You want to see cynical? Try this

Hubris probably describes it better. An utter disregard for, a contempt for, constitutional government.

Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court drew some lines in the sand[, wrote St. Petersburg (FL) Times columnist Robyn Blumner on October 31]. The court said that the president, despite his claims to the contrary, could not hold Americans as enemy combatants without giving them a range of due process rights. And, it said that noncitizen prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to go to court to challenge the legality of their confinement.

In fact, the New York Times said on November 1,

[t]he court, by a 6 to 3 margin, ruled in June that the people held at Guantánamo as unlawful enemy combatants "no less than American citizens are entitled to federal courts' authority" to challenge their detentions.

Despite that clear ruling, when Gitmo prisoners have tried to go to court, the Injustice Department has responded by repeating in district court the same arguments the Supreme Court rejected months ago!

Lawyers for many of the detainees, including the ones named in the Supreme Court ruling, say the Bush administration is purposely ignoring the justices' mandate and stalling.

They cite the government's refusal to acknowledge that detainees are entitled to free access to lawyers to make their cases before federal judges. More broadly, they argue that the government is still trying to argue issues it has already lost in the Supreme Court, especially that the detainees have full rights to challenge their detentions in lower federal courts.

The Justice Department responded to demands by the detainees' lawyers with language remarkably similar to that it used almost two years ago in the case it has already lost.

"The notion that the U.S. Constitution affords due process and other rights to enemy aliens captured abroad and confined outside the sovereign territory of the United States is contrary to law and history," a recent government brief asserts, in an echo of the briefs submitted in the original Supreme Court case.

Thomas Wilner, a lawyer for several detainees who were involved in the original lawsuit, said in his brief that the government's motion was "simply outrageous."

It has also been called "unethical" and the DOJ described as "completely unrepentant," acting as if the Supreme Court had never acted.

In what's become SOP, the administration is justifying its actions by taking a phrase out of context.

The Justice Department said in its brief that "the court expressly declined to address 'whether and what further proceedings' would be appropriate after remand," as proof the justices left open the issue of whether the government was required to afford the prisoners more rights. But the full sentence at the end of the principal opinion reads, "Whether and what further proceedings may become necessary after respondents make their response to the merits of petitioners' claims are matters that we need not address now."

That is, the DOJ is trying to argue that the Supreme Court left open the question of "what further proceedings" were necessary after remand - that is, after the matter had been sent back to lower courts. But in fact the Court ruled that such issues would arise after prisoners had made their claims and the DOJ had responded to them. Put even more bluntly, the DOJ is arguing that the prisoners' access to the courts is still at issue even though that is exactly the issue the Supreme Court resolved. Fortunately,

[t]his is not going over well in the legal trenches. Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., rejected the Justice Department's extreme position and granted a group of Kuwaiti detainees access to counsel and the right to confer with their attorneys without being monitored by the government.

And last Monday, the Bushites got slapped again.

Washington (AP, November 8) - A federal judge's ruling Monday that sidetracked the Bush administration's plan to prosecute foreign enemy combatants is the latest in a string of legal defeats for the government. ...

A judge in Washington said the military short-circuited the rights of Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. ...

[U.S. District Judge James] Robertson said Hamdan hasn't been given a chance to show he is a prisoner of war and entitled to far more legal protections, most notably the right to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.

Legal observers have predicted continuing losses for the Shrub legal goons as they try to turn the presidency into a monarchy ruling by divine right. Right now I can't help but wonder if their tactic is simply to stall stall stall until they can get in a few more judges who might find that their personal ideological vanities trump justice.

Footnote, There's Always One Dept.: Here's a candidate for one of those judgships.

Prof. Douglas W. Kmiec of the Pepperdine University School of Law said he believed that the Supreme Court ruling in June was "written in a deliberately incomplete manner so that it found a right to habeas review but left the nature of that review to some district court." Professor Kmiec said he believed the government was acting "well within its bounds and is not obliged to do anything beyond what they have done."

Of course, again, the Court did no such thing, but who cares when there's a War on Terror^{(reg.)(c)(pat. pend.)} to be won?