Senator Trent Lott gives us a perfect example on the difference between an opinion and an informed opinion during an interview yesterday on Fox news:
CAVUTO: President Bush says he will ask congress to keep them going. But it does make you wonder, are some enemies laughing at us? A concern by Republican senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who joins us now. Senator, what do you think?
LOTT: I think some people are probably laughing at us. This is ridiculous and outrageous. Now in legal speak, let me say, I have not read the entire opinion, nor the dissents. But preliminarily my opinion is they probably didn’t even have jurisdiction. They shouldn’t have ruled the way they did. This is not a bunch of pussycats we’re talking about here. These are people that have made it clear in many instances that they would kill Americans if they got out. This is Osama bin Laden’s driver. And this is one other example of why the American people have lost faith in so much of our federal judiciary. This is a very bad decision in my opinion.
It must really suck when you’ve got a Conservative leaning Supreme Court for the first time in a long time and yet your administration still gets bitch-slapped in such a stunning manner. Some of the analysis I’ve read of the Court’s decision about Bush’s Military Tribunals suggest that it could have implications on other administration programs such as domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this new Court won’t be as bad as so many of us feared.
Sen. Lott gives a very good object lesson in why we have judges. His second-guessing of the ruling is not based on the law, but on the results ("People are laughing at us! These are bad people!"). It’s rather alarming that he has a J.D. from U. Miss.
Never mind that the point of even the tribunals is, ostensibly, to actually *judge* whether each detainee is, in fact, a “bad person” in some legal sense—ruling that the process the Administration has chosen is, in fact, illegal, is, in Sen. Lott’s view, a “bad decision” because, he presumes, they are all guilty (which begs the question of why we need tribunals in the first place).
The only bit of legal reasoning Sen. Lott provides provides—after noting that he hasn’t fully read the decisions (or even the dissents) is that SCOTUS “probably didn’t even have jurisdiction.” Thank you for that considered legal judgment, Senator.
As to the court itself—it’s been said by many before, but political (and social) conservativsm <> judicial conservatism. There’s plenty to criticize, actually or potentially, from the current court make-up, but the idea that the present court (even with two Bush appointees) is going to be some sort of echo chamber for, oh, Trent Lott or Jerry Falwell or something, is probably not something we have to worry about.