> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Well, many movements exist, but they are neither massive nor
> militant.
> > And the power elite know this. Neither Republicans nor
> Democrats seem
> > in fear of not being reelected. With the exception of Social
> Security,
> > the Right has pretty much gotten all it has wanted -- from wars,
> tax
> > cuts, social program cuts, to immigration.
>
> I'm kind of surprised to hear Yoshie, of all people, say this.
>
> The social movements out there ARE massive and they can be
> militant. They aren't very visible right now, but there is lots of
> militancy bubbling under the surface. A few months ago, a bunch of
> students at a high school in California got new that military
> recruiters would be in the cafeteria of the high school the next
> day. The students used Myspace and phone calls to organize a
> protest. The recruiters were met by 300 angry students who
> physically assaulted the recruiters and kicked them out of the school.
>
> That's just one random high school.
>
> The power elite is scared shitless of the popular movements.
Like you, I disagree with people who say that the anti-war movement doesn't exist at all or has had no impact on the thinking of Americans. Opposition to the Iraq war is far more widely spread -- in terms of both passive sentiment and active involvement -- than at a comparable point in any earlier war, and that reflects invisible grassroots work. But I doubt that the power elite are "scared shitless." If they were, wouldn't they yield at least on _some_ issue -- tax cuts, social program cuts, workers' pension protection, civil liberties, immigration, _something, anything_?
John Roberts may be like Sandra Day O'Connor, but Samuel Alito may be more like Clarence Thomas than like Antonin Scalia or William Rehnquist on the question of presidential power. If movements were actually powerful, even Bush would have come up with a more moderate nominee than Alito, but he thinks that he can get away with Alito, and he will.
Cf.
<blockquote>Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .
The Court's opinions
Though no single opinion of the Court commanded a majority, eight of the nine justices of the Court agreed that the Executive Branch does not have the power to hold indefinitely a U.S. citizen without basic due process protections enforceable through judicial review.
Justice O'Connor wrote a plurality opinion representing the Court's judgment, which was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Breyer and Kennedy. O'Connor wrote that although Congress had expressly authorized the detention of unlawful combatants in its Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9/11, due process required that Hamdi have a meaningful opportunity to challenge his detention. This required notice of the charges and an opportunity to be heard, though due to the burden upon the Executive of ongoing military conflict, normal procedural protections such as placing the burden of proof on the government or the ban on hearsay need not apply. O'Connor did not write at length on Hamdi's right to an attorney, because by the time the Court rendered its decision, Hamdi had already been granted access to one. However, O'Connor did write that Hamdi "unquestionably has the right to access to counsel in connection with the proceedings on remand." The plurality held that judges need not be involved in reviewing these cases, rather only an inpartial decision maker was required.
Justice David Souter, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concurred with the plurality's judgment that due process protections must be available for Hamdi to challenge his status and detention, providing a majority for that part of the ruling. However, they dissented from the plurality's ruling that AUMF established Congressional authorization for the detention of unlawful combatants.
Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, went the farthest in restricting the Executive power of detention. Scalia asserted that based on historical precedent, the government had only two options to detain Hamdi: either Congress must suspend the right to habeas corpus (a power provided for under the Constitution only in times of "insurrection" or "rebellion"), which hadn't happened; or Hamdi must be tried under normal criminal law. Scalia wrote that the plurality, though well meaning, had no basis in law for trying to establish new procedures that would be applicable in a challenge to Hamdi's detention—it was only the job of the Court to declare it unconstitutional and order his release or proper arrest, rather than to invent an acceptable process for detention.
Justice Clarence Thomas was the only justice who sided entirely with the government and the Fourth Circuit's ruling, based on his view of the important security interests at stake and the President's broad war-making powers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_v._Rumsfeld></blockquote>
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>