Houston Democrats

The Bush administration isn't stopping there, though.

They have threatened to veto legislation advanced by liberals like John McCain to establish groundrules for investigating and preventing the kinds of detainee abuse that has happened at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

And now the tie-in to Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts (from the transcript of yesterday's Democracy Now radio program):

Roberts was also part of a three-judge panel that handed Bush an important victory the week before Bush announced Roberts nomination to the bench. In fact, the day before the ruling was issued, President Bush interviewed Roberts at the White House. The next day, the court released their ruling that the military tribunals of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could proceed. The decision also found that Bush could deny terrorism captives prisoner-of-war status as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Yale University, where we are joined by Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor for The Nation magazine and a national correspondent for Salon.com. He also teaches journalism at Yale. His latest article is at The Nation online and is titled "The Stakes In Roberts's Nomination." Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bruce Shapiro.

BRUCE SHAPIRO: Well, the case involves a man named Hamdan, who was allegedly Osama bin Laden's driver. He is one of the detainees at Guantanamo, captured on the field in Afghanistan, who the military has designated, the Pentagon has designated, for military tribunals, trials without benefit of review of court. A lower federal court had thrown these tribunals out, issued an injunction against them, saying that they violated the Geneva Convention and were -- and represented an illegitimate extension of presidential authority.

Well, one day after being interviewed by President Bush, a Federal Appeals panel, three judges of which Judge Roberts was a member, handed down a unanimous decision -- all three judges, by the way, Reagan-Bush appointees -- permitting the tribunals to go forward, reinstating them, and in particular, invalidating those Geneva Convention protections, and saying, in fact, that the courts had no business reviewing this question of Geneva Convention status, that it was purely a matter for the Executive Branch.

Torture? Cover-up? Complicity on both from the future Supreme Court Justice?

Activist judges?

Meanwhile, some Democrats are having discussions about things like this.