On Hamdan

Billmon has a must read post up on the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision. Crime and Punishment. It's long, but well worth your time:

In a civilized world, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney would all be working the phones right now trying to scare up some really good criminal attorneys – preferably ones with a hands-on experience in international war crimes litigation.

Who knows? Now that Milosevic is dead, maybe some of his old mouthpieces are available.

But of course, this is not a civilized world, which means the odds the Republican Guard (ours, I mean) will ever face trial are only slightly shorter than the chances Osama bin Laden and his sidekick Dr. Zawahiri will someday be called to account in a court of law for their crimes against humanity. This picture, I’m afraid, is probably going to remain only a scene we’d like to see.

Nevertheless, the Cheney Administration’s top officials have been formally notified that they face potentially enormous personal legal liabilities as a result of their actions in the war against Al Qaeda. They are, as the corporate lawyers like to say, exposed. At least this seems to be the conclusion some of the county’s better legal minds have drawn from Judge Stevens’s opinion in the Hamdan case.

Cheney and Bush in the dock for war crimes. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? I agree with Billmon though. It's not likely to happen.

Froomkin weighs in today as well, Overreach Overturned.

And in reasserting the rule of law, the high court has opened the way to what could be major legal action over other executive branch violations of established statutes -- about domestic spying, for instance. The ruling even raises the possibility that U.S. forces and Bush administration officials could be tried for war crimes.

The rousing of the legislative and judicial branches is the ultimate nightmare of the unilateralists within Bush's inner circle, most notably Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, David S. Addington. They had argued that nothing -- not Congress, not the courts, not traditional notions of basic human rights -- should limit the president from pursuing the nation's enemies however he saw fit.

The legislature roused? Yeah, I'm sure they're going to rouse themselves to pass legislation giving Bush the authority to do whatever the hell he wants.

I don't see him complying with this. And the chorus of "Judicial activism!!" is already in full throat. I have to ask though, did none of these wingnuts take civics in high school or college?

As Eugene Robinson asks, what part of "rule of law" don't they understand?