"Bush tries to kill all the Gitmo lawyers: "We should not forget this central point: The Justice Department is trying to do everything possible to prevent Guantanamo detainees from having any rights at all," writes Yale law professor Jack Balkin at the group legal blog Balkinization. "It wants to get as close as it can to what it the Bush Administration sought before [the Supreme Court decisions in] Rasul and Hamdan — a law-free zone. But the more the Justice Department tries to eliminate procedural protections and basic elements of fairness for the detainees, the more it undermines its argument that the detainees have a remedy that is just as good as habeas." Balkin continues:
The Bush Administration wants what it has always wanted — a legal black hole, a place where it can seize any non-citizen, declare them an enemy of the state and hold them without any means of redress. It wants, in other words, the very absence of law.
Although we have been momentarily distracted by the scandals over Alberto Gonzales, we should remember that the Administration's policies on detention and interrogation — all devised and approved by Justice Department lawyers — are the real reason why this Administration, and this Justice Department, have been such a disgrace to our country and to our traditions of government."

NYT, 4-27-07