Lost in the news shuffle of Iraqi "freedom" yesterday was the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court finally showed it had had enough of the Bush Administration's imperial edicts.

The SC's complicated holdings in the three cases involving detainees from the alleged battle against terrorism may not result in any prisoners going free, but it did spell out constitutional law - one letter at a time so even Bush might be able to understand - that we do have a tradition in this country about justice.

In effect, the rulings were nearly a unanimous repudiation of the Bush Administration's sweeping claims over those captives. The court roundly rejected Bush's assertion that in time of war he can order the potentially indefinite detention of anyone. If you want to be really stunned, read Antonin Scalia's opinion:

"The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive."

Scalia! I never would have believed it.

So, Dubya, you can't have your own personal Bastille, your own personal Gulag Guantanamo. Lucky for Stalin he didn't have a Supreme Court. I'm sure SS Stormtroopermeister John Ashcroft is wringing his hands today and muttering oaths against "activist" judges like Scalia.

Given that Bush and his neo-cons have claimed its war on terrorism might stretch over generations, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (oops, another conservative weights into the battle) wrote that the indefinite detention could actually make the dententions life sentences. And that, she said, is too long to do without the basics of due process.

The court took courage in addressing some very key post-9/11 issues. How can strength be balanced with liberty? Or, essentially, what are the limits on a president's power in a crisis? As Justice David Souter wrote:

"The defining characteristic of American constitutional government is its constant tension between security and liberty."

And as O'Connor wrote:

"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."

That of course was in regard to those few "terrorists" captured who were U.S. citizens, but the meat is still there.

And you have to love the liberal wing's (Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer) quote:

"At stake in this case (Padilla's) is nothing less than the essense of a free society. Unconstrained Executive detention for the purpose of investigating and preventing subversive activity is the hallmark of the Star Chamber."

The court did leave some loopholes, and I suspect John Ashcroft and his bully boys are working on getting around them right now. Once a Nazi, always a Nazi.