SYNDICATED COLUMN: Constitution à la Carte
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One Amendment from Column A, Another from Column B A week ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy was a liberal hero. Joining the court’s four liberal jurists, he declared that while 9/11 may have changed everything, it didn’t change the constitution. Despite statements by the Bush Administration to the contrary, Guantánamo is not a legal no-man’s land. POWs being held at America’s Devil’s Island now have the right to challenge their detention in federal courts. “Thank God,” an editorial cartoonist friend told me after Kennedy cast the deciding vote in a 5-4 decision restoring habeas corpus. “We were one vote away from fascism.” Antonin Scalia’s dissent–“[granting Guantánamo detainees the right to a fair trial] will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed”–was widely ridiculed as baseless and hysterical. What a difference a week–and your politics–make. Then Kennedy cast the swing vote in another major decision. Declaring Washington D.C.’s handgun ban unconstitutional, he accepted the NRA’s argument that the Second Amendment’s reference…
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