In other words, Scalia is the leftwinger in this decision ( and completely right) , and Thomas is a spacecadet.
Charles
^^^
Yoshie Furuhashi
* .
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.