Seventeenth of 25 excerpts from The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer:
In a stunning rebuke to Bush and Cheney's grandiose position on executive power, on June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the lawyers for the Guantánamo detainees in two separate landmark cases. . . .
Inside the White House, the Supreme Court's rulings utterly stunned Addington. A fellow administration lawyer noted that while Addington had a prodigious command of relevant case law, he had a completely tin ear when it came to understanding the politics of the Supreme Court, or, for that matter, politics in general. For more than a year, Ted Olson, the Solicitor General, along with some of the White House lawyers, had been arguing with Addington, in fruitless attempts to convince him to soften some of the hard edges of his extreme legal positions in order to buy some support from Congress and the Courts. The moderates in the administration argued that by building more political consensus, the administration could win more legitimacy for its policies. Addington accused them of being defeatist and unnecessarily yielding the president's powers.
Copyright 2008 by Jane Mayer. All Rights Reserved
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