The Forrest Gump "Stupid Is As Stupid Does" Award, 1st Runner-up

In the event the award winner is unable to complete their duties, the first runner-up shall take their place as the award-holder. From Thursday's New York Times:

A federal district judge ruled on Wednesday that the foreigners imprisoned at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had no legal way to challenge their detentions in federal court.

The judge, Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, said the seven prisoners who brought a claim in his court could not be granted what they had asked for, writs of habeas corpus that would have required the federal courts to consider whether they were lawfully detained.

Judge Leon said the courts could not do this even though the Supreme Court ruled last June that the prisoners had the right to invoke the habeas corpus law in asking federal judges for relief. He made a distinction between the right to file for a habeas corpus petition before a judge and the right to obtain one. ...

"No viable legal theory exists by which it could issue a writ of habeas corpus under these circumstances," he wrote. Courts, he ruled, could not evaluate the lawfulness of the actions of a president who detained "nonresident aliens, outside of the United States, during a time of armed conflict."

Do you get that? Leon has ruled that while prisoners may file for habeas corpus relief, there is absolutely no way they can get it because the president floats in a separate dimension entirely outside the reach of law. Put another way, Leon has ruled that what the Supreme Court meant was that prisoners are free to engage in an utterly useless, futile exercise with a pre-determined outcome.

Not only is that about the insanely bizarrest, head-scratchingest, jaw-droppingest, stupidest bit of crap I've come across in one hell of a long time - it's equivalent to saying that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech doesn't apply to any public expression because it says you're free to speak but doesn't say the government has to allow anyone to hear you - but if I was a Supreme Court justice, I would be outraged. Even if I'd been in the minority on the original decision I'd be outraged. Because this ruling makes fools of the Justices, openly thumbs its nose at them, portrays them as so thuddingly dense that they would propose a legal right without there being any way to meaningfully exercise it. Just insane.

For that latter reason if no other, I don't see this decision standing. But if by some logically inconceivable shift it is, if the Supreme Court proves itself as ready to pucker up for Bush's ass as Judge Leon has, it will be time to stop talking citizen action and start talking citizen insurrection. Not violent insurrection, not for me, but a radical nonviolent one. A Gandhian one. An Orange Revolution one. A Solidarity one. An Otpor one. Because our entire government will at that point not simply have failed us, but will have failed us beyond the reach of even legal legitimacy.