Al Gonzales - take your habe and shove it

Mark Kleiman brings up these remarks by USAG Gonzales that I've been meaning to address.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

...Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

And with that narrow reading, Al "Mr. Torture" Gonzales stomps the last breath out of the body of the single most important legal precept that holds our form of government together. Under that logic, the president has the sole authority to determine any individual's right to due process. As Kleiman rightfully points out:

Let's call a spade a spade: the power the Attorney General claims on behalf of the President is nothing less than tyrannical power. If no one is safe from arbitrary arrest, detention, and maltreatment, then each of us enjoys his liberty only at the President's sufferance.

I guess on the plus side, if the President's contention that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms is true, we don't have anything to worry about anymore since that pretty much destroys any freedoms we had left since this administration started systematically shredding our Bill of Rights.