Not until a year after Lexington did the Continental Congress muster the resolve to declare the 13 colonies free and independent states, no longer subject to Parliament or Crown.

Not for five years after July 4, 1776, did George Washington’s army truly attain America’s independence at Yorktown.

Even then, Washington and his aide Alexander Hamilton knew that the 13 states, while politically independent, were dependent upon Europe for the necessities of their national life. Without French ships and guns, French muskets and troops, the Americans could not have forced Gen. Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.

Cornwallis would have sailed away, as Gen. Howe had from Boston.

Indeed, absent the 1778 alliance with France, our Revolution would have been a longer, bloodier affair and might not have succeeded.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, both Washington and Hamilton were determined to make America’s political independence permanent, and to begin to cut the umbilical cord to Europe.

In the Constitution that came out of that convention, the states were prohibited from imposing any tariffs on the products of other states, thus creating the greatest common market in history, the United States of America. Second, the U.S. government was empowered to raise revenue by imposing tariffs on foreign goods, but explicitly denied the power to impose taxes on the incomes of American citizens.

And as Hamilton set the nation onto a course that would ensure economic independence, Washington took the actions and made the decisions that would assure our political independence.

First, he declared neutrality in the European wars that followed the French Revolution of 1789. Second, he sought to sever the 1778 alliance with France, a feat achieved by his successor, John Adams.

Third, in his Farewell Address, the greatest state paper in U.S. history, Washington admonished his countrymen to steer clear of permanent alliances and to stay out of Europe’s wars. Rarely in the 19th century did the United States divert from the course set by Washington and Hamilton.

In 1812, however, James Madison, goaded by “war hawks” Henry Clay and John Calhoun, and ignoring the counsel of the Farewell Address, declared war on Britain and came near to seeing his nation torn apart.

Had it not been for the Duke of Wellington’s preoccupation with Napoleon and Andy Jackson’s rout of a British invasion army at New Orleans, America might have been split asunder. In 1814, New England was on the verge of seceding, and the British had in mind splitting off the vast Louisiana territory. As it was, Madison had to flee Washington when a British army came up the Bladensburg Road to burn the Capitol and Madison’s White House.

After peace in 1815, however, Madison signed the Tariff Act of 1816 to prevent British merchants from dumping goods into the United States to kill America’s infant industries that had arisen during the war and to prevent British merchants from recapturing the U.S. markets they had lost.

For most of the 19th century, the nation followed the economic policy of Hamilton and the foreign policy of Washington – and was richly rewarded. By the first decade of the 20th century, America was the most independent and self-reliant republic in all of history.

And by staying out of two world wars of the 20th century until many of the bloodiest battles had been fought, America emerged in 1945 economically and politically independent of all other nations.

During the Cold War, however, Americans came to believe that a temporary alliance, NATO, was necessary to prevent Joseph Stalin’s empire from overrunning Europe and turning the balance of power against us. To help our wartime allies and former enemies Japan, Germany and Italy to their feet, we set aside Hamilton’s policy and threw open the American market to the goods of Free Europe and Free Asia.

These should have been temporary alliances and temporary measures. Instead, they were made permanent.

No longer free of foreign entanglements, as Thomas Jefferson urged, we now have commitments to defend 50 countries. The old Hamiltonian policy of “Prosper America First” has given way to worship of a Global Economy, at whose altars we sacrifice daily the vital interests of our own manufacturers and workers.

“Interdependence” is now the desired end of the new elite.

And so we have become again a dependent nation. We borrow from Europe and Japan to defend the oil of Europe and Japan in the Persian Gulf. We borrow from China to buy the goods of China. We are as dependent on foreign borrowing as we are on foreign oil.

And the questions arise: If the men of ‘76, who led those small and vulnerable states, were wiling to sacrifice their lives, fortunes and sacred honor for America’s independence, what is the matter with us?

Do we not value independence as they did? Or is it that we are simply not the men our fathers were?

Happy Independence Day.

Stiff Right Jab contributor, Pat Buchanan, is America’s leading populist conservative, was a senior advisor to three American Presidents, ran twice for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996, and was the Reform Party’s Presidential candidate in 2000. The author of eight books, including the mega-bestsellers, The Death of the West and Where the Right Went Wrong, as well as other bestsellers. Mr. Buchanan is a syndicated columnist, a political analyst for MSNBC, and a founding member of three of America’s foremost public affairs shows. He is also Editor Emeritus of The American Conservative..

Stiff Right Jab invites you to visit Buchanan.org to get your copy of Pat’s great new book, Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War.

With the presidential nominees all but official, partisans on both sides are targeting their campaigns -- and that inevitably means negative ads. Lately they have come in the form of unsolicited e-mails portraying Barack Obama as a Muslim or charging John McCain with abandoning his disabled first wife. Yet, though we decry it, negative campaigning is as much a part of our political tradition as fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Since the time of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, successful politicians have sought to sanctify their candidate and demonize their opponent. After three largely nonpartisan elections, the first campaign for president, in 1800, pitted Adams against Jefferson. Patriots in the best sense of the word, both men were brilliant, successful lawyers who stood out among the surviving heroes of the American Revolution. Devoted family men, they had served their states and country during the war and held high positions in George Washington's administration.

Thomas Jefferson

No finer Americans ever faced off for the presidency, yet partisans on both sides immediately went negative. The two best-known authors of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, morphed into opposing party leaders slinging the mud.

Led by Madison, Jefferson's supporters in what would become the Democratic Party portrayed Adams as a crypto-monarchist who would subvert American democracy, establish a state church and perhaps even reunite our fledgling republic with England. It did not matter that Adams had drafted his state's republican constitution or that he hated the British. Democrats pointed to various events from Adams's first term -- including passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and engaging in a sea war with France -- to claim that "the foundation of a monarchy is already laid." Adams's vocal support of a strong, almost imperial, presidency and his party's efforts to centralize power in the national government provided further ammunition.

George Washington

Hamilton and partisans of his emerging Federalist faction, the ideological ancestor of the modern Republican Party, had honed their tactics four years earlier, when whispers about irreligion and the sex lives of slave owners undercut Jefferson's chances in the last pre-party contest for president. By 1800, the Federalist attack machine was running at full throttle. It portrayed Jefferson as a debauched deist who would import the horrors of revolutionary France.

In reality, although Jefferson questioned traditional church doctrines and held high hopes for the French Revolution, his religious beliefs differed little from those of Adams, and both men sought a neutral course for the United States between the two warring world powers, France and England. Yet the chief Federalist newspaper proclaimed, "The only question to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart, is, 'Shall I continue in allegiance to God and a religious president; or impiously declare for Jefferson and no God!!!' "

John Adams

Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison are sainted pillars of American democracy. They authored the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights -- and negative ads, in each case striving to help their country by promoting their vision for it.

In any contest, hobbling your opponent helps your cause. Our founders learned it in their propaganda campaign against the British during the Revolution and used it against their partisan opponents. Reread the Declaration of Independence today and note not just the soaring preamble -- but also the charges it levels against Britain. Whatever the faults of colonial rule, the Declaration makes the case for independence by exaggerating Britain's sins.

As Election Day draws nearer in the current campaign, the attacks will sharpen. Even if McCain and Obama try to remain above the fray, their partisans will continue to make their case. Adams privately decried the charges against Jefferson's faith and family life but publicly did nothing to stop them. Jefferson, for his part, secretly funded the most scurrilous of the anti-Adams scandalmongers, James Callender. In a widely reprinted rant that damned the sitting president as a British lackey, Callender concluded, "Take your choice between Adams, war and beggary, and Jefferson, peace and competency!" Some will paint the choice between McCain and Obama in equally stark terms. For good or for ill, negative campaigning is part of the American way.

Since the winners write history, it is not too surprising that those who won the battle on the precise shape the United States would take get more press. So it is that several of the founding fathers do not get more historians interested in their beliefs and lives.

Among the anti-federalists were Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, Richard Henry Lee, Edmund Randolph and a few others. But of those it was George Mason and Patrick Henry who carried the water for the individual and natural rights of man over those of the state. They seemed to have an instinctive understanding that it was the tendency of mankind to gravitate from tyranny to freedom and back again. They understood the nature of power and of those who wield it and that those who wield it are not often concerned with the consequences that power has for the individual.

The firebrand of the American Revolution (the secession movement that succeeded), Patrick Henry, was also an influential man from the pivotal state of Virginia. In the post-rebellion era, his opinion regarding the Constitution was crucial to its successful adoption. Patrick Henry and his fellow Virginians George Mason and Thomas Jefferson were the anti-federalists who made sure individual rights were included in a document that dealt primarily with the limitations and areas of responsibility for the three branches of government.

If it weren't for George Mason and Patrick Henry, a Bill of Rights would not have been added to the Constitution. It was their vehemence and insistence that eventually forced the federalists to insert it. The Bill of Rights for Mason and Henry defined the most important rights and freedoms of the people of the United States: Rights that Madison and Hamilton and Washington assumed would be obvious. The three federalists, Madison, Hamiliton, and Washington, argued that to declare those rights on paper would mean other rights would not get deserved attention or imply that rights had to be set to paper. Their argument showed a lack of foresight about the nature of man and what history proves about the tendency of the powerful to amass power and control to itself.

In addition, Mason and Henry sought an 11th right, one regarding private property, but it was left out. More is the pity, given the land grabbing by the federal government and certain interest groups in this day and age. The land grabbing and erosion of private property rights is always couched in benevolent terms even as the federal government is now the largest holder of the geographical land mass of the United States. It's power and control is exerted over 42 percent of the United States. It is a very poor steward of what it controls. Sweetheart land deals between members of government and the economic class have gone on a long time. In recent years, those deals have totally skewed private property rights and placed corrupt officials in line for special 'deals.' Some of this went on even during our founding but the intention of the founders was to protect private property rights and to dispose of lands to the states or private individuals: That was the intention but that is often not how the system works.

Much is made of the fact that the original document uniting the states in a loose confederation, the Articles of Confederation, was replaced by the present Constitution. The Articles joined the several states in a much more informal union, while the Constitution locked them into a sovereign central government located in Washington.

After the Revolution, Madison and Hamilton and their followers seemed to morph into an entirely different kind of American than those who had fought in the war. In the words of historian Vernon Parrington, a great change had come over men like Madison and Hamilton:

"[T]hey discarded the revolutionary doctrines that had served their need in the debate with England. They were done with natural rights and the romantic interpretations of politics and were turned realists … their economic interests were suffering from the lack of a strong centralized government, and they now held that men were animals with turbulent passions, and require government proper and adequate for animals. …The great obstacle to such a program was the political power of farmers, bred up in traditional practice of home rule, jealous of local rights, and content with the Articles of Confederation."

We might add that farmers and small businessmen had made up 90 percent of the Continental Army and had indeed pledged their lives, their fortunes and their honor to win that war. Thus, they had no small stake in the outcome of the federalist versus anti-federalist debate. It become clear that the 'natural' aristocrats like Washington, Hamilton and Madison sought to make sure an elite maintained control over lesser men for purposes of efficiency and power.

When the coup of the federalists took place in secrecy at the Constitutional Convention, three Virginians stood against it. They were George Mason, Edmund Randolph and Patrick Henry.

[Patrick Henry was not a delegate to the Constititutional Convention. However, he was a delegate to the Virginia ratification convention. His support of ratification for the Constitution was deemed crucial to eventual ratification by all the states, especially Georgia and the Carolinas. Washington asked the ailing Henry as a point of friendship to support ratification by Virginia. Mason was a delegate to both conventions and after all his hard work on drawing up the document chose not to sign.]

But it was George Mason and Patrick Henry, so different in personality, who formed the core of resistance. Mason was as cool, logical and quiet as Henry was a passionate philosopher and orator. Both had been successful large farmers and small businessmen, both were family men, and both had a similar distrust of a strong central government.

Mason believed that the Constitution which Madison was plugging had elements of top-down construction and control. He was also concerned that those favoring a strong central state had made a deliberate, concerted effort to get appointed to the Convention and thus form the resulting Constitution. He worried that the document favored a strong judiciary, a circumstance that would come to plague the new nation. The 11th Amendment was added to the Constitution to calm his fears. But as luck and history would have it, over the years that amendment has been set aside by judicial activism.

When the Constitution was accepted by the various state delegations, Virginia's Richard Henry Lee wrote criticisms in his journals about how the federalists – i.e., centralists – had planned and created a unanimous document when no unanimity existed.

Meanwhile, anti-federalists such as Thomas Jefferson had come to view Alexander Hamilton as more interested in making members of the Congress grateful to him personally than in setting up a viable nation-state. He was well aware that Hamilton would have preferred the government to be a monarchy or at the very least a cabal of aristocratic Americans with power held by a small group. Hamilton did not see the rights of man or individual liberty as being particularly valuable in the scheme of things. So it was early on that our form of government and the political process were on a collision course – the central state versus the rights of the individual under natural law, Divine law and common law.

Why did Mason object so strongly to a powerful central government as well as to the Constitution that came out of the Convention? In his "Objections to the Federal Constitution" Mason stated:

"There is no declaration of rights: and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitutions in the separate states are no security. Nor are the people secured even in the enjoyment of the benefit of the common law … the laws will be generally made by men little concerned in, and unacquainted with their effects and consequences. … [T]here is no declaration of any kind for preserving the liberty of the press, the trial by jury in civil cases, nor against the danger of standing armies in time of peace."

Most telling are Mason's final comments, which should give us pause as to what we have become as a nation in July 2001:

"This government will commence in a moderate aristocracy; it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will … produce a monarchy, or a corrupt and oppressive aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two and then terminate in one or the other."

George Mason did not sign the document for two reasons. One was his concern over a too-powerful central government and the other was because it did not end the slave trade. Both he and Henry commented on the fact that the slave trade would be a pernicious thorn in the side of the newly established country. How right they were.

How it must have irked Mason to watch as the direction of the nation was placed in the hands of a central authority. It was Mason, after all, who had been appointed in 1776 to draft the "Declaration of Rights" for Virginia. The ideas he brought away from English philosopher John Locke can be found in the Declaration of Independence – that a republic had to begin with a legally binding commitment that individuals have inalienable rights that are superior to those of the state.

Mason's original work began "… all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights … namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

It was on the basis of these words that his friend and fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, penned the first part of one of the most eloquent and profound documents in human history, "The Declaration of Independence":

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

In 1787 Mason proposed that a bill of rights be added to the Constitution, but his proposal was defeated. That is why he refused to sign the new Constitution. He and Patrick Henry are the main reasons Americans have a document that limits the power of the central government over the legitimacy of their natural rights.

Without these two contrary patriots it is likely that the United States would have become a tyranny faster than it has. Patrick Henry, on the urging of his friend and compatriot George Washington, signed the Constitution. But Mason never did.

As it turns out, Mason and Henry were correct. The power of the state has trumped the power and rights of the individual. Before our eyes we are subjected to confiscatory taxes, a government with thousands of rules that tell us what we can do with our land and how much water our toilet tanks can hold. A government where the judiciary is corrupted and the courts clogged with cases that have no business being initiated. A government that promotes an educational system that shouldn't exist as a function of government. We have a government that now does the business of the economic and banking class before that of the American system and its people.

Because the signers listened to Madison and Hamilton, we have hundreds of government departments that are make-work projects for bureaucrats and politicians. At present we also have a system of patronage for the well-connected and the politically correct, through official departments like the National Endowment for the Humanities and Department of Commerce. Patronage is as old as dirt, but it should have been harder to institutionalize in a free republic.

Presently, we have a central government that no longer protects individual rights but does protect the power of the state, a government that has created forfeiture laws which nullify due process. It conducts wars on things, where people are the casualty. It continues to destroy basic natural rights to property and subjects our persons to search and seizure without due process of law. We have a standing army and unelected bureaucrats with as much power as or more power than our elected representatives. We have a central state where the executive can use executive orders to circumvent Congress and the Constitution. In the last 30 years, the control of our destiny has been handed to those who prefer global organizations to national. We are losing the nation because too much power was granted to those who live and die for power in Washington, DC as they recreate the nation by destroying it from within.

While Hamilton and Madison had their reasons for wanting a strong central state, it was a quiet, bookish fellow and a firebrand who warned that the nation created out of blood and sacrifice would become what it has become – a tool for the elite and the aristocracy grown up out of money and power, a system that has created a prosperous economy while it continues to erode individual freedoms.

We must not forget that a healthy economy is not the same thing as liberty. Prosperity is the result of the individual at liberty making the most of that liberty while operating in a self-interested, self-disciplined way.

The promise of the Jeffersonian ideal, to keep it simple, to maintain a country where limited government is not a wish but a reality, has been run over by the philosophical descendants of our first aristocracy. The federalists were all that and more.

It is too bad they didn't listen to Mason and Henry. It might have saved us the likes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as 100,000 pages in the Federal Register and institution what recent inhabitants of the White House refer to as the 'unitary executive.' While the federal courts exert undue power over the other branches of government and the states - it is the executive branch that centralizes extra-constitutional power to itself. The pages of the Federal Register tell the tale: Those pages are crammed with limits on freedom but very, very few on government.

As it is, the notions of the federalists have combined with those who think that rights devolve from the State. Therefore, we are in a downward spiral toward a bad combination of philosophies. That combination denies inalienable rights and natural law. That combination builds an elite that is more interested in its own power than in the limits of the state or the rights of the individual.

On this July Fourth, it would do the politicians of both parties a lot of good to consider George Mason and Patrick Henry. They were the two who would have written out the slave trade and set a different course. Perhaps we would have been able to find a system of best government governing least. The closer a system is to the governed, the less likely it is to become corrupted.

Happy July Fourth. May the good Lord help set this nation on a new path of freedom.

Although he was a federalist, the words of Ben Franklin come to mind: "Where liberty is there is my country."

Diane Alden is senior editor at Stiff Right Jab, one of the original and most popular pundits at NewsMax.com, and a regular guest commentator on the East Coast Hit Marc Bernier Show (listen in every Wednesday).

Arianna Huffington's slam on centrism - "Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers" -- proves that the struggle for the soul of Barack Obama continues. Moderate voices must stand tall and strong against the partisans pulling him to the left. Obama's meteoric rise to national prominence -- and his victory in the Democratic primaries -- resulted from the lyrical centrism of his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. Without that message of unity, moderation, centrism, civility, and sanity, Obama would be just another junior senator. If Obama forgets the origins of his brief career and lurches left, he risks returning to his Senate seat in the fall of 2008, behind even Hillary Rodham Clinton in the pecking order.

Huffington’s post on this issue rests on a false choice between principled extremism and centrist pandering. Huffington caricatures “tacking to the center” as “watering down th[e] brand,” playing to the “fence sitters,” and “dilut[ing]” Obama’s “own positioning.” Huffington fails to understand that being a moderate does not necessarily mean being a pushover. Obama’s vision of new politics, which she chides him for abandoning, is rooted in a traditional push for the center, with a renewed, optimistic vision for today.

Obama’s centrism is part of a great American political tradition. America's greatest presidents were maestros of moderation, who understood that the trick to effective leadership in a democracy is finding the middle, or creating a new middle. George Washington viewed his role as more of a referee than a crusader. He preached repeatedly to his squabbling subordinates, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, about finding common ground. Abraham Lincoln spent most of his time in office, negotiating, compromising, cajoling, and conniving to keep the badly divided North united against the South. That is why he emphasized fighting to keep the Union together rather than liberating the slaves, despite his personal dislike of slavery. Theodore Roosevelt, although temperamentally immoderate, proved to be an adept arbitrator, ending the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, and even earning a Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic skills in resolving the Russo-Japanese war. Franklin Roosevelt, though often denounced as a radical, in fact tacked carefully between the extremes of the radical left and the complacent right, inching America toward a modified welfare state.

All these presidents succeeded because they understood that they had to play to the middle. Part of the reason why so many Americans are so angry with the current administration comes from George W. Bush’s disdain for the center. By not reaching out sufficiently, Bush has left many Americans alienated from his policies –and from America’s democracy.

Democracy is ultimately a fragile flower. Presidents – and presidential candidates – have to tend it carefully, remembering that the consent we who are governed grant is implied, and rests on a collective act of good will. Great presidents tap into a broad, mainstream strain of American nationalism that keeps this nation of now over 300 million people united and, on the whole, even-tempered.

Arianna Huffington also erred in claiming that previous Democratic nominees stumbled when they shifted to the center. Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton did not lose because they were too centrist; they lost because each lacked an effective message – and allowed their opponents to define them. Huffington also conveniently overlooks the only Democrat to win a presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976, Bill Clinton, who repeatedly played to the center, and triumphed.

For Democrats to win in 2008 -- and for America to heal and to prosper – Barack Obama needs to find his centrist voice, showing that he can bring a new tone to American politics, as well as creative, broad-based solutions to some of the pressing problems the country faces. Obama has to make sure that the Republicans do not cast him as the next George McGovern. The young Illinois Senator could learn a lot from the pantheon of democratic heroes who understood how to have core principles but also the broad centrist vision necessary to keep this country united.

The Liberty Fund Library provides online resources in multiple categories including philosophy, art, economics, war and peace and much, much more. It provides both a forum and the library of resources. Both are excellent. It also has robust search capabilities.

Of particular interest for the study of military thought is a full version of many of Machiavelli’s (below) writings made available in English here. [See a good biography of Niccola Machiavelli here.]

Niccolo Machiavelli

This allows students to view directly not only Machiavelli’s Art of War (here), but also his more famous work, The Prince and Discourses on Livy. Versions are available for download in multiple formats including: html, pdf and ebook formats.

Also available on the site - in the category of war and peace – are: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s final address, Thomas Hobbs’ translation of Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian Wars (Vol. 1 and 2), Rousseau and many more. The site provides an outstanding overview of history and thought with access to hundreds of other primary works.

I'll be enthusiastically adding to my links.

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Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States, devotes two chapters to the American Revolution.  He focuses on the divide between the rich upper classmen of New England businessmen and Southern gentry that made up the American leadership, and the merchants, sailors, farmers, slaves, indentured servants, and the rest of the American population that had to be mobilized to win the revolution.  In the beginning, John Adams estimated that a third of the population was opposed to the revolution, a third supported the cause, and a third were neutral.  Zinn noted that while mechanics and sailers were incensed at the British, much of the public was lukewarm.  The men who first joined the revolutionary army were respectable men with property and respectability in their communities, but the need for greater numbers led to the recruitment of poorer white men.  The military was a place where the poor could rise in rank and change their social status and many joined for that reason.   Some states used conscription to fill the ranks of their armies.   Excluded initially from the militia were friendly Indians, free African Americans, and white servants.  So the majority of support for the revolution came from the town mechanics, laborers, seamen, and small farmers who made up "the people" and bonded through the camraderie of military service and benefitted from the distribution of land.

During the War for Independence, Zinn noted that occassional riots would occur that were motivated by the resentments of the poor against the rich elite.  Divisive civil conflicts occurred during the course of the war in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, and to a lesser degree, Virginia.  The threat of slave revolts were a constant worry to Southern plantation owners.   Amid the chaos of the war, thousands of slaves fled for freedom, leaving on British ships to settle in England, Nova Scotia, the West Indies, or Africa, or staying in America as free blacks, evading their masters.   The war gave African Americans and other oppressed groups a venue to make demands for equal treatment from their white countryment.  In Boston, African Americans asked for city money to educate their children.  In Norfolk, they asked to be allowed to testify in court.  Peter Matthews, a butcher in Charleston, led free black artisans and tradesmen in petitioning the legislature to repeal discriminatory laws against blacks.  In 1780, seven African Americans in Dartmouth, Massachussetts, petitioned for the right to vote.  The agitation of African Americans and the poor white classes showed the gap between the high idealism of the Declaration of Independence and the realities of discrimination and poverty of a large segment of the American population.  This gap has led more radical historians like Zinn to see the American Revolution as being the trading of a British elite with an American elite.

Joseph Ellis is a historian who sees much more of the accomplishments of the Revolution than Zinn.  He's famous for his books on the Revolutionary era and his latest book, American Creation, explores the evolution of the United States as it goes from fighting a revolution to setting up a working government.  This exploration weighs the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers and their two great failures.   Ellis felt that the American Revolution succeeded, while the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions failed, because the American leadership was made up of many different players with many different beliefs.  The diversity of the American leaders helped the United States from devolving into a one-man despotism, like Napoleon in France, Lenin in Russia, and Mao in China. 

Ellis felt that the revolutionary generation succeeded in many areas.  The Americans won the first colonial war for independence in the modern era, defeating the most powerful military in the world.  They established the first nation sized republic and the first secular state.  They created political parties as institutional channels for ongoing debate, permitting dissent as a legitimate voice.  And for Ellis, the most important thing was that the United States was able to reconcile two competing and contradictory political impulses.  The first impulse, as represented by the Declaration of Independence, was a radical document that locates sovereignty in the individual and depicts rebellion against government as a natural act.  The second impulse was represented by the U.S. Constitution, and it located sovereignty in the collective state, making government an essential protector of the people and not its enemy, and valuing social balance over personal liberation. 

With these achievements, Ellis notes two great failures of the founding of our nation.  The first was the failure of the nation to end slavery, or at least adopt a plan to gradually emancipate the slaves.   Most of the Founding Fathers were against slavery, and some of the leaders, notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, tried to get legislation to end slavery and the slave trade.  They were unsuccessful in their attempts to end slavery, though, and they realized that the existence and expansion of slavery would eventually lead the nation into civil war.   The other failure of the Founding Fathers was to find a way to implement a just settlement with the Native Americans.  Like with slavery, most of the leaders acknowledged that the Native Americans had a legitimate claim to their land.  They never successfully were able to come up with a just plan for the indigenous people of this country.

Gordon Woods is another historian who has gained a reputation for his insights on the Revolutionary period.  His book, Revolutionary Characters:  What Made the Founders Different, explores 8 of our revolutionary leaders and asks what it was about them that made them different from leaders of succeeding generations.  The leaders that he explores, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and Aaron Burr, were of different temperements and political beliefs, but most of them (with the exception of Aaron Burr) were united by their aspirations to be disinterested gentlemen, a sort of moral ideal of a leader with the 18th century virtues of politeness, grace, good taste, learning, and character.    Most of the leaders were the first in their families to attend college or attain social status, and they deeply believed in a leadership that was gained through talent and not heredity.   Aaron Burr was the one leader who didn't aspire to the 18th century idea of the gentleman politician.  He seemed to always act upon political expediency instead of worrying about the public good, and this eventually lead to his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton.

Each of the founders were very different men with different beliefs and personalities.  Washington did his best to live up to the gentlemanly virtue of civility, and this led him to many of the decisions that garnered respect among his colleagues:  his decision to surrender his position as commander in chief to the Congress in 1783 rather than pursue greater power;  his decision not to run for a third term as President;  his decision to free his slaves after he dies.  Franklin's sense of public service led him to be ambassador to England and France, where he helped the colonies victory by securing French support.  Jefferson's belief in the ability of the people to make the right decisions lead him to fight for greater public education, for the separation of church and state, and the abolishment of slavery, all in an attempt to educate enlightened citizens in Jefferson's idea of a perfect republic.  John Adams, Jefferson's close friend and frequent political foe, believed in a natural aristocracy of merit, and believed in a balanced government between the aristocracy and the common people.  Alexander Hamilton believed that government should exploit the self interest of the influential class at the top of the society to harness their talents for the benefit of the rest of society.  James Madison believed in a government of clashing interests that neutralized each other, allowing liberally educated rational men to decide questions of the public good.  Woods considers Thomas Paine the first public intellectual who wrote Common Sense and his other radical tracts specifically for the average person in the taverns and guilds of the city.  

In his book, The American Revolution, Gordon Woods wrote:

"The history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed as a story of right and wrong or good and evil from which moral lessons are to be drawn.  No doubt the story of the Revolution is a dramatic one:  Thirteen insignificant British colonies huddled along a narrow strip of the Atlantic coast three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization, becoming in fewer than three decades a huge, sprawling republic of nearly 4 million expansive-minded, evangelical, and money-hungry citizens is a spectacular tale, to say the least.  But the Revolution, like the whole of American history, is not a simple morality play;   it is a complicated and often ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not celebrated or condemned.  How the Revolution came about, what its character was, and what its consequences were- not whether it was good or bad- are the questions this brief history seeks to answer."

In this Fourth of July, I'm grateful for the work of these historians for giving me different views of the founding of our nation.  From Howard Zinn, I learned that the revolution was not just the story of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.  It is also the story of the merchants, the small farmers, the slaves, the freed blacks, and the Native Americans.  Zinn reminds us of the gap between the high idealism of the Declaration of Independence and the realities of the people in the margins of our society and that true social change only occurs when those marginalized people feel empowered to agitate for change.  From Joseph Ellis, I've learned to appreciate the accomplishments of the leaders in building a government that allowed debate to take place and didn't degenerate into a one person dictatorship.  Ellis also reminds us though of the failures of the founders, of their inability to resolve the issues of slavery and the just treatment of Native Americans.  From Gordon Wood, I learned to appreciate the founders as individuals, with their own beliefs and personalities and gifts.  Each were united in trying to live to the 18th century idea of the virtous gentleman leader and this seperated them from future generations who lived up to different models of leadership.  Each historian gives us a different and more whole view of the American experience, one that shows the ideas and the people who helped shape who we are today. 

Randy,

To make the discussion easier to follow, I will interpolate my responses to your comments:

I have been pressed for time, but my first response would be that your beef isn't mainly with me.

Perhaps not mainly (as indicated below), but it is your name on the byline. And to the extent that it expresses opinions, they are yours:

"In the meantime, before any other courts seek to redefine marriage, they would do well to study anew the true source of rights and stay out of the business of crafting their own."

You stated those opinions. Presumably you hold them. Inasmuch as I disagree with each of them, it would appear that I have a pretty substantial "beef" with you, as well.

Most of my article recounts how the Supreme Court decided in 1986 (Bowers v. Hardwick) that there is no fundamental right to engage in sodomy to be found in the Constitution. The Court overruled itself in 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, saying there is a newly discovered right, which had been missed before. I simply state what the court held and the reasoning it used.

The constitutional analyses in those two cases, in my opinion, are both flawed because they are based on a mistaken perception of what the constitution is and what it does with respect to the individual rights of people.

The essential point was perhaps best expressed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 84, in which he argued against adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Referring to the Constitution, he said, "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations." In short, our Constitution is a grant by the people to the government of certain limited powers, not a grant by the government to the people of certain limited rights. The 9th Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights specifically to drive home this point.

Therefore, proper constitutional interpretation starts not with the question of whether a particular right is "granted" in the Constitution, but whether by anything contained in the Constitution the people have specifically given the government the power to deny the right which is the subject of controversy. In short, not "is there anything in the Constitution which gives gays the right to marry?", but rather "is there anything in the Constitution which gives the government the power to deny gays the right to marry?"

I think we can agree that the Constitution is silent of the subject. That being the case, proper constitutional interpretation leads inescapably to the conclusion that the people have not given the government the power to deny gays the right to marry. To the extent that the court in the precursor case of Lawrence v. Texas found a "new right" to make one's own private sexual choices, it was mistaken ... not because there is no such right, but because that right has been there since the day the Constitution was ratified and is not new at all.

I then discuss how Justice Scalia wrote in the dissent in Lawrence that this new-found right would be used to argue that same-sex couples should have the right to marry. Chief Justice Ronald George of the CA Supreme Court did just that. The reasoning employed in both instances was to redefine the right at issue. The right in Lawrence was no longer to right to engage in sodomy, but the right to be able to choose how to conduct one's sexual life as one pleases (nothing about that in the Constitution).

True enough; there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution about marriage at all. Or about the right of heterosexual couples to marry. If your reasoning is correct, then, a state could constitutionally choose to deny heterosexual couples the right to marry; or for that matter, to engage in sex at all. Both are propositions absurd in the extreme, but follow logically from the manner in which you would have the constitution interpreted.

Chief Justice George did the same thing. It's not the right of same-sex couples to marry, but the right of people to marry whomever they choose.

However, the majority opinion in this case wasn't even based on the federal constitution. It was based on the California constitution and California statutory law by which "... a same-sex couple may enter into a legal relationship that affords the couple virtually all of the same substantive legal benefits and privileges, and imposes upon the couple virtually all of the same legal obligations and duties, that California law affords to and imposes upon a married couple."

That being the case, Chief Justice George said:

"Accordingly, the legal issue we must resolve is not whether it would be constitutionally permissible under the California Constitution for the state to limit marriage only to opposite-sex couples while denying same-sex couples any opportunity to enter into an official relationship with all or virtually all of the same substantive attributes, but rather whether our state Constitution prohibits the state from establishing a statutory scheme in which both opposite-sex and same-sex couples are granted the right to enter into an officially recognized family relationship that affords all of the significant legal rights and obligations traditionally associated under state law with the institution of marriage, but under which the union of an opposite-sex couple is officially designated a “marriage” whereas the union of a same-sex couple is officially designated a “domestic partnership.” The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution."

Scalia points out, if there is a Constitutionally protected right to conduct one's sexual life as one pleases, how can courts possibly uphold laws dealing with prostitution, child molestation, child pornography--moving on to marriage directly--incest and polygamy.

Scalia, the self-styled "originalist" is, in truth, a charming charlatan of strict construction. A true "originalist", or anyone intellectually committed to strict construction of the constitution, would recognize and acknowledge that constitutional analysis ought to conform to the Hamiltonian standard described above. And that, therefore, the first question to be answered in any constitutional case ought to be "what is there in the constitution which gives the government the power to prohibit" the conduct in question.

In any event, as I discussed in my original post on your column, Scalia's argument on this point is disingenuous. To the extent that there is a right to "conduct one's sexual life as one pleases", that right can, at the very least, be constitutionally limited to consenting adults. There is nothing in either the Lawrence case or in In re Marriage Cases by which anyone could reasonably conclude that there is a constitutional right to engage in child molestation or child pornography. That comment is, at best, a constitutional straw man. At worse, demagogic nonsense.

If my Constitutional analysis is so flawed, why is it shared by the majority in Bowers; Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist in Lawrence; and some of the justices in the dissent on the CA Supreme Court, four of whom did not agree George's opinion (5-4 ruling).

It is flawed for the same reasons that the opinions to which you refer are flawed ... and why Bowers is no longer the law and the other opinions to which you refer are minority opinions.

I do address how inalienable rights come from God, but in doing so, only restate what the Declaration of Independence hold is a self-evident truth.

And this is where your "constitutional" analysis runs completely off the rails. As venerable as is the Declaration of Independence, it has no role in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, which stands on its own. Nor does "God", in any of his various manifestations, have any role in constitutional analysis. In fact, as you may recall, the constitution pointedly omits reference to any "god" at all and mentions "religion" only for the purpose of denying to the government entirely the power to legislate with respect thereto.

You said in your column:

Now look, this is simple. For every home foreclosed in America, it impacts a minimum of three people - doesn’t matter if it was an “investor” or not. It changes the buying power of at least 3 people.

Take the total number of homes in foreclosure or where the foreclosure has already occurred over the last two years and multiply by 3. That is a conservative estimate of the immediate and specific impacts of those events.

Then, put that number under the heading, “Foreclosures - losses”. Next, make a column for “Foreclosure - ripple effects”. Take the mean average of interactive positions affected by each of those 3 people. This means they aren’t giving at church anymore, or buying groceries where they used to live nor attending school, soccer or scouts, etc.

Multiply the first number by 25. This is not the accurate mean average. It is a conservative estimate which includes drug stores, discount stores, auto repair businesses, dry cleaners, sports activities, restaurants, malls, gas stations, little league and others. Make a list of these, if you want. It really is a conservative estimate.

Therefore, column one has the conservative “real” number of immediate real lives affected and column two has the conservative estimate of the “real” impacts to the buying power lost to businesses and surrounding community services, organizations and churches across the United States.

Then, take the number (as close to actual as possible) of jobs lost over the last 2 years, (not unemployed because those numbers are fudged). Using this number, multiply by 4. This is the average number of people affected by a job loss. This goes in column four under the heading, “Jobs - losses”. It represents a conservative estimate of the buying power lost when one single job is removed from the family it was supporting or helping to support.

Now, take an average mean of the impacts in dollars no longer available to use to buy things. Use an average base that is conservative. Lest we forget, these numbers and multipliers are the highest probability of assured impacts because the estimates are on the conservative side. The real impact numbers are much greater and amplified to an extreme that can only be imagined using these charts.

So, using the conservative dollar estimate of $500 / week or $12,000 per year - whichever makes you feel better about it - multiply the job losses number by either (or both) of these numbers. Enter this amount in a column title, “Job losses - ripple effects @ $500/wk” or put in the $12,000 per year number, instead, whichever was used. This represents the absolute minimum amounts of buying power that has been lost by these job losses.

Now, if you’ve done this right, all these numbers will represent the same time period, (2 yrs); and the same basic conservative estimation process used on all of them to derive a clearer picture of the problem that has occurred across the US.

When comparing this chart to any other derivations of impacts and losses, - remember this, they don’t mix. It is nearly impossible to get a true picture of how other impact charting was done and whether their figures mixed apples and oranges. Or, whether the statistics and studies used narrowly defined, targeted, select denigrations of totals to use for the derivations and base totals because of bias, intent or ignorance.

The close to damn accurate chart you’ve just made starts to show a clearer picture of the real problems we face in this historic time of national crisis. It explains why our businesses are failing in record numbers, our towns and cities are being heavily impacted financially and otherwise, housing developments sit empty and a host of other services are going bankrupt.

It isn’t what can or can’t be put on credit or borrowed that signifies the greatest and most severe part of our economic crisis. It is the true loss of buying power in the consumer base that supports all of it. These columns of numbers are conservatively generated to supply a realistic assessment of cause and effects relationships in our economy. It evidences a severe problem, even in its most conservative derivations.

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 06-24-08
Cricket House Studios, USA1 - 2008 -
“Creating the Tangible from the Impossible every day and the Impossible from the Tangible as needed.”

I also would like to know what specific individuals at FEMA were responsible for stopping those new goods in the warehouses from being distributed to Katrina victims in a timely manner. And, what specific individuals and chain of command decided to mark them as surplus, why the FEMA decision-makers and others in our government judged these supplies to be un-needed, and who specifically made that decision. It is our right to know why and how these decision-makers can be so completely “off”. Are they all doing drugs? Have they created a process by which they cannot make accurately based decisions? Do they not watch the news? Do they not go “on-site” before making these determinations? Are they living in some other country most of the time? Do the chain of command systems at FEMA and at the Corps of Engineers (and other agencies) form the basis for criminal negligence on a consistent basis?

Also, there was a show that described a man’s thirty years of efforts to make liquid gas from coal and he has created a proven process and method for this - why aren’t we seeing this man’s work be brought into the marketplace to solve some of the gas and diesel fuel problems? Why isn’t the man’s efforts, also shown on public broadcast, to create an algae based farming for ethanol fuels being given to distribution for the marketplace and whatever is required to do that made available to him? Where are the total electric cars that were successfully created by our automakers and why aren’t we supporting these companies, including the tesla car - to get these cars into our hands right now/ immediately? They’ve already been created, they do work, they do solve the problem and they can be made affordable for us - what is wrong with doing whatever it takes to get these to us?

Our government bias to speak for oil companies that are using our national resources to make their profits - must change. It isn’t thirty years from now to get these things done with the studies, research and alternatives that have been being designed for over thirty years back from here. The status quo isn’t a practical alternative for thirty more years, not for even two more years and in fact, not even for six more months. The speculators are engaging in illegal and criminal gambling practices at our expense and the oil companies have over three hundred percent profiteering practices which is also illegal (considered gouging, opportunistic profiteering beyond what we allow to any other business or industry or companies of any size, and they're using natural and American taxpayers' resources and moneys to make these profits). Our US government leadership, decision-makers from all positions are engaging in favoritism, conflicts of interest and self-serving abuses of their power and position to further the agenda for oil companies and others that are fully capable of competitiveness without these unfair advantages.
Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 06-23-08, USA, Cricket House Studios, 2008

The neighborhood group agreed Tuesday to drop its court fight complaining that the Federalist-style home was going to face the wrong direction.

A National Park Service lawyer has said delaying attaching the house to its foundation could damage the home, which will overlook St. Nicholas Park.

[Matthew] Brinckerhoff, (a lawyer for the Friends of Hamilton Grange) says neighborhood residents don't want to imperil the house.

The group will continue with their lawsuit to try to prove that the government improperly made decisions about relocating the house.  The home could be dropped on it's new foundation as soon as this weekend.

"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them." -- The Federalist No. 78, June 14, 1788

If only Hamilton were alive today...

Not only are the decisions of Boumediene v. Bush and Odah v. United States constitutionally illegitimate, both trampling on the Executive and Legislative branches with amazing arrogance, they will undoubtedly place all Americans (and non-Americans) at greater risk.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:

America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. [...]  On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and 40 in Pennsylvania. [...] It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane anywhere in the country, to know that the threat is a serious one. Our Armed Forces are now in the field against the enemy, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed. The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.

[...]

In the long term, then, the Court’s decision today accomplishes little, except perhaps to reduce the well-being of enemy combatants that the Court ostensibly seeks to protect. In the short term, however, the decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield. [...] Some have been captured or killed.

[...] But others have succeeded in carrying on their atrocities against innocent civilians.

[...]

And today it is not just the military that the Court elbows aside.

[...]

Congress, at the President’s request, quickly enacted the Military Commissions Act, emphatically reasserting that it did not want these prisoners filing habeas petitions. It is therefore clear that Congress and the Executive—both political branches—have determined that limiting the role of civilian courts in adjudicating whether prisoners captured abroad are properly detained is important to success in the war that some 190,000 of our men and women are now fighting. [...]

But it does not matter. The Court today decrees that no good reason to accept the judgment of the other two branches is “apparent.” “The Government,” it declares, “presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas corpus courts had jurisdiction to hear the detainees’ claims.” What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever. But the Court blunders in nonetheless. Henceforth, as today’s opinion makes unnervingly clear, how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails.

-- Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. at 1-5 (2008 ) (Scalia, J. dissenting).

[emphasis added]

Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg: the enemies of America wish to thank all 5 of you for making murder more convenient.
Townhall: A Supreme Error By Fred Thompson

Here's what the power writers on the subject are saying:

Scott Horton, Harpers.org A Setback For The State Of Exception

Yesterday, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, delivered a sweeping decision which rebukes the Bush Administration over its expansive views of wartime executive powers. In Boumediene and a series of companion cases, the Court was asked to decide whether the ultimate guarantor of the rule of law—the writ of habeas corpus–was available to persons in detention in Guantánamo. In the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress had stripped the Great Writ. Congress did not do so explicitly, through the specific mechanism envisioned in the Constitution. Rather, it took a backdoor approach, providing a highly qualified and limited right of appeal as a substitute for habeas corpus. The Supreme Court’s majority found this to be unconstitutional.

The ruling was a resounding defeat, the third in succession (after the rulings in Rasul and Hamdan) for the Bush Administration’s war powers claims.

While the specific holding of the case turned on the history of the Great Writ and the understanding of the Framers in building off an English legal legacy, there is a remarkably intense discussion of the power and prerogatives of the president crammed into its pages. Specifically, Justice Kennedy, the decisive “swing vote” on the Court, takes careful aim at the legal theory on which the Administration has constructed virtually the entire legal edifice of its war on terror policy, and renders a devastating judgment.

[snip]

This furnishes yet another reason to treat the presidential election with as much sobriety as can be mustered. Much hangs in the balance. But for the moment, friends of the Constitution should rejoice: the Rule of Law and not of Man is vindicated once again. The world looks towards January 20, 2009 with hope for a new American leadership, rejuvenated through the democratic process. The Supreme Court has upheld the keynote of fidelity to founding principles which will be essential to any successful government that follows the Bush fiasco.

Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel Matt Apuzzo Pushes Back

If Matt Apuzzo doesn't watch out, he's going to be given DOJ's silent treatment, as TPM once was. It seems Apuzzo (who covered the Libby trial) was none too happy being told that the "press conference" DOJ had organized to talk about the Boumediene decision was totally off the record.

Military.com High Court Rules For Detainee Rights simply published the AP wire story.

Washington Post Editorial The Justices' Refrain

THE SUPREME Court ruling yesterday that those held at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal court is a welcome victory for due process and the rule of law. It completes a signal and totally avoidable failure by President Bush, who will leave office with the nation's regime for holding al-Qaeda combatants in shambles. And it leaves unanswered many questions that will undoubtedly trigger more litigation.

[snip]

Mr. Bush suggested yesterday that he may propose -- again -- legislation to enable the detention of foreign suspects without charge. It's not clear whether Congress can be moved to act before the upcoming election -- but sooner or later, lawmakers must fix this mess. If al-Qaeda militants and other foreign terrorism suspects are to be held outside the U.S. justice system, they must be granted robust rights, including access to civilian lawyers and judges and the ability to challenge the evidence against them. Only in the most extreme cases should prisoners be held indefinitely without charge or trial, and then only with regular judicial review. It's time that Congress absorb the lesson that the Supreme Court has repeatedly imparted: The war on terrorism cannot invalidate the rule of law.

New York Times Editorial Justice 5, Brutality 4

For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats in Congress, President Bush has denied the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to label “unlawful enemy combatants” and throw into never-ending detention.

[snip]

There is an enormous gulf between the substance and tone of the majority opinion, with its rich appreciation of the liberties that the founders wrote into the Constitution, and the what-is-all-the-fuss-about dissent. It is sobering to think that habeas hangs by a single vote in the Supreme Court of the United States — a reminder that the composition of the court could depend on the outcome of this year’s presidential election. The ruling is a major victory for civil liberties — but a timely reminder of how fragile they are.

John Nichols, The Nation Supreme Court Judges Obama Right on Constitution

Of course, Justice Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, will not be signing the "Habeas Lawyers for Obama" letter. Nor will the other Republican appointees (Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter) who formed the majority of the court's pro-habeas majority that also included Democratic appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. But the justices have made it clear that Obama, a lawyer who has taught constititional law at the University of Chicago Law School, was right in his judgement that -- to, again, quote Kennedy -- "(the framers) deemed the writ (of habeas corpus) to be an essential mechanism in the separation-of-powers scheme."

Brian Angliss, Scholars & Rogues Memo To The Chief Justice: Contempt For Your Fellow Justices Is A Bad Thing

Any time you hear someone say something like “with all due respect” or “respectfully,…”, you know that you’re about to bear witness to an extraordinary insult. Or that you just witnessed such. In the case of Chief Justice’s Roberts’ dissent to today’s 5-4 decision against the detention of “enemy combatants” without access to due process under habeas corpus (the Constitutional right to challenge your detention as unlawful in a federal court), his statement comes at the end of a 28-page dissent that drips contempt for the Justices in the majority.

[snip]

It’s always easier to work with people you like and respect. But if you can’t like the people you work with, you must at least be able to respect them. Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent, stuffed as it is with language that is full of contempt, makes it plain that he simply has no respect for the more liberal of his fellow Justices. And it’s not possible to have a productive working relationship without a foundation of respect. Think about it - if you can’t respect the quality of a coworker’s work, how can you trust that it’s right? If you can’t respect his or her work ethic, you can’t trust that he or she won’t claim your work as their own, or be done on time, or anything else. If you hold someone in contempt, they’re not your equal, so they’ll never be as good as you, even if they ultimately exceed you in every way.

[snip]

There are an infinite number of ways the Chief Justice could have written his dissent that could have shown he had respect for his fellow Justices. He chose not to. And in so doing, he has all but guaranteed that a Supreme Court already riven by internal division will never unite under his leadership.

Carol J. Williams, LA Times A Q & A On The Guantanamo Ruling

How have the Guantanamo prisoners reacted to the news of the ruling?

Lawyers who represent the prisoners note that they are unable to communicate directly with their clients. It may take two weeks for their letters explaining the ruling's implications to reach the men in their cells. One habeas lawyer, Wells Dixon, was at Guantanamo to visit a client and was likely to convey the news to him, but it was unclear whether or how fast that information would be circulated.

LA Times, Editorial Habeas For Guantanamo Detainees

Bush can rail against the Supreme Court or he can honor the spirit as well as the letter of this ruling and work with Congress to reform a system that has delayed justice for detainees and dishonored America in the eyes of the world. And he should do what both of the men aspiring to succeed him have promised to do -- close Guantanamo.

David Kaye, LA Times Op-Ed, Scalia's Fear Factor

Justice Antonin Scalia has been a controversial voice of fidelity to the text of the Constitution and a forceful advocate for conservatism throughout his 22 years on the Supreme Court. Yet Thursday, his dissent in a key ruling in the war on terrorism showed him at his worst. His ill-considered language makes it harder for national leaders to clean up one of the darkest blots on America's reputation in President Bush's post- 9/11 world -- the policy of detaining enemy combatants that is summed up in one word: Guantanamo.

[snip]

Scalia's overheated rhetoric harms a critical national decision that must be made about what to do next with the detainees. Be afraid! he says. And know whom to blame when the next terrorist attack comes! It's exactly this kind of demagoguery, designed to limit debate, that got us where we are today, with the Congress adopting a detainee law based on fear rather than effective policy and American principles

[snip]

Scalia seems to believe that Guantanamo has made Americans safer. But we know that Guantanamo and its harsh interrogation policies have attracted global disapproval and made it difficult for our allies to cooperate with us on counter-terrorism issues.

And are we safer today than we would have been if the president, in 2001 or early 2002, had established a legally sustainable process for determining whether individuals brought to the prison at Guantanamo were in fact associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, as the State Department advised?

Are we safer than we would have been if the president had sought to devise a secure but humane policy in a good-faith consultation with Congress long before the Supreme Court forced him to do so (in the case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld in 2006)?

Keith Perrine, Congressional Quarterly Congress Unlikely to Try to Counter Supreme Court Detainee Ruling

Congress has tried twice since 2005 to overrule Supreme Court decisions regarding the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay but seems unlikely to take on the high court’s latest detainee ruling.

[snip]

After adverse high court decisions in 2004 and 2006, Bush marshaled the Republican-controlled Congress to pass the two laws at issue in Thursday’s opinion.

Democrats found it too difficult politically to block either the 2005 or 2006 laws. But now they control Congress, while Bush has a low approval rating and only a little more than six months left in office.

It is a surefire formula for congressional inaction this year.

David Cole, The Guardian Closing The Law-Free Zone

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court did what no politician has yet been able to do – it effectively closed Guantanamo. The prison camp still exists, of course, but after Thursday's landmark Supreme Court ruling, the camp's raison d'etre has evaporated. The Bush administration self-consciously chose to house its detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base because it thought the location would afford it a "law-free zone." But now the Supreme Court has ruled that the pre-eminent law of the United States, the Constitution itself, extends to the detainees at Guantanamo. As a result, there is no longer any advantage to keeping the detainees there. In this respect, then, the decision is likely to hasten the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison. Whether it will bring justice remains to be seen, but it has taken a very big first step, by insisting that the law must apply.

In one sense, the decision in Boumediene v Bush is a limited one. It does not order the release of a single prisoner – indeed, no prisoner has been released by court order in the six years that men have been held at Guantanamo. Nor does it address the scope of the President's authority to hold individuals as "enemy combatants," what procedural protections they are owed, or how they should be treated. It simply opens the courthouse door. Six years after Guantanamo opened, detainees will finally get their day in court.

But in every other sense, Thursday's decision was groundbreaking. For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a federal law enacted by Congress and signed by the President on an issue of military policy in a time of armed conflict. (emphasis added) The Supreme Court has historically deferred to the President during times of conflict, especially when the President has acted with Congressional assent. For the first time, the court extended constitutional protections to noncitizens held outside US territory during wartime. And for only the third time in its history, the court declared unconstitutional a federal law restricting its own jurisdiction. (The court has typically sought to avoid such confrontations, because in some measure political control of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is seen as conferring democratic legitimacy on an unelected institution).

At issue in the case was whether the writ of habeas corpus, borrowed from the UK and guaranteed in the US Constitution, extends to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. The writ, which has its origins in the Magna Carta, guarantees prisoners the right to seek court review of the legality of their detention. In 2004, the Court ruled in its first Guantanamo case, Rasul v Bush, that the habeas corpus statute could be invoked by prisoners at Guantanamo. But that decision, based on an interpretation of a statute, was overturned when a Republican-majority Congress did President Bush's bidding and stripped the federal courts of habeas corpus jurisdiction over Guantanamo detainees' claims.

[snip]

But reality was on the side of the detainees. Guantanamo has long become a symbol of Bush administration lawlessness in the "war on terror." The prison camp has become such an embarrassment for the US around the world that President Bush, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have all said they would like to see it closed, and both presumptive presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, have said they would shut it down. The Supreme Court was simply unwilling to go along with an administration position that has effectively declared war on the very heart of what the court is about – the rule of law.

What does this mean for the detainees? More waiting, to be sure. As noted at the outset, much remains unresolved. But the bottom line should now be clear: Guantanamo is no longer a law-free zone.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com Conservatism vs. Authoritarianism: The British vs. the U.S. Right

That is an expression of conservatism true to its ostensible principles of individual liberty and limited government power. And, in England, principled conservatism on such issues is not unique to Major. The Tory MP leading the opposition to expanded detention powers, David Davis, resigned his seat in order to run again specifically on a platform of opposing due-process-less detentions and similar expansions of government surveillance power....

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This skepticism of Government power -- which lies not only at the heart of most key British reforms over the last 8 centuries but also at the heart of the American Founding -- is precisely what has been missing almost completely from the American Right, for which there is now no federal government power too great or too unlimited to embrace. The American right-wing faction which now dominates the Republican Party is defined largely by their insatiable lust for limitless government power in virtually every realm -- spying, detentions, interrogations, and war-making.

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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.

USA999, Commenter, Glenn Greenwald Unclaimed Territory Blog Salon.com What Conservatives?

Generally when we speak of "conservatives" in a political context we use the term to mean people believing in limited government, with modest intrusion in the lives of the people living under its reach. And in the United States this would imply a commitment to the Constitution; indeed references to "original intent" are often understood to be a desire to assure contemporary Supreme Court decisions are understood to be consistent with the values invested in the original document.

For this reasons Americans embracing the stance of Justices Alioto, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas should not be described as conservatives. They are extremists bent on destroying the Constitution, not preserving it. We have urgent need of a national debate on how we have permitted a political class so opposed to American principles and values to rise to positions of power in the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court. But as Gleen Greenwald notes, those who drape themselves in the mantle of American conservatism are not conservatives at all. And when John McCain announces he will nominate justices in the mold of Alioto and Roberts he underscores his commitment to an American extremism which is anti-Constitutional to its core.

Dan Froomkin, The Washington Post White House Watch Blog A Blow Against Tyranny

In yesterday's landmark Supreme Court decision that President Bush cannot deny prisoners at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detentions in federal court, there's a key pa