Reading notes

I cannot tell if this is but a step in the right direction, or an early glimpse of an incoming tidal wave of change. Sidney Blumenthal writes at Salon:

Another Bush legal official, even now at the commanding heights of power, admits that the administration’s policies are largely discredited. In its defense, he says without a hint of irony or sarcasm, “Not everything we’ve done has been illegal.” …

I guess that’s the upside. Downside for administration officials is only takes one thing, not everything, as basis for criminal conviction. Downside for us is that many of the things they’ve done that are illegal, however short of “everything,” have consequences as big as earthquakes far into the future.

On June 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the most conservative in the country, issued a decision striking at the heart of Bush’s conception of the presidency. In al-Marri v. Wright, the court ruled that Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a resident of Qatar, arrested as a student at Bradley University in the United States, accused of aiding al-Qaida, could not be held in indefinite detention as an “enemy combatant” and must be remanded to the civilian criminal court system. …

“The President,” the court said, “claims power that far exceeds that granted him by the Constitution.” This extraordinary decision, citing the Framers, declared Bush’s actions — and his imperial presidency — null and void. …

Few, if any, presidents have ever been the subject of such a devastating legal decision. While presidential actions have been ruled illegal or unconstitutional in the past, they were individual acts. But in the case of Bush, the al-Marri decision not only discredits Bush’s position but denies his idea of his presidential legitimacy in the American tradition. The decision also declares that Bush’s idea is a mortal threat to the Constitution. And this ruling was issued by the most conservative court in the land.

To this cautious good-news assessment I can only add that sane thinking by conservative minds, as this decision reveals, reminds me (as I often need reminding) that the conservative worldview is not itself the festering malignant sore on the face of our democracy. The festering malignant sore is the beliefs and actions of current practitioners who claim the conservative mantle but exhibit none of its virtues.