The Rude Pundit on the decision:

…[I]f you think yesterday’s Supreme Court decision was a pile of shit, then you believe that the United States has the right to hold foreign nationals without allowing them to challenge their imprisonment in fair, open courts. You believe that a special court with special rules of evidence and special procedures is the only means through which a presidentially-designated “alien enemy combatant” held at a United States-run facility can even say, “Umm, do you have any proof I’m anything more than a fuckin’ goat herder who was wandering in the right field at the wrong time?” You believe that the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions (except in the narrowest possible interpretation) do not apply to prisoners held at Gitmo. And you’re absolutely hysterical, batshit insane over the idea that a human being held without ever being told why might get to ask.

That’s it. Every right-winger’s rant about “terra! terra! moooslims!! terra!” really boils down to wanting Big Daddy Gummit to be able to snatch anyone from anywhere and hold them for as long as they want, with no recourse for the victim. That’s 100% antithetical to everything our government is supposed to stand for (and let’s just set aside for a moment that the GOP is supposed to be the government-hostile, drown-it-in-a-bathtub party); the right of habeas corpus was enshrined as natural law hundreds of years before our noble experiment took off, and our own Constitution notes in no uncertain terms that the right cannot be revoked except under extraordinary circumstances.

It’s significant, by the way, that the Constitution phrases it that way: the right cannot be taken away by the state. It says nothing about the State granting us such rights because the rights are ours, period. The State is not the source of our rights and liberties. It’s an institution we the people have created to ensure the safety of those rights while entering into a social contract to provide other services impractical to handle absent a construct like the State. Unlike apologists for the current Administration, our founders did not view the Bill of Rights, or Habeas, as legal technicalities to be subverted to serve some short-term gain. They viewed them as the natural order of things, a codification of the rights of man endowed by the Creator, whomever you believe that may be, and as truths that should not and cannot be legitimately abrogated.

True patriots still understand this, and behave accordingly. Believing an imprisoned man ought to be able to challenge his captivity in a fair court doesn’t make us weak, and doesn’t give aid and comfort to the enemy. It just means we truly believe in the principles of liberty and equality. Doing otherwise means we don’t. To abandon that core belief is to hate what this country should stand for, and must stand for again.