Supreme Court decision puts Court under election-year spotlight

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: News Analysis
Justices Come Under Election-Year Spotlight
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: June 14, 2008

WASHINGTON — Thanks in no small part to Justice Antonin Scalia’s dire warning that granting Guantánamo detainees access to habeas corpus “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” the Supreme Court finds itself on the verge of becoming something that it has not been for many election cycles — a campaign issue.

Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, opened a town-hall-style meeting in New Jersey on Friday morning by telling the crowd of 1,500 people that the Supreme Court “rendered a decision yesterday that I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” Mr. McCain’s initial response to the court’s 5-to-4 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush had been considerably milder. The decision “obviously concerns me,” he said on Thursday afternoon.

But overnight, the prospect of using the decision as a rallying point seemed to occur to many conservatives simultaneously. The ruling has “teed up the Supreme Court issue nicely for the G.O.P.,” Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, a group that advocates for Republican judicial nominees, wrote on his blog. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page quoted Justice Robert H. Jackson’s famous observation that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and added, with reference to the author of Thursday’s majority opinion, “About Anthony Kennedy’s Constitution, we’re not so sure.”

On the other end of the spectrum, liberals warned that the vision of civil liberties embraced by the court’s narrow majority — security requires “fidelity to freedom’s first principles,” Justice Kennedy wrote — was hanging by a thread. “One more Bush justice on the court and the decision would likely have gone the other way,” said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American Way. Senator Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee, praised the decision as “an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/14assess.html?ref=todayspaper

[blondeatlast]

1. SCOTUS shouldn't be a political issue, but it must be this year.

It disgusts me that it is but it must be. Nine people are the difference between a democracy and a virtual monarchy or worse.

We MUST get this country back in November.

[iamjoy]

2. Could Be Bad For Us

Most people can't think beyond the immediate threat. They believe the simple words of McSame and Scalia about how they are less safe. They do not think of or appreciate the Constitution and the civil liberties it protects. Today it is "enemy combatants" they are holding without charge, tomorrow, who knows...

[DeepModem Mom]

3. I agree. Unfortunately, you're right. I don't think people are educated about our system...

its history and importance.

[rock]

4. Those that interpret the Law

make the Law.

[asjr]

5. I believe this is one of the most

important reasons to elect a Democrat. Yes, we have to worry about the war, economy, gasoline prices, but the fact that there could be more judges like Scalia and Thomas placed on the SC by a Republican president is the most frightening. Republicans are always talking about "activist judges" when they have four of the worst in office. They say they want judges who follow the law--but only if it is their law.