The prodigal Jesse at Pandagon makes this pretty simple (ellipsis mine to reduce TEH STOOPID; read the whole thing if you want more Andrew McCarthyism):

The National Review has been going predictably apeshit over the upholding of habeas corpus since the Supreme Court narrowly affirmed that the Constitution isn’t made of Charmin, but this bit by Andrew McCarthy makes me giggle:

It is difficult to single out the most outrageous aspect of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s cataclysmic Boumediene ruling last Thursday: The reckless vesting of Constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans […]

How dare the Supreme Court ask us to do something and then say it’s not good enough?

I do appreciate the idea that the Constitutional considerations embodied in the court’s first request for a better law somehow fly out the window because Congress responds to the request. The MC Pee Pants Torture and Detainment Act of 2008 isn’t safe? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

“The reckless vesting of Constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans.” That, by the way, is a “bloody jihad” that neither McCarthy nor the entire United States government can prove, and he’s wetting his pants because he doesn’t want to have to prove it. Locking up TEH MOOSLIMOFASCISTS! for life because some guy in Afghanistan we never met is, somehow, good enough for him. Fortunately, that’s not good enough for the Constitution.

To the pea-brained bed-wetters out there ready to throw the Constitution away over this decision (yeah, like you weren’t ready before it, too): Look, this is pretty simple. You can’t lock someone up without proving under the law why they need to be locked up. It’s that simple. It’s the same principle keeping Tom DeLay on your teevee, and that seems to make you happy enough.

Assuming for the moment that your fear of them is not entirely bigoted, you’re probably shouting “Prisoners of war! Prisoners of war! They’re prisoners of war! We don’t let POWs go before the war is over! We never have! That’s stupid!”

Sadly, no! First, your side has spent the past six years arguing that these people are not prisoners of war, because if they were, the protections of the Geneva Conventions (against, you know, hideous torture, random beatings, and death) would apply. You argue that because they’re not from any “recognized nation-state,” they can’t be POWs.

Second, even if you gave in and said they were POWs (which means, you know, that we have to stop torturing them, and we all know how much you love the idea that US soldiers are torturing the islamocommiefascistliberalMSNBCists every day), we’d have to send them home “when the war is over.”

But there’s been no declaration of war. There are no goals. There isn’t even the tiniest smidgen of a glimmer of an idea of what would mean the “War on Terror” is over—which, essentially, means they’re locked up for life on nothing more than the word of some Pashtun who collected $25,000 from the US Army for turning in his neighbor who didn’t support the Taliban properly.

If they’re not POWs, they have the right to challenge why they’re being held and make the government prove that they’re bad guys, and if they’re anywhere near as bad as you say they are, that should take about two hours in any federal court. You’re only worried because you know they’re not bad guys, or at least weren’t before you supported locking them up and torturing them for six years.

If they are POWs, they have Geneva Convention rights, including a clear statement of conflict that says when the war is “over” so they can be released. But President Bush has said that the “War on Terror” will last for decades. Again, and this is easy enough for conservatives to understand, that means these people were captured, imprisoned, and almost always tortured for years, and you want it to be decades, without anyone in the entire world capable of looking at the evidence (if any exists) and saying “no, you’re wrong, this guy is not a terrorist.”

Even that seems to be too hard for the folks at the Corner or Clown Hall, who are paid very well to make sure they don’t understand these things. They’re talking about “sovereignty” (the entire point of building the prison at Guantanamo Bay was to have it “not on US soil” so US laws would not apply, the exact position that the Supreme Court demolished in its slim 5-4 decision), or “aliens,” or “combatants,” or all this stuff. So try this extremely simple “Constitutional Law For TEH STOOPID” version:

The United States goverment, as a whole or through its designated representatives, can never act anywhere in ways prohibited by the Constitution..

The government is created and empowered by the Constitution. It is simply nonsensical to argue that the government is somehow not bound by the Constitution in any of its actions. In foreign lands, US agents (including soldiers) may not be able to guarantee freedom of speech or freedom of assembly to people who are not subject to US law, but those agents themselves must not restrict speech or assembly to those under their direct control.

It is beyond satire to argue that people acting under the auspices of the Constitution, anywhere in the world, can use that power to do things to others that they would not be allowed to do in the United States. If you can’t imprison someone for life with no review here, you can’t do it in Cuba. If you can’t torture people here, you can’t torture them in Syria (and you probably can’t hand them over to Syria to have them tortured on your behalf).

There were POW camps in this country in World War II. One of them, housing over 1300 German and Japanese POWs, shipped over here from Europe, was right here.

During World War II, an eastern portion, 94 acres, of the Fort Reno lands served as an internment workcamp for German Prisoners of War. Mostly from Gen. Rommel’s Afrikakorp, captured in North Africa, over 1,300 Germans were brought to Fort Reno by rail. While imprisoned here, the German POW’s were hired as laborers for local farmers and in 1944 built the Chapel located to the north of the Parade Grounds. The west side of the historic military cemetery is where 70 German and Italian Prisoners of War are interred. Most of these men died at other POW camps in Oklahoma and Texas. Only one Fort Reno German POW died while imprisoned at the Fort Reno internment camp.

There are 62 German and 8 Italian Prisoners of War interred at the POW Cemetery added to the west end of the Post Cemetery. A number of Germans and Italians have made special trips to view the resting place of their relatives or friends. Every year a special memorial wreath appears on Veterans’ Day in remembrance of those prisoners buried at the Fort Reno cemetery. A German-American Heritage Day is held at Fort Reno in November.

If you could not treat caputured “enemy” that way here, then you can’t do it there. There ain’t nothing in the Constitution that gives any part of the US Government the power to ignore the Constitution at any time. The government can never act anywhere in ways prohibited by the Constitution.

The right wing welfare machine is probably going to have to give these people a raise. It’s not paying them enough to make sure they can’t understand this simple and fundamental concept. Those of you on the conservative side should be looking out for the fundraising letters any day now.