Mercy From The Executioner?

According to this Yahoo News story, it seems that President Brainless has picked an interesting time to decide that this country is, after all, a member of a community of nations that should abide by international agreements and laws.

There’s a lot going on here, so I’ll try to break it down as much as I can.

Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican immigrant, was convicted of raping and murdering two adolescent girls and sentenced to death. However, Dubya is trying to stay his execution and review his case as well as the convictions of 50 other Mexican nationals because they were not offered access to Mexican consular officials after their arrests. This is out of deference to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (where, one day God willing, he will stand as a defendant along with Deadeye Dick Cheney and Rummy as accused war criminals). And The Supremes are scheduled to hear the case today.

And as writer Massimo Calabresi notes trenchantly here…

The raucous right is in an uproar, stunned that their one-time hero, George W. Bush, is going against them on a case that combines three of the issues closest to their heart: immigration, the death penalty and international sovereignty. But the real lesson the right wing should take from the case is that the Presidential power they so jealously defend when it is used against foreign nationals looks a lot less attractive when it's applied at home.

Indeed (and as you can read here, the Texas court has already told Bush to kiss off on this, with respect of course).

Here is more from the Yahoo story…

"It's a jujitsu move of acceding to the International Court of Justice ruling, but aggressively pursuing presidential powers at the same time," says Thomas Goldstein, who heads the Supreme Court practice of the Washington law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld LLP. "The idea is that you can essentially write the states a note and tell them what to do. It's a very novel assertion of presidential powers."

If Bush ends up winning this round, with the Supremes deciding to comply and favoring expanded presidential power over the desired Repug preference of leaving matters of law such as this to the localities of jurisdiction, then I’d like to see all of the Democratic candidates for the party nomination come out and make the case that what could be deemed as international interference ended up tilting our system of checks and balances ever more precariously towards the executive branch.

And that would be funny in a way despite the deadly serious circumstances, since it would ensconce the Democrats as “the party of states rights” once and for all.