Adventures in the law

My friend Candace (she’s interviewed here) reports that the Supreme Court of the United States has accepted her original petition for habeas corpus on behalf of her client Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi; the petition itself may be found here. Candace was nice enough to let me make some editorial suggestions with respect to this petition, some of which actually made it in there; hence, I take more than a rooting interest in this particular case.
We’ve been in legal never-never land for so long that it’s often hard to remember those naiive days when many of us actually believed that the President didn’t have the ability to lock any of us up solely at his whim, potentially forever… in short, that we were a country ruled by law rather than by men. But 9-11 changed everything, including, evidently, our tolerance for dictatorship.
This is the front-line in the war for this country’s soul, boys and girls, not to mention what kind of a country we hand over to our children. The national regret we will feel some 20 or 30 years from now (as was the case with respect to Japanese internment) just ain’t gonna do it… this is up to us… right here, and right now; while I’m optimistic that the Supreme Court will do the right thing for Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, the thing is… Candace’s client is deathly ill, and we can only hope that this man, whom the government’s own “combatant status review tribunal” once cleared of any involvement in terrorism or action against the United States whatsoever, only to receive a “do-over” tribunal (and he would have had another and another, until eventually the correct answer of guilty was reached)… held in abysmal conditions for five years, deliberately not treated for life threatening liver disease by the military… manages to live to see his rights vindicated.
It’s not much, but it’s all we got…
Update: Candace reports that the government has been ordered to respond to the petition on 31 October… stay tuned…