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We are, sadly, accustomed to hearing President Bush’s lawyers justify this administration’s ceaseless efforts to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law: intrusions on privacy, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, torture.

It was bad enough when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales helped write and defend these policies; he always made clear his loyalties were to Mr. Bush, not the nation. But it was appalling to hear his successor, Michael Mukasey — who was supposed to be better — demanding that Congress further expand Mr. Bush’s power to detain foreigners without charges or reliable evidence, and further evade judicial oversight.

In a speech last Monday, Mr. Mukasey renewed the administration’s criticism of Supreme Court rulings on detainees. The court has ruled in several cases that Mr. Bush and then Congress, at his insistence, illegally denied the Guantánamo prisoners the basic human right to challenge their detention in court.

He demanded that Congress swiftly pass measures that would sharply reduce the possibility that any Guantánamo prisoner could have a fair hearing.