The only Senator to speak about the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld today was Dick Durbin (D-IL.) Here is his statement and a snippet:

Today, the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration and for James Madison and for the rule of law. Here is what Justice Anthony Kennedy said: "Concentration of power (in the executive branch) puts personal liberty in peril of arbitrary action by officials, an incursion the Constitution's three-part system is designed to avoid."

This is a historic decision -- a decision that reminds this President and every President to come that they must answer first to the Constitution of the United States. It says to President Bush and all of those who promulgated these policies that they must answer to our Constitution.

Let's hope our Imperial President takes note.

Update: The New York Times calls the decision "the most significant rebuff to date to President Bush. In a nutshell,

Justice Stevens declared flatly that "the military commission at issue lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedure violate" both the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the American military's legal system, and the Third Geneva Convention.The majority opinion rejected the administration's claims that the tribunals were justified both by President Bush's inherent powers as commander in chief and by the resolution passed by Congress authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11. There is nothing in the resolution's legislative history "even hinting" that such an expansion of the president's powers was considered, he wrote.

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The Supreme Court has ruled Bush's military tribunals at Guantanmo are illegal. The opinion is here (pdf).

The ruling, a strong rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court's liberal members in most of the ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan. Thursday's ruling overturned that decision.

This is just crazy. A New Orleans judge sentenced three people who looted liquor from a grocery store after Hurrican Katrina to 15 years in prison, saying he wanted to send a message.

They were convicted of attempting to leave the grocery with 27 bottles of liquor and wine, six cases of beer and one case of wine coolers, six days after Katrina made landfall. Little, McGowen and Pearson each testified that they were not looting, but they offered conflicting accounts of matters such as who drove to the store.

The looting law under which they were convicted had been in effect for two weeks. Compare their sentence to the year these men got for bribing a federal official in the aftermath of Katrina.

This could be the best news I've read all day. Indonesia is about to agree to a prisoner exchange treaty with Australia that might allow Schapelle Corby to finish serving her 20 year jail sentence for importing 9 pounds of marijuana into Bali, a crime she denied committing, in her native Australia. Last May, Bali said a transfer would not be considered.

It's not a "go" yet. First, the transfer treaty would have to be retroactive and cover past offenses. It's not clear that it will. Second, Schapelle might prefer to do her time in Bali.

This is a classic, and reading the news about the possible transfer of Schappelle Corby and some of the Bali 9 heroin smugglers from the hellhole of Kerobokan prison in Bali to one in Australia, it just popped into my mind.

So baby, here's your ticket, put the suitcase in your hand
Here's a little money now, do it just the way we planned
You be cool for twenty hours and I'll pay you twenty grand

....It's a losing proposition, But one you can't refuse
It's the politics of contraband, It's the smuggler's blues

By the way, the blond in the video is Glenn Frey's ex-wife, Janie Beggs, a really cool lady.

Larger video version here.

As the Administration puts out more spin on detainee suicides, the reality is that these suicides are acts of despair, not acts of war.

Many of these men, uncharged of any crime, have reported that they've been told that they will never get out. Aziz does not know if he will survive what he calls this "compulsory, slow execution."

Still, many detainees also believe that there is some moral impulse that will push the American people to action. They thought that starving themselves will make people pay attention. They thought that telling the humiliating and painful stories of torture or abuse will outrage us. Perhaps now they think that their dying will make us finally acknowledge what our country is doing. Instead, we allow ourselves to be told that these deaths were an act of war and not even give it a second thought.

In the mail today: Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies, lead counsel in Rasul v. Bush in which the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees are entitled to judicial review.

Scotus Blog reports the Supreme Court did not issue a decison in the Hamdan case today. But, it issued two decisions unfavorable to criminal defendants.

In a ruling written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., the Court concluded that states may bar foreign nationals from raising the issue of their treaty rights to talk with a consular officer , if they did not raise that issue at trial. The Court majority said that the outcome was dictated by the Court's 1998 summary decision in Breard v. Greene. The Court did not resolve the issue of whether individuals could sue to enforce the consular rights treaty, the Vienna
Convention.

In a 5-3 ruling, the Court decided that prison officials may deny newspapers, magazines and photographs to their most dangerous inmates. The plurality opinion by Justice Stephen G. Breyer upheld such a ban. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., took no part. He had dissented when the Third Circuit struck down the ban.

President Bush rabel-rouses and calls the actions of the New York Times, in writing about the secret Operation Swift program that used national security letters to obtain records relate to international banking transactions, "disgraceful." Conservatives are rallying to his cry.

Who's sticking up for the Times?

Froomkim is a must read.

As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances. How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won't say. In fact, it can't say. By contrast, it does matter to us.

This column has documented, again and again , that when faced with a potentially damaging political problem, White House strategist Karl Rove's response is not to defend, but to attack.

Arianna who has hardly been a pal to the Times this year comes out strongly in its camp:

New details on Rush and ViagraGate:

The Florida Sun-Sentinel reports:

Florida civil rules governing doctors and pharmacists require that the true patient's name and address are on the label, according to two attorneys and a Florida Medical Association spokeswoman.

Doing otherwise "is technically a violation of dispensing and prescribing by the doctor," said Allen R. Grossman, a Tallahassee attorney who defends physicians in disciplinary cases. Grossman formerly was general counsel to the Florida Board of Medicine, which licenses and oversees doctors.

Other Florida experts, including those involved with professional and medical boards weigh in:

This is actually one of my favorite Stone's songs--from Sticky Fingers -- and the only one I can play on the guitar and sing at the same time. The TL kid and I actually do a decent job of dual-guitaring it together.

But tonight, it reminds me of Rush. Dead Flowers, a classic of Mick and Keith together -- with a country motif.

Well when you're sitting there, in your silk upolstered chair
Talking to some rich folk that you know
I hope you don't see me in my ragged company
You know I could never be alone
Take me down, little Susie, take me down...

And we won't forget to put roses on your grave.

Larger video version here.

Listen to the second verse, and ask yourself, what's the difference between x number of oxycontin a day and a needle and a spoon? Answer: In America, those who can only afford the latter go to jail.

The Dukester commenters on TalkLeft cannot stop from discussing every detail and nuance of the case. For every post I write, even on days when there's no news, they post 200 to 500 comments.

TalkLeft's webmaster Mike Ditto has made them a gift -- a TL duke blog just for them.

So now when you want news and opinion on duke, just go here. It has every entry since April 2 and all of your comments, with links to each. New Duke posts will also show up on Talkleft's main page, but now those who come here just for Duke can bypass the more important issues of the day and duke it out to their heart's content.

For the rest of you that could care less about the Duke case, I'm still going to make a new entry every time the Duke comments on the latest entry top 250 or so, so just scroll on by when you see the graphic.

A huge thanks to Mike. And yes, this is another Duke open thread.

Congress is voting tomorrow on an amendment, introduced by U.S. Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), to bar the U.S. Justice Department -- which includes the DEA -- from spending taxpayer money on raiding, arresting, and prosecuting patients who are using medical marijuana in the 11 states where it's legal.

Action Alert time: Go here and let your Congressperson know how you want them to vote.

If you agree that sick and suffering patients should not have to live in fear of armed federal agents breaking down their doors, this is your chance to do something about it. The bipartisan Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment would prohibit the U.S. Department of Justice -- which includes the DEA -- from spending taxpayer money to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana patients in the 11 states where medical marijuana is legal.

Via NORML:

Eighty percent of the American public supports the physician-supervised use of cannabis as a medicine, and they do not wish to see their tax dollars wasted by those in Congress who would target the sick and dying in their overzealous war on drugs. Last year, 161 members of Congress voted in favor of Hinchey-Rohrabacher, but we need 57 more members to join with them to stop Washington's war on patients.