Mark, the Mexicans are just going the American way. They know that President Bush can give all the prime-time addresses he wants — nothing is final in our nomiocracy until a Robed Lawyer comes down from Mt. Sinai and speaks!

In all seriousness, this is of a piece with the alien combatants filing habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detention (a process congress thankfully curtailed last year — only after federal judges made rulings giving the enemy, in wartime, a right to counsel … paid for by the taxpayers they were trying to kill).

The federal courts were once understood as a core part of our government — a forum in which Americans, the source of government authority, could vindicate their constitutional rights against illegitimate government action, BUT nonetheless a part of our government vis a vis the rest of the world.

But we continue to see a steady, scary transformation. Our courts are now seen — and, more importantly, often see themselves — as somehow outside and above our government: a forum in which the rest of the world gets to press its case against America.