the five and who the four were?  Read more 

This is what happens when the Supreme Court becomes controlled by radicals:

For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.

But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product — even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.  Read more 

As opposed to the SCOTUS:

The Supreme Court for Republicans in the United States.  Read more 

Cass Sunstein does some conservative framing on the Bush Court in WaPo today:

The most intriguing development on the Supreme Court this term has been the emergence of a powerful alliance between two different kinds of conservatives: the visionaries and the minimalists.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the visionaries, are not merely predictable in their votes; their sweeping opinions call for fundamental changes in constitutional law. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, the minimalists, have also turned out to be predictable in their votes. But their opinions tend to be cautious, narrow and unambitious. They are reluctant to reject the court’s own precedents, and attempt to rule in a way that preserves them.

In every one of the term’s key cases, including today’s momentous decision on school-desegregation plans, the minimalists and the visionaries have agreed on the outcome — but they have frequently divided on the reasoning.

Er, I’ve got minor editorial suggestion for Professor Sunstein, and that’s that he use change “visionaries” to another word:  Read more 

If you listen to the SCLM you’ll hear again and again that “Hamdan” is a political problem for the Democrats, and only an operational, policy problem for Republicans.

We demand to differ.

This is the first in a series of posts in which we will explore Republican vulnerabilities and Democratic opportunities.

We take the following truths—at a minimum—to be reasonably evident:  Read more