In yet another in a seemingly endless string of setbacks for the Bush administration, the Supreme court harshly rebuked the Bush administrations inability to properly adhere to the rule of law.

This ruling follows closely on the setbacks of the Jose Padilla case, and other Guantanamo legal maneuvering.

Geoman:

Hm... lacks specificity. Let's see if we can get a really juicy spin that is specific, damning, and utterly shameless!

Dafydd

The far right Neo-Con George W. Bush Administration today failed in a simple exercise: Stand up for the Rule of Law and enforce the agreements that he, himself has signed.

The Bush Administration had argued before the Supreme Court that the State of Texas should run it's Court System according to the Rule of Law. In an astonishing decision today, the Supreme Court ruled against the Administration, allowing Texas to prosecute a Foreign Citizen without giving him access to his Embassy.

"You wonder how a thing like this can happen," explains Snidely Whiplash, a Constitutional Lawyer who has successfully plead cases in front of the Supreme Court, "but the Bush Administration's lawyers couldn't successfully argue their case. The Supreme Court Justices have to rule according to the evidence put before them, and the persuasiveness of the arguments. Whether or not it was a question of competence or just bad legal tactics, Bush's lawyers dropped the ball. The result was that a majority of the Justices had to rule for the other side." When asked if the Justice Department's attention had been distracted by the firing of Attorneys and the Alberto Gonzales debacle, sources tell CBS News that "of course that kind of thing is the case. If the disgraced Attorney General had not left the department in such a shambles, this kind of mistake would never have happened."

I'm not going to try to write it "in character" or with appropriate feigned scorn, but I think what we'll see is this:

Bush chose this case and pushed it because he wanted to lose it. The goal was to get a SCOTUS decision that the ICJ didn't have jurisdiction in the US. So this is all a big unilateralist plot, yet another of Bush's ways of alienating the rest of the world and distancing the US from the emerging global community.

Claims of "unilateralist plot" are really too vague. Specifically, this should refer to the previously established understanding between Roberts, Bush, and Scalia whereby in return for nomination they enact Bush's horrific agenda.

Now, seriously, I'm a little confused by this ruling. I'm all in favor of executing murderers and/or rapists (and kidnappers, and...), but my understanding is that first, the Constitution holds that treaties are the "Supreme Law of the Land" next to the Constitution; and second, that the federal government has exclusive sovereignty over foreign affairs. Thus, if "we" were so stupid as to ratify a treaty empowering the ICC over our citizens, the US Constitution would render only limited protection (i.e. although "congress shall make no law", it can sign a treaty, and the executive can enforce it). Now, how can a mere state, which has no foreign policy authority whatsoever, trump a treaty obligation? If this means that states are not bound by federal treaties, it therefore means that most treaties with the United States are entirely unenforceable, since states are the most powerful actors.

I just don't understand how this is supposed to work.

I like the results in this case, but I don't get the ruling.

Perhaps I should (gasp) read it.

Never mind. Daffyd, you were wrong to call this a treaty. The question was whether the Vienna Conventions are binding on court cases; the clear precedent is that they are not. They are not ranked as a treaty and should not be cited as such UNLESS one wishes to parody the liberals who will condemn the eevil Bush Regime for seeking to overthrow international cooperation by jackbootedly enforcing it.

And if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for eight more years. Heh heh heh. Now I want to print some campaign buttons.

wtanksleyjr, in Reid v. Covert, SCOTUS declared that the treaty power could not be used to violate Constitutional protections and provisions.

There's also an earlier decision, from about 80 years ago, which clarifies just how treaties stand in comparison to laws and constitutional provisions. I can't remember what it is, though, but what it says is that treaties stand lower than laws, and treaties in practice aren't necessarily automatically in force. Some treaties are clearly frivolous exercises in public relations which neither side genuinely takes seriously, and such treaties are not "law of the land". Or at least that's the way I understand it, though IANAL.

Oddly enough, the UN charter is considered to be one of those.

Can't fiegn a BDS pov, I am sorry to say.
Here in Houston, the city impacted by the crime, the attacks on the Prez on this came mostly from our hard-right talk radio station - KSEV.
Instead of seeing this as a tough case, in which Bush was ultimately trying to protect Americans caught in legal problems overseas, the reactionaries at KSEV attacked Bush for trying to force the state to review the killer's case.
What is needed is legislation requiring states to comply with treaties, imho. These treaties help significant numbers of Americans in Mexico and elsewhere. There was no way that a review of this disgusting killer's case would show that a Mexican consulate review would have helped him avoid the death penalty. The case was open and shut.
But next time you are stopped in Baja or Cancun after a serious car wreck you might think twice about how wicked the Bush position was.

"The Supreme Court informed the Shrub that he is not King George I and no longer Governor of Texas, neither. If he wants Texas, a sovereign State in a Union of sovereign States known as The United States of America, to let some rapist/killer off because some foreign court said so, he should have negotiated a treaty that said so and obtained the advise and consent of Congress in accordance with the Constitution."

Which, really, is the right thing to say. I like the President, for a lot of reasons, but he was wrong as he could be on this.

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