The Powers That Be and the wonderful birthday present they gave me

Supreme Court rules (PDF here, if you've lots of time) 5-3 (Roberts had to abstain) against Bush administration on military tribunals and other Guantanamo "we don't need no stinking geneva conventions" practices. The Times article is actually gleeful (not surprising, since NYT is of course an enemy of the state and should be closed down):

The Times wrote that the Court "in sober tones shredded each of the administration's arguments"

The decision was such a sweeping and categorical defeat for the Bush administration that it left human rights lawyers who have pressed this and other cases on behalf of Guantanamo detainees almost speechless with surprise and delight, using words like "fantastic," "amazing," "remarkable." Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a public interest law firm in New York that represents hundreds of detainees, said, "It doesn't get any better."

[ ... ]

among those in attendance, there was no doubt that they were witnessing a historic event, a definitional moment in the ever-shifting balance of power among the branches of government that ranked with the court's order to President Nixon in 1974 to turn over the Watergate tapes or with the court's rejection of President Truman's seizure of the nation's steel mills, a 1952 landmark decision from which Justice Kennedy quoted at length.

And the very best quote of all:

In the courtroom on Thursday morning, the chief justice sat silently in his center chair as Justice Stevens, sitting to his immediate right as the senior associate justice, read from the majority opinion. It made for a striking tableau on the final day of the first term of the Roberts court: the young chief justice, observing his work of just a year earlier taken apart point by point by the tenacious 86-year-old Justice Stevens, winner of a Bronze Star for his service as a Navy officer during World War II.

Thank you, PTB. A birthday present to give me faith in my country again. Maybe it'll last long enough so that I don't spend the 4th of July in my usual bitter "how am I supposed to be proud and happy about my country these days?" funk.