Ixnay on the orldway opinionay

There is an area of my backyard, in the rear corner, between the oleander and the roses, that Spooney and I refer to as Area 51, otherwise known as dog shit central. The dogs are trained to do their business there so that the remainder of the yard can be enjoyed, landmine-free. This mostly works pretty well.

My neighbor has a lemon tree along our shared rear wall, and the ripe lemons frequently drop on our side, into Area 51. Spooney and I pick up these lemons, wash them very well, and use them in a variety of beverages. We refer to them as “poop lemons,” and their presence has inspired an oft-repeated saying in our house:

When life gives you poop lemons, make poop lemonade.

It is therefore in the spirit of poop lemonade that I give our frequently full o’ shit Supreme Court all props for their 5-4 ruling yesterday that, when it comes to due process at least, words…um…well, actually mean things.

Specifically, that you can’t just invent a new name for a group of people (enemy combatant), and declare that all the legal/constitutional protections that they possessed under their old names (such as “prisoner of war,” or “citizen of another country not involved in any conflict,” or “innocent dude with Arab last name,”) are null and void.

Justice Kennedy, reminding everyone that he can still swing both ways, wrote in the majority opinion that “the Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply.” Also that “the political branches [do not] have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.”

Oh, SCOTUS snap!

And perhaps most meaningfully, he writes that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

Well said. I might quibble with the “extraordinary times” bit, although I understand he’s referring to 9/11 and its aftermath, and not the last 4 years or so, which I would say are extraordinary only in that they are characterized by a remarkably willful ignorance, and an unprecedented obsession with prevailing politically, no matter the cost to the country.

Official SCOTUS dickweed Scalia crabbed for the minority that the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

I can only hope that he’s one of them.

Barack Obama commented that the decision was “an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law.”

Which begs the question: do Americans even give a shit?

It’s an important question in this election year, especially since many Democrats are insisting that one of the most important reasons we should vote for Obama is because it will signal the world that we are, you know, kinda sorry for being such assholes for the last seven years.

I wish those Democrats would shut the fuck up.

Look, you’re never going to win the race by pointing out that the rest of the world favors the Democrat. If anything, that would make him less likely to win amongst a certain contrarian, xenophobic, love-it-or-leave-it contingent of American voters. And those voters comprise about…um…let’s see…multiple by 6...carry the 1….I’m going to say 99.7 – 99.8 percent of all American voters.

Or maybe it just seems that way. I mean, if still president Bush has taught us anything, it's that revilement and derision abroad makes you a fucking superhero in America. At least until gas prices go so high that America has to start selling their SUVs.

And the companies that made them.