Noted Conservative Hack Jonah Goldberg posted a little article tearing into the idea that the Supreme Court is the place where we define what is and is not constitutional. He is defending the new radical Republican talking point that all legislation should have a constitutional justification attached to it. This is the Tenther’s (folks who think that the powers of the Federal Government are completely enumerated in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment gives all other powers to the states individually) favorite meme.

They would use this thinking to end the Federal minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All the big Tea Party faves have this idea, with Joe Miller, Sharon Angle and Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell really leading the charge.

This idea is nuts on the surface but it is packed full of nutty goodness as you get deeper as well. The whole push for “constitutional fealty” by the Right is a ruse and always has been. The reason that they want to return to so called original intent it so wipe out two centuries of case law that does not suit their radical agenda.

I’ll agree with Sen. Lindsey Graham on one thing: “Americans still wait for justice.” That’s the headline of a column he wrote that ran in the SunNews and other South Carolina newspapers on Monday, lamenting that the U.S. government still hasn’t put the plotters of the September 11 terrorist attacks on trial. But Graham’s explanation for why we haven’t yet seen justice is actually backwards.

The New York Times today highlights a new report released by ProPublica and the National Law Journal concluding that torture and “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved by the Bush Administration and used on suspected terrorists has made it impossible to bring many of those alleged terrorists to justice.

Trying 15-year-old child soldier Omar Khadr for murder, the planned sentence life imprisonment, absurd and obscene on so many levels.

Last week, the United States government transferred an Algerian national, imprisoned for the last eight years at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to his home country.

After an initial delay, Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square car bomber, stood up today in a federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan and entered a plea of “guilty”.

For months now, certain commentators and legislators have been arguing that Congress needs to pass a new law authorizing the indefinite detention without charge or trial of suspected terrorists and their supporters.

It was an odd sequence of events.

First, on Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill to stop the Obama administration from purchasing a new prison that could house detainees now at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay under lock and key here in the United States.

A Supreme Court decision on Monday stated that federal official could hold people who are considered “sexually dangerous” indefinitely. The idea of keeping sexually dangerous people off the streets is not a bad one until you think of the enforcement mechanisms. Who gets to decide who is sexually dangerous and who is it? Aren’t these the same people who go to work with politicians who themselves have committed sex crimes?

Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins played a key role in writing the new prisoner status review program under an Executive Order from Obama and now is serving in Afghanistan in a key role implementing it.