Remeber when liberals were screaming about precedent and how the Roberts court was an abomination--nay, a massacre--of longstanding legal principles? Why, you'd think moonbats actually cared about the law, to listen to them blather on about stare decisis!
Naturally, I've been waiting for the screaming about stare decisis regarding the Boumediene case in which five liberal justices threw precedent under the bus, as it were, to arrive at the decision they wanted.
Well, I'm still waiting.
Liberals?
*hears crickets*
Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting that for liberals, stare decisis is important when it's a decision they like, like killing babies or helping criminals. But when a decision hurts the U.S., they can't even pronounce stare decisis.
This John Yoo piece sums up the hypocrisy:
Boumediene should finally put to rest the popular myth that right-wing conservatives dominate the Supreme Court. Academics used to complain about the Rehnquist Court's "activism" for striking down minor federal laws on issues such as whether states are immune from damage lawsuits, or if Congress could ban handguns in school. Justice Anthony Kennedy -- joined by the liberal bloc of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- saves his claims of judicial supremacy for the truly momentous: striking down a wartime statute, agreed upon by the president and large majorities of Congress, while hostilities are ongoing, no less.
First out the window went precedent. Under the writ of habeas corpus, Americans (and aliens on our territory) can challenge the legality of their detentions before a federal judge. Until Boumediene, the Supreme Court had never allowed an alien who was captured fighting against the U.S. to use our courts to challenge his detention.
In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court's word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists.
Yeah, that Roberts Court is sooo darn conservative. Remind the moonbats of this when they cry and whine about the D.C. gun case.
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