How the Supreme Court can get it wrong, even when they get it right.

The First Amendment (every blogger's best friend) guarantees me the freedom to bitch about the Supreme Court. Well, not in so many words, but that's the gist of it.

Why would I want to bitch about the Supreme Court? After all, they've protected a woman's right to make a medical decision without government interference, stopped the state of Connecticut from banning contraceptives, and made sure nobody got a paper cut recounting the Florida presidential ballots. They're looking out for us.

But they're not looking out for Mexicans. Or any foreign nationals, as it turns out. Today, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Texas didn't have to comply with an International Treaty, and the President couldn't make them do it. The treaty in question is the Vienna Convention, which guarantees a foreign national the right to consult with his consulate if he's arrested in a foreign country. The issue came up when a Mexican national named Ernesto Medellin was arrested for rape and murder, and was never informed of his right to talk to the Mexican embassy or obtain a lawyer from the Mexican government. Medellin confessed to two rapes and two murders, and the Texas courts sentenced him death. But Medellin appealed that sentence on the grounds that he was denied his Vienna Convention rights, and the nation of Mexico filed suit in the World Court that they were not informed of Medellin's arrest, as per treaty requirements.

The World Court ruled in favor of Mexico, and requested that the Medellin case be reopened. And President Bush, in an act of compassion and international understanding that left many liberals speechless, requested that Texas comply with the World Court's decision.

But Texas doesn't take orders from The Netherlands, and apparently they don't take orders from their President and favorite son either. So, the case ended up in front of the Supreme Court.

Here is where the Court made the right decision and the wrong decision. They found in favor of Texas, stating that the President has no authority to direct a state's court to do anything it doesn't want to. Those of us in favor of limited executive authority, who have cringed at the broad expansion of executive power in the last seven years, praise the court for their decision.

But Chief Justice John Roberts apparently doesn't know when to quit. He further stated that international treaties don't equate to enforceable domestic laws, unless Congress passes statutes to make it so. Now, I'm just a simple country boy, and he's the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But when Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that 'all Treaties made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land," I assume that means exactly what it says. The Vienna Convention, and all other treaties, are the supreme law of the land. That doesn't mean you get to ignore them as you see fit, as the Supreme Court has ruled today. They were right to say that the President has no authority to force Texas to follow the law. But the Supreme Court does have the authority to do so, and the fact that they won't pisses me off.

Now, before you accuse me of sticking up for a murdering rapist, let me explain why this has me up the wall. There is this place down in Cuba called Guantanamo. It's a military base where we keep people we suspect to be terrorists. In 2002, the President issued an Executive Order stating that these terror suspects do not qualify as prisoners of war, and therefore the Geneva Conventions for the treatment of POWs do not apply to them. He states in the memo that he has the constitutional right to suspend the Geneva Conventions in this case. The Department of Justice issued a legal brief that goes further, stating that there is no authority that can place legal restraint on the President's war powers, and therefore he has the right to do anything he wants as Commander in Chief, and no law or treaty can stop him.

This is the broadest expansion of Executive Power in American history. The memo states bluntly that the President is above the law when the country is at war. Those of us who remember our history know that the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire when Julius Caesar appointed himself Dictator-for-Life, claiming that as long as Rome was at war, it needed one person to rule by decree, above the law, for the safety and security of all Roman citizens.

Of course, the supreme law of the land is the U.S. Constitution, and no one in this country is above it. The role of the Supreme Court is to decide what executive, legislative, and judicial actions and decisions are and aren't constitutional. It's the most important function that any branch of the government serves. That's Civics 101. But if the Supreme Court thinks that the Vienna Conventions can be ignored by a body as low-ranking as the Texas Criminal Court system, what hope is there that the President will ever be held accountable for suspending the Geneva Conventions? What hope is there that the Courts will overturn the President's self-expanded war powers? What hope is there that the Supreme Court will ever serve its most vital function, to tell truth to power?

As fair warning, I'm about to wander into a dangerous realm of speculation and liberal fear-mongering. Bear with me. What will happen if a Democrat wins in November? To hear the President tell it, the Democratic Party's plan for the Iraq war is tantamount to surrender, and a withdrawal of troops from Iraq will place the nation in grave danger of another terrorist attack. If the President truly believes that handing over power to the Democrats will endanger the country, won't he feel a responsibility to stay in power? He has already made the legal claim that no law can constrain his actions as Commander-in-Chief. How far does that claim go? Will he refuse to step down next January if he really believes doing so will endanger American lives? And if he doesn't leave the White House on January 20, 2009, who will remove him? The Supreme Court showed today just how toothless they are. The Congress has no army. The President is the head of the Army, the CIA, the Secret Service, and the National Guard. The only person who can remove the President from office is the President.

Of course, that's wild conjecture, a liberal fantasy built on a slippery-slope of logical fallacy. But the idea is potent, and it keeps me up at night. To get back to the point, kudos to the Supreme Court for telling the President to butt out of the Texas legal system. And shame on the Supreme Court, for setting the dangerous precedent that international treaties carry no weight, and we can feel free to ignore them.

I'm not going to lie to you...

Greetings, anonymous reader! For better or worse, you have stumbled upon my humble corner of the blogosphere (I know, spheres don't have corners. Keep it to yourself, Euclid.) Well, now that you're here, I'm not going to lie to you; this blog is hardly worth your time.

I have carved out this little niche in the interweb to blather incessantly about whatever is on my mind. If you stick around, you'll find ramblings on American politics, the Seattle sports scene, Wolf Blitzer's unruly beard, and everything else that weighs upon my mind like a block of granite.

I'm going to use this space to tackle the great questions of humanity, like the nature God and evil, the paradox of Free Will, and why Star Trek is better than Star Wars. I'll be posting some boring literary critiques, policy position papers, the occasional work of bad fiction, and the even less occasional work of really bad poetry.

This blog will exist for the sole purpose of putting on the record my every deep thought and shallow whim, if for no other reason than to make it impossible for me to one day run for president. This enterprise is selfish at best, self-destructive at worst, and most likely somewhere in between. In short, it is hardly worth your time. But for any measure of your time that you devote to reading it, I thank you. After all, a writer without readers is just a dude who talks to himself.