Gitmo ruling weakens security

Inter Lake editorial

Those who view the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as a blemish on mankind won a major victory Thursday with the Supreme Court ruling that detainees have a right to pursue habeas corpus challenges in American courts.

It was billed as a "stunning blow to the Bush administration" but in reality it is a stunning blow to the country.

Predictably, leftist human rights activists will now smugly declare in absolute terms that Gitmo always has been an unconstitutional enterprise. Problem is, it was a 5-4 decision, with dissenting justices making powerful arguments about the folly of the majority, so one thing that the decision can't be called is absolute.

It is disturbing how this ruling applies to unlawful combatants, the lowest of the low - murdering terrorists who in more than 30 cases have returned to jihadist pursuits after being released from Guantanamo Bay.

We can only wonder how the ruling may ultimately apply to lawful, uniformed combatants who may be captured in future wars. Will America's court system and constitutional protections be extended to hundreds or thousands of true POWs?

Justice Antonin Scalia summed it up perfectly: "The Nation will live to regret what the court has done today. I dissent."

Even those longtime Montanans used to the vagaries of our weather were scratching their heads during Tuesday's onslaught of snow.

That is, they were scratching their heads when they weren't knocking the snow off of valuable trees, frantically trying to cover up newly planted tomatoes, delicately brushing slush off of geraniums or putting snow tires back on their vehicles.

Some people used the occasion constructively and sent snow photos to relatives back East suffering through 90-degree-plus weather.

In short, the June snowstorm created consternation for many people as they watched what had been forecast as showers turn into an all-day assault by heavy, wet snow.

Those of use who have lived in the Flathead for a while know, of course, that June snows are not all that unusual. But that didn't make it much easier to accept the latest distress inflicted on all of us during a spring of exceptionally foul and unattractive weather.

The only bright note in the June surprise is that damage to foliage was apparently less extensive than from previous late-spring snowstorms.

And remember that sometime summer will come.