Asked what form of goverment was being constructed inside the constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have replied "A republic, if you can keep it."
NYT:
In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant. “To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.” “We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic.”
Chris Floyd reflects:
Although today's ruling is most welcome, it is a tragedy that we have come to this point at all: that a federal court has been forced to consider the "question" of whether a president has the arbitrary power to stick people in military dungeons without charges for as long as he likes. Why should this even be a question, a matter for debate?
Flawed, incomplete, contradictory and corrupted as it may be, the republic is a precious historical achievement. Crying shame if we were to piss it away out of blind fear and militant stupidity.
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