[RickSp]

Interesting commentary on the irresponsilbity and hypocrisy of Congress when it passes bills that the Congressmen know is unconstitutional and that the the Congressmen expect to be overturend by the Supreme Court.

Pass the Buck - When Congress passes unconstitutional laws

The language of addiction has become the catchall excuse for bad personal behavior of every sort, but it's worth invoking in one more context: the constitutional one. Please do forgive the United States Congress its atrocious behavior last week. It's not a bad institution, per se. It's merely addicted to judicial review. Last week, we watched as several senators voted for a bill redefining the treatment, detention, and trials of enemy combatants, even as they expressed doubts as to its constitutionality. The bill setting up military tribunals for enemy combatants, among other constitutional infirmities, contains a provision stripping courts of their power to review the constitutionality of the detentions. This provision, which suspends the writ of habeas corpus for current and future detainees, was contested by a number of senators, but the amendment that sought to excise it from the final bill failed by a vote of 51-49. Before that amendment was rejected, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, announced, "I'm not going to support a bill that's blatantly unconstitutional ... that suspends a right that goes back to [the Magna Carta in] 1215." He added, "I'd be willing, in the interest of party loyalty, to turn the clock back 500 years, but 800 years goes too far." Specter's justification for then voting for a bill he deemed unconstitutional? "Congress could have done it right and didn't, but the next line of defense is the court, and I think the court will clean it up." There is some irony in this congressional willingness to see the courts as some kind of constitutional chambermaid—as an entity that exists to clean up after Congress smashes up the room. It is especially ironic when it's articulated by members of Congress who like to invoke judicial restraint as a constitutional value. But it is beyond ironic, and approaching parody, when Congress asks the court to clean up a bill it knows to be unconstitutional, when the bill itself includes a court-stripping provision. Criticizing the court for overturning the laws passed by Congress—as Specter did repeatedly during the John Roberts and Samuel Alito hearings—is fair, so long as one is willing to defend one's own interpretation of the Constitution when one gets a chance to assert it. But simultaneously crying "judicial activism" as you rely on the courts for political cover when you're too timid to defy the electorate—or your president—is hypocritical.