Belated applause for Will Power
Posted by Tennessee Cottonmouth at 6/23/2008 12:07 AM and is filed under George Will,Bob Barr,republican,Libertarian,McCain 
Has George Will (yes, that George Will) officially joined the expanding ranks of conservatives and tiny-l libertarian Republicans growing progressively skeptical about John McCain's dedication to the spirit and letter of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights?
Without using one archaic word, and his self-indulgent propensity for insouciant, inconsequential meandering held mostly in check, Will last week ridiculed McCain's shrill denunciation of the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 ruling that Gitmo prisoners are entitled to petition the United States government for habeas corpus hearings.
"One of the worst decisions in the history of the country!" McCain preposterously bellowed, then launched predictably into the standard warmed-over GOP boilerplate against "unaccountable judges" subverting the omnipotent imperial presidency and so forth.
Taken aback by the McCain's "extravagant condemnation" and off-kilter sense of historical proportion (or that of whatever "clever ignoramus" is calling the senile old trouser trumpet's campaign stump tunes), Will queries:
Without using one archaic word, and his self-indulgent propensity for insouciant, inconsequential meandering held mostly in check, Will last week ridiculed McCain's shrill denunciation of the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 ruling that Gitmo prisoners are entitled to petition the United States government for habeas corpus hearings.
"One of the worst decisions in the history of the country!" McCain preposterously bellowed, then launched predictably into the standard warmed-over GOP boilerplate against "unaccountable judges" subverting the omnipotent imperial presidency and so forth.
Taken aback by the McCain's "extravagant condemnation" and off-kilter sense of historical proportion (or that of whatever "clever ignoramus" is calling the senile old trouser trumpet's campaign stump tunes), Will queries:
Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?
Will also pointed out for those who haven't been paying attention that McCain's latest anti-constitutional position isn't at all inconsistent with others he's staked out.McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold law that abridges the right of free political speech, has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, "quote 'First Amendment rights.' " Now he dismissively speaks of "so-called, quote 'habeas corpus suits.' " He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as "the great writ of liberty."
The job of reminding McCain that he still lives in an ostensibly constitutional republic, and that most here don't require a Hanoi Hilton get-away to appreciate freedom from tyranny, falls squarely on the shoulders of Bob Barr. Indeed, as Will offered in an April Newsweek column, a "condign punishment" for the Arizona Senator's authoritarian sins would be if Barr and the Libertarians, whose ballot-access efforts have been "handicapped by John McCain's handiwork," were to vanquish his will to unconstrained power in November. 
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