For the third time since Guantanamo Bay became a US prison for suspected terrorists in 2002, the US Supreme Court has ruled against President Bush and for the people detained in that facility, stating that they are entitled to the basic rights granted to any prisoner detained on US soil.

The first, Rasul v. Bush in 2004, laid waste to Bush's proclomation that as Commander-in-Chief, he had the right to determine who was and who was not an "enemy combatant," ruling that US courts have the power to determine whether a given prisoner at GITMO has been wrongfully detained.

The second instance came in 2006, in a case known as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration's use of military tribunals at GITMO was unconstitutional. This resurrected talk of the Detainee Treatment Act, of 2005, which states that "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." Such treatment was defined as anything prohibited under the "Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution."

And now, in the third instance of justice for the GITMO prisoners, the Supreme Court determined that the people there deserve to be protected under the "writ of habeus corpus," a law that dates back to our nation's founding that requires a captor to bring his prisoner before a court, where it will be determined whether the prisoner's detainment is justified or not.

The upshot is that GITMO prisoners are entitled to a fair trial and the system of due process that differentiates our country from a fascist one. Already the blogosphere is abuzz with talk about this historic ruling.

I don't have to spell out what it means that that the Bush administration lost these cases. What I will point out, however, is that John McCain backs Bush, not the Supreme Court.

Something to think about.

[Image: Andifeelfine]