In an exchange between Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General asserted that there is no grant of habeas corpus in the Constitution. When I first heard of the exchange yesterday, I was in the midst of other things, concerns, etc., and wanted to have time to consult a transcript to read for myself what Gonzalez said. Well, Think Progress has it, and he actually said it. One of the copies of the Constitution I have says, in Article I, section 9: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. By inference, if the privilege can only be suspended under very certain, named circumstances (the mechanism for such suspension is a matter of controversy, and Lincoln used that controversy by suspending the writ in Maryland during the Civil War through executive order; the Supreme Court rulings on this instance are muddled, but generally supportive) one would have to assume the privilege exists without regard to the status of the person in question. Of course, as that old middle-school taunt goes, when you "assume" you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me", so perhaps Gonzalez is taking nothing for granted here.
I'm sorry, I couldn't even continue that line of thought. We are approaching the 900th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, in which the sovereign, at the time King John, agreed, among other things, to consultation with his nobles over legislation. He also agreed that he was beholden to certain legal limitations in his action as jurist, and if presented with a writ, had to produce a person imprisoned and present publicly the charges and evidence against that person. At the beginnings, the Great Writ, as it has become known, was a very limited affair, but the dual principle of the limitations of judicial power and the claims of the individual over and against arbitrary abuse and imprisonment by the state were implanted and have grown steadily over the centuries.
I wonder where Gonzalez went to law school. I wonder where Gonzalez practiced law. I wonder . . . I wonder a lot of things. Most of all, I wonder how, after making such a statement, the Senate didn't immediately demand he step down from the office of Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, as he has shown, if through no other action but this one, that he is singularly unqualified to hold the office to which he is entrusted. Of course, that would be on par with the rest of the Bush group; last week, new Secretary of Defense Robert Gatges said he "wasn't an expert" on military matters. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was tossed under the bus by Robert Novak for bad management at Foggy Bottom. Gonzalez' DoJ is replacing career prosecutors at US Attorney offices with political hacks as these career prosecutors go after corruption cases with links to the Administration (Talking Points Memo continues to be on this case; thank God, quite literally, for Joshua Micah Marshall). The end is listless, as they say, and we are left to shake our heads in baffled confusion - how did this happen?
My suggestion is that we send AG Gonzalez a copy of the Constitution, with the particular passage in question highlighted; a dictionary with all the words conained in the clause highlighted; an introductory level logic textbook so that Gonzalez can learn about inference, about hidden premises, and the uses of syllogisms in drawing conclusions. All this with a bus ticket - why spring for airfare for this joker? - back to Texas, where he can hang his shingle out and practice law, arguing against all sorts of things that are in the Constitution.
