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Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project, calls the Supreme Court's 5-4 squeaker affirming the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their imprisonment a "tremendous victory."

I call it an embarrassment and an alarmingly narrow escape.

The first recorded use of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of a prisoner's detainment stretches all the way back to 1305, and other, unrecorded uses of the principle likely pre-date the Magna Carta in 1215.

And all these centuries later, Americans in the land of the free are still struggling with the concept?

In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled against the administration's claimed right to deny prisoners in Guantanamo their habeas corpus protections. In response, the cowards in Congress added an amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act to deny US courts jurisdiction to hear the habeas corpus claims of Guantanamo prisoners.

This week's Supreme Court decision has finally put the constitutionality of the right of habeas corpus to rest — at least for a while — but not the controversy.

John McCain called the decision upholding this centuries-old legal principle "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

Maybe McCain is older than we think. Maybe he fondly remembers the good old days back in the 12th and 13th centuries when a government could lock folks up without giving them or their families a solid reason why.

For this reason alone, we shouldn't let this man anywhere near the White House.