Supreme Court rejects hearing on military detention case

[struggle4progress]

27. I do not call the plaintiffs rightwing crackpots: I say that their case unwisely advanced

a rightwing crackpot view of the law

Of course, you are correct that the rightwing loves indefinite detention; and it is further true that rightwing authoritarians advance the view that the President has the authority to indefinitely detain anyone for any reason -- an abominable view which I expect everyone here finds thoroughly abhorrent

Sadly, and in the most moronic fashion, the plaintiffs in Hedges v Obama themselves rushed into court, arguing that this rightwing crackpot view of the law WAS (in fact) the law. What an idiotic courting of catastrophe that was! Suppose the court had upheld their statement of the law, saying Yes, the President has the authority to indefinitely detain anyone for any reason? What then? You say, The plaintiffs are seeking freedom from the threat of arbitrary indefinite detention, and perhaps in their minds that was their intent, but had their theory of the law prevailed, it would have had exactly the opposite effect from what you claim

Fortunately, the court was wiser than the plaintiffs and declined to find that the law was as the plaintiffs stated. The court confined itself here to the issue raised by the plaintiffs (namely, the meaning of the NDAA text) here, examined the text and the legislative history, and then properly found that the NDAA language simply meant that the NDAA did not affect in any way the existing law with regard to indefinite detention of US citizens, law resident aliens, or persons arrested/captured inside the US. The court was not required to sort out, and so did not attempt to sort out, the intricacies of the law in all its details