Gonzales and Habeas

A legal reader writes:

The Gonzales statements on habeas during that hearing started me on a slow burn. On one level, he is engaged in Dickensian lawyering. He didn't say a thing that couldn't be backed up. Indeed, on a very technical level, looking at every word he uttered, his statements about the Rasul case (this is the case they talk about without naming) are arguably more accurate than Specter's - the technical holding, from a stare decisis perspective - does not rest on constitutional norms. 

But go back and look at Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address: he says very clearly that habeas is one of the basic premises of our entire system of government; that it's a fundamental right that shores up all the others. Elsewhere he identifies habeas as one of the "four pillars" of our constitutional system. You're not going to convince me that the Founding Fathers didn't view habeas as "grandfathered" into the US system - that's simply obvious. So why are we now being subjected to this Stalinist historical revisionism? Why does the Attorney General of the United States make comments like this in such a public forum? He would only make them because he needs them for cover, i.e., because he has advocated and implemented a consistent policy of violating habeas corpus rights that rests on each of these niggling distinctions. Which is why one should stop scrutinizing the footnotes of law review articles and be worried.

This also reveals a fundamental Gonzales deceit. We shouldn't forget that back in the first weeks after 9/11 when concerns were being raised about tactics, he held up habeas corpus very prominently.  Don't worry about overreaching, he said, anything we do will be subject to habeas corpus challenge. From his Nov. 30, 2001 op ed in the NYT:

"anyone arrested, detained or tried in the United States by a military commission will be able to challenge the lawfulness of the commission's jurisdiction through a habeas corpus proceeding in a federal court." 

He repeated this in a series of interviews and public appearances, always the same thing: don't worry, habeas will provide the cure. (Of course, the weasels over at DOJ will say this applies to the empty set, they will say no one is "arrested, detained or tried in the United States," since all those proceedings will be in Cuba!)

Gonzales is a liar and a torture-apologist. He is also attorney-general.