Following-up to our discussion over the weekend on liberals relying on incorrect history to make the case for their preferred policy outcomes, check out this from Barack Obama:

Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited "that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that's the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday." (Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it's worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it's not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)

It is an appalling, nay, disgusting, characterization to compare granting habeas corpus to unlawful enemy combatants with the military tribunals at Nuremberg. Indeed, one gets the distinct sense that today's liberals would howl mightily at the extraordinary proceedings that were used to convict prominent Nazis of assorted, heinous crimes. Those trials weren't exactly a case study in the application of Constitutional rights as provided to U.S. citizens within our borders (though they were fairer than the defendants deserved).

Further evidence our political figures need to spend more time studying history than dreaming of how to make it.