It's rather simple, really!

Glenn Greenwald, writing on Salon, puts yesterday's US Supreme Court decision in the most basic, simple and readily understandable way - even though those railing against it just don't want to understand.

"I was just on WNYC debating yesterday's Supreme Court ruling with Jed Babbin, one of the most enthusiastic and active participants in the Pentagon's "military analyst" program (Babbin was one of the "military analysts" on the indescribably propagandistic trip to Guantanamo, where they were led around by the Pentagon for a grand total of 3 hours and then came back and, in unison, pronounced Guantanamo free of abuse; Babbin is still squeezing propaganda mileage out of that trip, as he said this morning that he was at Guantanamo and there was no abuse. Detainees even play soccer there, he said).

The question I put to him again and again was one that he simply couldn't answer: how and why would any American object to the mere requirement that our Government prove that someone is guilty before we imprison them indefinitely or execute them? That is all that yesterday's Supreme Court ruling required -- not that detainees be released, but that their guilt be proven in a fair proceeding. The fact that the Right is so enraged by this basic requirement vividly reveals the authoritarian impulses which define them. After all, key McCain ally Lindsey Graham is actually threatening to amend our Constitution to limit the right of habeas corpus in response to yesterday's ruling. The authoritarian radicalism of this faction can't be overstated."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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