Barack Obama now has a webpage, Fight the Smears, debunking right wing smears concerning him and Michelle. He lists the smears, who is promoting them and details why they are false.

TalkLeft has banned discussion of the smears, particularly the one claiming there is a tape of Michelle using racially charged words, because there has not been a shred of credible reporting to back up its existence. There still isn't. But now that Obama has brought it into the open, our ban is pointless.

So, here's a place to discuss his new website debunking the false assertions about him and Michelle. One caveat: Personal insults against the Obamas or insinuations that the debunked items are true will not be allowed. In other words, you can't perpetuate the falsities. [More...]

Finally, some good news from Texas.

District Attorney Craig Watkins is using a $453,900 grant from the New York-based Justice, Equality, Human Dignity and Tolerance Foundation to pay for post-conviction DNA testing. With the help of law students, Watkins' office is reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates, including requests denied under the previous district attorney. The grant also requires Dallas County commissioners to fund the DA's office for two additional years.

The grant also funds three positions at the Innocence Project of Texas. Money well spent.

This attempt to free wrongly convicted people comes at a time when there is a proliferation of cases overturned by new DNA evidence nationwide. In Texas since 2001, DNA testing has cleared 33 people who spent a combined 427 years in prison.

As we have come to expect, John McCain's response to today's decision upholding habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees was, compared to Barack Obama's response, considerably less sensitive to our nation's constitutional values.

"These are unlawful combatants, they are not American citizens and I think we should pay attention to Justice Roberts' opinion in this decision," McCain said, referring to the chief justice's dissent.

McCain said he hadn't read the decision. Presumably, he hadn't read the Chief Justice's dissent, either. McCain's remarks confirm his blind faith in Chief Justice Roberts. That should tell you something about the kind of judge he'll nominate to the Court if he's elected in November.

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Today's Supreme Court decision ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values. The Court's decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain. This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy.

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A 2005 Daily Kos post by Barack Obama chiding people like me for being very hard on Democrats who voted for John Roberts is making the rounds again and it is worth revisiting today in light of the 5-4 vote in today's Gitmo/habeas corpus decision. Obama wrote:

Two decades after being convicted of murder in Tennessee and sentenced to death, after losing an appeal, losing a habeas proceeding, and losing an appeal from the denial of his habeas petition, Paul House persuaded the Supreme Court that new DNA testing established his probable innocence. The Court therefore applied the "actual innocence" exception to the rule that a habeas proceeding must be commenced within a year after the state proceedings become final -- much to the dismay of the Tennessee prosecutors who can't admit they sent the wrong man to death row.

That might have been a happy ending, but the story isn't over. Two years later, House is still behind bars "while a prosecutor methodically battles every effort from the courts to have him retried." [More...]

Thanks to Big Tent Democrat and TChris for their posts today -- I'm at work and won't be writing until tonight.

Here's an open thread for those of you with other topics on your mind. Please, as always, keep it civil.

More reaction to the Gitmo detainee decision (pdf):

• National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
• ACLU
• Center for Constitutional Rights
• Human Rights First

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Via Somerby, Nancy Giles, who claims to be a Democratic political strategist (NOTE: Apparently not. Just a random Democrat. Which begs the question, why is she on TV?):

ABRAMS (6/11/08): Well, let me ask you this. Nancy, if the numbers show—if it’s close by the time he has to make the decision, and the numbers show in the polls that Hillary could make the difference, would that make the difference to you?

GILES: No. [. . .] No, it’s not worth losing over because I don’t think he’ll lose...I think it would be a real liability. But his whole campaign is new—change, not old politics. And Hillary—look, if he gets Hillary as his VP, he’s got to hire somebody to be the official presidential taster because you don’t know what`s going to be in your food. You don’t know what could happen. I literally feel that way.

(Emphasis supplied.) She literally feels that way. Oy. What synonyms can be used for the words disgusting and idiotic? Because I am not allowed to name call at Talk Left.

Speaking for me only

Three passages from the majority opinion's conclusion in Boumediene are worth your time (so is the rest of the opinion, but weighing in at 70 pages, it takes some time to digest):

Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives. ...

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In my previous writings on the Boumediene constitutional habeas corpus cases, I argued that the DC district court and the DC Circuit court misread the important Eisentrager precedent.

MSNBC just flashed the report that in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court just ruled that the detainees in Guantanamo have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. Apparently, the Supreme Court agreed with me and disagreed with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

AP:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." . . . In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."

More to come when I read the opinion . I want to compare it to my prior analysis. [More...]