Really? No fucking shit!

Better, more informed minds than mine have been blogging about the SCOTUS' Hamdan decision, but this statement in today's WaPo really sums up the last five years for me:

In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate.

Now, I just scanned the Constitution, and nowhere does it differentiate between the powers of a wartime and peacetime president. I also re-learned what Amendment XXIII was - I think you'll be pleasantly rewarded for your curiousity!

For five years, we knew that this "I'm a war president" line of legal logic was a steaming, grass-blade flecked pile of horseshit. I'd wager most of the people who chronicled the events for the last five years knew that the expansive war powers claimed by Bush were unconstitutional. But before saying, "There's nothing in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers or really in our history which supports this interpretation of Article II," - obvious to me, not the most legal of minds - journalists needed the definitive answer - apparently from the Supreme Court, until the Bushies just say, "To hell with them!"

Why did the SCOTUS saying this make it newsworthy when everyone but the ruling cabal already knew that the Bushies were overreaching their power and doing great harm to people at home and around the world?