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The small wow is that yesterday the Supreme Court saved the writ of habeas corpus. This is being treated as BIG NEWS across the land, and it is, but I am giving it only a small wow. After all, the Supreme Court is supposed to save the writ of habeas corpus. That’s it’s job. So it’s nice to see the Court doing it’s job, but it should not come as that much of a surprise to us. It gets credit, but not extra credit, for doing what it’s supposed to do.

Most people probably could not explain what the writ of habeas corpus is, but most people have an inherent grasp of it. What surprises me about the news coverage of the Court’s decision, and indeed, of the underlying constitutional struggle that has given rise to the Boumediene decision and others in its area, is just how poorly the media has explained what is going on. Therefore, I have volunteered to step and and provide a simple, coherent and accurate explanation for what is going on.

In our system of government, every individual has the right to challenge the legality of government action. In simple terms, if the government does something that affects you in some fashion, you have the right to go to court and ask some judge “Hey, is this legal what they are doing?” There is no government action without judicial oversight.

The current President, however, has a different angle on things. He thinks that the President has certain “inherent” powers. An inherent power is one that is not specifically given to him in the text of the constitution but which is “implied” by the fact that he is President. He thinks that the President has the inherent power to identify people as enemies of the United States and to do with them as he sees fit. And, he thinks, no court anywhere can say anything about it. Furthermore, since he sees this power as being granted by the Constitution (not in actual words, mind you, but impliedly), he believes that Congress is powerless to limit that power.

These ideas are essentially crackpot ideas, at least from anybody who takes the law and the Constitution seriously. There are, however, an awful lot of people who do have authoritarian tendencies, and many of them go to law school and some become judges. To these people, the President’s theories make perfect sense, just like tax deductions for beer and wine purchases would make perfect sense to an alcoholic.

I am digressing somewhat, because the Supreme Court has not yet had to address the President’s “inherent powers” theories. Thanks to the spineless attributes of politicians, notably members of Congress, the President has been able to get laws passed giving him all the powers that he thinks he has anyway. In 2006, After the Supreme Court ruled that he had to follow the Geneva Convention, he got Congress to pass a law that basically said that the President can identify anybody he sees fit as an “enemy” of the United States and hold that person, basically forever, and that no court has the power to judge whether the President is acting legally or not.

This was an outrageous law. Utterly contrary to everything this Country stands for, but it was proposed immediately before the 2006 election and so all members of congress (of both parties) that were facing reelection automatically voted for it, lest they be deemed “weak on terrorism.” I am letting you, dear reader, know that you, as an intelligent human being, have the inherent authority to slap in the face anybody who utters that ridiculous phrase “weak on terrorism.”

Yesterday’s decision ruled simply that everybody, even accused terrorists, have the right to ask a Court whether what the government is doing is legal. That right is in the constitution, and Congress cannot take that right away.

So that’s the small wow. What’s the BIG WOW you might ask?

The BIG WOW is that four Supreme Court justices thought otherwise. Four Supreme Court justices thought that it was perfectly ok for the government to imprison individuals, some of whom have been literally kidnapped, and hold them for years, six years at last count, and that those individuals have no right to challenge the legality of the government’s actions.  And these are the guys who are supposed to be the last line of defense of our liberties?  That, to me, is a BIG WOW.

Hillary accuses Obama of using Rove-like tactics against her. A page out of the Karl Rove playbook she calls it. Shame on you she scolds Obama.

Hmmmm.

I don’t actually have a copy of the Rove playbook, but I suspect that there’s a whole chapter devoted to projection — the tactic of accusing your opponents of having your own bad qualities, or of doing the bad things that you yourself are doing. Accuse the Democrats of being big spenders, while running up the largest deficits in the history of the country. Say Democrats don’t support the troops, while abusing the hell out of the military and refusing to provide necessary armor, medical care, etc. Shout about the Democratic vision of a nanny state, while reading everybody’s email and listening to everybody’s phone calls.

So if you ask me, it’s Hillary that has taken a page, or rather a chapter, out of the Karl Rove playbook. To accuse your opponent of using Rovian tactics is a classic example of this kind of projection. Karl Rove would be proud.

John McCain keeps complaining the the New York Time’s story about his close relationship with a Washington lobbyist was based on “anonymous sources.”  That’s just ridiculous.  An anonymous source is one that is unknown to the newspaper.  No newspaper of any repute will quote, much less base stories on, anonymous sources.

McCain is just confusing an anonymous source with a confidential, or unnamed, source.  The source of the Time’s  story were former staffers of the Senator.  They are certainly known to the Times; the Times has simply decided not to name them in the story.  This happens all the time and is key to good journalism.  If sources couldn’t remain confidential, they wouldn’t talk to newspapers.  There are even laws in many states that protect the confidentiality of news sources.

The use of unnamed sources is certainly susceptible to abuse.  In effect, we have to rely on the integrity of the newspaper.  So who would you believe, the New York Times or a politician?

It’s downright jarring for a die hard liberal such as myself to hear one’s views on the economy echoed by a republican candidate for president. But that was exactly what happened last night during the republican debate. When asked for his view of Bush’s “economic stimulus package,” Mike Huckabee pointed out that the money for the “rebate” checks would have to be borrowed from China and that the money would most likely be spent on good manufactured in China. Huckabee asked the perfectly rational question – whose economy is going to be stimulated?

I couldn’t agree more, but I wouldn’t have been nearly as polite as Huckabee. The whole thing is insane. Yes, it’s true that consumer spending is a huge component of our economy, but I don’t see what sending 120 million people a check for a few hundred dollars is going to do. People spend money when they feel confident about the future. Is getting a one time check from the government for a few hundred bucks going to make the future look rosy? I don’t think so….

I would put this program under the category of pandering when what we need is some thoughtful planning. We need to take a look at the fundamental problems with the structure of our economy, and figure out what to do to fix them. What are those problems? Hmmm, let’s start with the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs, the war in Iraq (wars are economic issues too), the ridiculous tax structure, the widening chasm between the super duper rich and everybody else, our disastrous trade policies, and the absence of any coherent energy and medical care policies. Those are just for starters, and of course, the 120 million checks of Chinese money are not going to address a single one of those problems.

But those are big problems and they take time to solve, you might say. Well, you have to start somewhere, and one place to start would be for the so called leaders in our government to start talking about these problems and show some signs that they are actually working on solutions. That might generate a spark of confidence, which in itself would be a stimulus. Instead, we keep hearing that we have to lower taxes on corporations and the rich even more, that we need to enter into more trade agreements with low wage countries, that we need to drill for more oil and that the government does not belong in health care. And of course, “the surge in Iraq is working.” In other words, more of the same irresponsible and lunatic policies that put our economy in the dumpster in the first place. Is it any wonder that people are sour on the economy?

In the meantime, our embarrassment of a president shows his deep understanding of economic issues. After reaching a plan with democrats that would send $28 billion in cash payments to 35 million working families that earn too little to pay income tax, Bush expressed his “satisfaction that it was built entirely on tax breaks.”

First of all, my apologies to all the Dan Gilberts in the world. It must be a fairly common name, so if you are a Dan Gilbert and are NOT running for President on the GOP ticket, I’m not writing about you.

As a matter of fact, the Dan Gilbert who IS running for president is a pretty obscure figure. If you Google his name, he doesn’t even show up on the first page of results. It’s not good if you’re running for President and there are two, yes TWO, people with your name that are better known than you.

One is a Harvard Professor of Psychology who has written a book called “Stumbling Upon Happiness.” It promises to “shatter your most deeply held convictions about how your mind works.” No mean feat, considering that you probably don’t have any “deeply held convictions” about how my mind works, but I don’t hold that against Doctor Gilbert. He appears to be an accomplished scientist, and I doubt that he is a complete moron.

Another Dan Gilbert who is better known than the Presidential hopeful is the founder of Rock Financial, now Quicken Loans. Full disclosure here: this Dan Gilbert went to the same law school as I, my sister once worked at Quicken Loans, and both my father and I refinanced our homes through Quicken Loans. Having said that, I don’t know anything about this particular Dan Gilbert. I have no reason to believe, however, that he is a complete moron.

Which brings us to the Dan Gilbert who would lead our great country. This particular Dan Gilbert is so obscure that the only biographical information that I can find about him is from his own campaign website. He says that he is a businessman and lives somewhere in South Carolina. He owns a company that makes electronic drums. Go figure.

So if this guy is so obscure, why am I writing about him? It’s because I happened to catch him on the Tom Hartman show the other day, where I learned that he had placed third on some New Hampshire straw poll for the Republican primary. This turns out to be a complete non-event, but it got Gilbert on Hartman’s show and is the only positive thing that has happened in the guy’s campaign, such as it is. So I got a chance to hear Gilbert talk. And that’s how I learned that he is a complete moron.

I like to hear what a candidate has to say about health care. To me, the question “should the government pay for health care?” is about as difficult as “should the government pay for roads?” And while there’s nothing surprising about a Republican who opposes universal health care (they like toll roads too), Gilbert’s solution for the problem was startling — a person who is uninsured and beaten down by medical bills should be allowed to take on a second job and not pay social security taxes on the wages of his or her second job. The question is not how stupid is that, but how many ways is it stupid? It’s bad policy, it’s illogical, and it’s bad math, just for starters. Considering that Gilbert’s bread and butter issue is “family values” and he bemoans the fact that parents don’t spend enough time with their children, it’s odd that he wants to encourage bread earners to take on second jobs to pay for medical bills.

In fact, it’s when it comes to “family values” that Gilbert’s thinking is the most muddled. Hartman brought up the issue of economic inequality and the erosion of the middle class. Hartman pointed out that before the economic policies of the Republicans took hold during Reagan’s presidency, most households had only one working parent, and the other parent could stay home with the children. Gilbert responded by arguing that the economic difficulties of the middle class were caused by the abandonment of “traditional values,” specifically children being born out of wedlock with the result that households had only one income to support the family. Huh? The reason families can no longer get by on one income is because they don’t have two incomes?

Perhaps the foregoing will come as less of a surprise if you consider that Gilbert is mathematically illiterate. In a recent post in his “blog,” Gilbert cites statistics stating that in the first 17 years of his or her life, the average American child will have spent 63,835 hours on television, movies, videos, video games, the internet, and music, but only 11,000 hours in school and 2,000 hours with their parents. Gilbert cites these statistics without question. Gilbert is an idiot. These numbers are mathematically impossible. They would have the average child spending almost 12 hours a day immersed in “television, movies, videos, video games, the internet, and music,” but only 19.5 minutes per day with their parents, and only 4.5 hours per school day in school. Maybe Dan Gilbert spent only 4.5 hours in school, and maybe that’s the problem. Dan must have skipped a lot of math classes.

The moral of the story: if you’re determined to vote for somebody named Daniel Gilbert for President, make it the Harvard Professor or the guy who started Quicken Loans. The first seems to know a thing or two about happiness, and I have a hunch that the second is pretty good in math.