Habeas

From today's glorious 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court finding the Detainee Treatment Act unconstitutional and affirming that the men held prisoner at Gitmo have habeas rights under the Constitution:

"Officials charged with daily operational responsibility for our security may consider a judicial discourse on the history of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 and like matters to be far removed from the Nation’s present, urgent concerns. Established legal doctrine, however, must be consulted for its teaching. Remote in time it may be; irrelevant to the present it is not. Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives."

- Kennedy, J.

That ain't nothing but the truth, my friends. Nothing but the truth.