"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." ~~Winston Churchill

And so we sit, shackled by self-imposed chains of fear, captivated by shadowy forms that move discordantly across the walls of our perception. Once again we are eager to accept appearance for reality. The Supreme Court ruling last week rejecting George Bush's military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees casts a huge shadow on the wall. Many are saying it not only curbed Bush and Cheney's unlimited presidential power grab, but absolved us of the responsibility of having to do anything about it.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just overturned a ruling for President Bush that upheld Guantanamo Military Tribunals.

The Court said that the procedures adopted to try Guantanamo prisoner Hamdan violated the Geneva Conventions.

Once Again, the Bush Administration has overstepped its legal authority:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President George W. Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed tribunals were illegal under U.S. law and the Geneva Convention.

In a just world, Armando would be carrying this fight to the blogosphere.  He understands the subject far, far better than I ever will.  He knows the implications and the ramifications.  He could smack everyone around and make the point clear as a sharp stick in the eye.  It's not fair that an idiot managed to deprive so many blog communities of Armando's knowledge and ready wit.  

This is a subject already touched on several sites, but it's not gotten the attention it deserves.  So I'm here to harp on it again and hopefully blow away some of the fog around this issue.  I want to tell you why the "No Knock" ruling by the Supreme Court is not just unsettling, it's momentous.

And why the "no knock" ruling has almost nothing to do with knocking.

It is as much as a done deal. Justice Samuel Alito will now sit on the bench of the highest court in our land for possibly the next 30 years. This ultra-conservative will rule against victims, grant unprecedented Executive power, re-interpret our laws, and promote the ultra-right agenda upon our country. Check Alito's America website for what we can expect to see from this KING GEORGE YES MAN!

Watch the careers of those who put him on the Supreme Court. Get the voting record at CSPAN and remember these so-called legislators at election time. With the exception of Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, every single Republican voted for the confirmation of Alito. A straight party vote, despite his checkered past on the bench. Republicans as a whole, voted their party-line rather than their conscience. It sickens me that these are the representatives of the people, and they are merely representing their party over the welfare of their constituents. I believe that Senator Chafee's statement is very clear, and well examined. Please read Senator Chafee's statement here.

I am obviously disappointed with the vote today regarding the destruction of the final check and balance on George Bush's Imperial Reign. I will never understand how the Beltway Brigade operates. I'm actually happy about that. Why should I be sympathetic to a powerful group of Senators who rely more on collegiality and spin rather than the will of the people who gave them that power?

As far as I'm concerned, the 20+ Democrats who voted for cloture today are traitors to their base, the everday Americans who canvassed and advocated for their votes in neighborhoods across this country. There is no excuse for their capitulation.

continued...

Tomorrow, you will vote on whether to end debate on the nomination of Samuel Alito.  In an atmosphere where too many mask their intentions in platitudes and coy terms, allow me to blunt. You dropped the ball. Before the hearings, you failed to establish a clear strategy approaching this nomination. At the hearings, you tried, but failed to convey to the American people how disastrous Alito's record really is. After the hearings, it became each member for himself. And finally, you let the media confirm this man without question.

You dropped the ball, and it would have been easy for us to heed the Republican call and give up. But when you dropped the ball, Senators, we picked it up. The second you approached us for help, we pounced into action.  We leaped to action not because we were sure of victory. We are the reality-based community, after all. We know the numbers are against us. We know the chances of a successful filibuster are near zero.  But we also know that if you don't stand up for your beliefs when so much is at stake, rhetoric of opposition rings painfully hollow.

I see reports of Senators waivering on the filibuster because of its "political ramifications." Some of you are afraid of being labeled "obstructionist" by the media.  I remind you, Senators, the American people want you to block this nomination. Some 56% of Americans say Alito should not be confirmed if he'll overturn Roe. 52% of Americans think the President should be impeached if he wiretapped Americans without a warrant--yet you're going to allow a judge who thinks there are virtually no limits to Executive Power on the highest court of our land? Had the media had done its job of informing the public about Alito's record rather than running it through the GOP-filter and sanitizing it for public consumption, I guarantee you the outcry against Alito would far surpass that of any other Supreme Court Nominee.

Our forefathers did not contemplate confirmation of a Justice "with the advice and consent of the media."   Ignore the pundits and listen to your conscience. Does standing up against Samuel Alito feel like "obstructionism"--or does it feel like one of the last stands against an unprecedented aggrandizement of executive power?  Does it feel like "politics," or does it feel like breathing life into our system of checks and balances?

More below...

Update [2006-1-28 16:19:59 by sdf]: georgia10 has the lastest state of the field over at The Big Orange:

This is a follow-up to Armando's great posts this morning on the filibuster. Improbable? Yeah. Impossible? Never. Take 15 minutes out of your weekend for democracy's sake. Track the updates on the cloture count here. Here is the latest update: NO on cloture (announced support for a filibuster):

Barbara Boxer (D- CA)
Dianne Feinstein (D- CA)
Christopher J. Dodd (D- CT)
Richard J. Durbin (D- IL)
John F. Kerry (D- MA)
Edward M. Kennedy (D- MA)
Paul S. Sarbanes (D- MD)
Debbie A. Stabenow (D- MI)
Harry Reid (D- NV)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (D- NY)
Charles Schumer (D- NY)
Ron Wyden (D- OR)
Russell D. Feingold (D- WI)
Barack Obama (D-IL)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Senators To Call:

Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D- AR), 202-224-4843
Joseph I. Lieberman (D- CT), 202-224-4041
Thomas R. Carper (D- DE), 202-224-2441
Daniel K. Inouye (D- HI), 202-224-3934
Tom Harkin (D- IA), 202-224-3254
Evan Bayh (D- IN), 202-224-5623
Barbara A. Mikulski (D- MD), 202-224-4654
Carl Levin (D- MI), 202-224-6221
Mark Dayton (D- MN), 202-224-3244
Max Baucus (D- MT), 202-224-2651
Frank Lautenberg (D- NJ), 202-224-3224
Jeff Bingaman (D- NM), 202-224-5521
Jack Reed (D- RI), 202-224-4642
Patrick J. Leahy (D- VT), 202-224-4242
Maria Cantwell (D- WA), 202-224-3441
Patty Murray (D- WA), 202-224-2621
Herb Kohl (D- WI), 202-224-5653
John D. Rockefeller, IV (D- WV), 202-224-6472
James M. Jeffords (I- VT), 202-224-5141
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D- DE) , 202-224-5042
Bill Nelson (D- FL), 202-224-5274
Daniel K. Akaka (D- HI), 202-224-6361
Mary Landrieu (D- LA), 202-224-5824
Byron L. Dorgan (D- ND), 202-224-2551
Olympia Snowe (R- ME), 202-224-5344

The bold are those in most need of some convincing. Senators Biden, Nelson, Akaka, Landrieu, Dorgan, and Snowe have stated they would likely not support a filibuster. Not a firm stance, like Chaffee, Salazar, Pryor, and Conrad, so there is reason to keep calling them.

Georgia has more details over there, so go take a look.
Original post below the fold:

John Kerry has a new anti-Alito petition and will be entering the gathered signatures into the Congressional Record!  Please sign it and share it far and wide.

Dear Friend,

I've studied Judge Alito's legal record. I met with him one-on-one. After all this, I am left with one simple conclusion: if Judge Alito becomes Supreme Court Justice Alito, he will move the Court backwards.

I will vote against Judge Alito's confirmation, and I hope a majority of Senators choose to join us on the Senate floor, voting and speaking out against him. I know we face tough odds, but this is an important fight.

The bottom line is Judge Alito cannot be trusted on the Supreme Court. We can't trust him to stand up to government abuse of power. We can't trust him to ensure all citizens enjoy equal protection under the law. We can't trust him to protect our right to privacy. We can't trust him to defend mainstream American values.

To muster enough Senators to defeat Judge Alito, the American people have to make it clear that they are against his nomination. That's where you come in. By speaking out, you will help us convince other Senators to join our fight.

We can do this! Be sure to also check out SusanHu's great diary about some Senators who need that extra nudge to do the right thing.

"President Bush said Alito was 'imminently qualified.' Then he said 'Unless imminently means not.'" --Conan O'Brien

It's time I came out of the closet. Although many of you know me as judybrowni (or judybrownibot) the annoyingly persistent poster of links to anti-Alito actions, in real life I'm the mild-mannered (well, actually kinda bitchy) editor of a series of joke books (which include The Comedy Thesaurus).

I come from a yellow-dog Democrat family (of at least four generations back), who also believed in the power of humor. As Sigmund Freud wrote in his book, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, "Every joke is a judgement."

And I've even injected my general interest joke books with a progressive slant.

So much so, that I once received a letter from a wingnut with time on his hands, who complained that he'd counted 50 jokes in one of my books with a liberal bias. To which I replied, "If we have to deal with your dangerous clown of a President, the least you can do is take a joke -- or 50 of them."

Now that I've revealed myself, I've decided to combine my avocation with my vocation: every time I hit you up with an action, I'll reward you with jokes.

John A. is certainly right (though I don't agree that all Dems are equally to blame), as is profmarcus, that after much anticipation of a battle over Alito, the remarks emerging from the Democrats  (or I would emphasize some Democrats) represent a profound failure of leadership.  I have, perhaps through a spasm of wishful thinking, been willing to attribute the reports of "glum Democrats" to a SCLM eager to parrot the latest administration line, but it's impossible to ignore the remarks of prominent Dems this weekend.

We Californians have long since learned not to be disappointed with (or at least not surprised by) Dianne Feinstein's shortcomings, her self-important forays into a "reasonableness" that would be best left for fellow self-important blowhards such as Biden and Lieberman.  Still (as Georgia10 noted over at Kos), Feinstein's comments Sunday morning are both pathetic and sadly telling:

Despite the SCLM's faithful parroting of the Republican mantra of inevitable confirmation (never mind that potential "nuclear" crisis involving the Senate breaking its own rules in order to prevent a filibuster), there are positive signs that the Democrats are not, despite the shared wishes of the administration and the media, simply going to roll over.  Harry Reid, for one, has been on note the entire time.

Now President Lawbreaker is begging for a quick confirmation -- nothing to see here folks -- and, what do you know, playing off of poor Mrs. Alito's horrible, life altering trauma this week.  Everything according to plan, right on schedule, but for this annoying detail:

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Friday in the waning minutes of Alito's confirmation hearing that unidentified Democrats will "exercise their rights" to put off next week's scheduled vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats say they won't be ready Tuesday to vote on his nomination since Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has called on party members to hold off making a decision until after a meeting Wednesday.

Wonder what Harry's gonna say at that meeting?

Stay tuned; this ain't over, not by a long shot, despite what we're reading and despite what we're hearing.

-- Stu

Enough with the smug and obscuring bloviation from Republicans,

make your own voice heard on Alito:

Go right to the top, and tell 'em "No" to Alito's confirmation:

Phone, fax, and email addresses for the Judiciary Committee.

Here's another "Veto Alito" tool:

    Write a letter to the editor of your local paper and contact your congress critters -- all with one click.

People for the American Way has collected over 60,000 signatures on their Anti-Alito Petition to send to the Senate, please add yours:

Save the Court Petition

Okay, it's your very last chance to wield your John Hancock against Judge Samuel Alito.

People for the American Way, for one, has collected over 59,000 signatures to be sent to the Senate -- why not sign 'em up to a nice round 60,000?

A penstroke (well, some clicking, actually) and you could be nudging the Senate to filibuster, so c'mon!

The Solomon Amendment is law which allows the government to ban federal funding for schools which do not allow military recuiters on campus. The Supreme Court will hear from law schools throughout the nation this week on whether the federal government an withhold funds from law schools which refuse to allow military recruiters on campus.

Several law schools (mine included) are parties to the lawsuit, Rumsfeld v. FAIR.  The schools, members of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), have a policy against allowing recuirters who discriminate based on sexual orientation to recruit on campus.  The United States military, with its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, is one such recruiter.  The AALS has reluctantly carved out an exception, finding that law schools which allow the military to recruit on-campus do not violate the anti-discrimination policy.

The case is not, as some would think, an anti-discrimination case, but rather a free speech case.  Refusing to allow the military to recuit on -campus because of its discriminatory policy is an act of free speech, of protest really, against that policy.  The Solomon Amendment, the law schools claim, infringes on that speech.  You can read more about the implications of the case here.

The Third Circuit, in considering the case, reasoned that what's good for the boy scouts is good for the law schools:

Imagine a world where doctors are forbidden by law to put their patient's health first -- when that patient is a woman seeking an abortion.

The Bush administration wants this to become a reality for every woman in America and her doctor -- and sooner than you think.

This Wednesday, November 30 the Supreme Court will hear Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood -- a case that could eliminate the requirement that abortion restrictions must include protections for women's health.