Good faith, and what the hell is going on here?

While some of our politically conservative neighbors in these United States might be mourning what they perceive as the death of marriage—a lament we should expect to hear many times in the future, wondering just how many times an idea can die—it seems almost ironic that we cannot say the same of the concept of good faith, largely because the patient’s condition is classified.

Michael Abramowitz last weekend brought us the front-page story of how the White House ignored legal advice that its detention policy for terror suspects was untenable. We should not be surprised that at least one lawyer would be willing to state the point clearly: “I can virtually guarantee you,” wrote John B. Bellinger III, in August, 2006, “without a legislative basis, federal courts are not going to be willing to uphold the indefinite detention of unlawful combatants”.