NYTimes.com leads with the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and even the Wall Street Journal gives it fourth billing today online.

Both papers are labeling the Court’s 5-3 decision, which held that the current military commission’s ‘structure and procedures’ violate both the Military Code of Justice and the Geneva Convention, as a major defeat for the Bush Administration. Oddly enough, it is the NYTimes that ends on a more sanguine note about the Administration’s options. The paper quotes a counterterrorism law professor saying that “ ‘The court really rescued the administration by taking it out of this quagmire it's been in . . . .[T]he ruling may clear the way to a resolution of the murky status of detainees held at Guantánamo, in Afghanistan and in secret detention centers run by the Central Intelligence Agency.’” Somehow I doubt Mr. Bush will be writing any thank you notes to the Justices any time soon.

While both papers cite J. Breyer’s concurrence saying that “ ‘Congress has not issued the executive a 'blank check,'" both fail to point out that Breyer was taking from now-retired J. Sandra Day O’Connor’s plurality opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), which put the Court’s stamp of approval on military tribunals for enemy combatants (including US citizens) in the first place.

Ironically, Scalia issued a powerful dissent in Hamdi, saying that unless Congress suspended habeas corpus, Hamdi—a US citizen—could not be detained without charge. Of course, both papers don’t dig deep enough into the earlier opinions here and merely write that Scalia is mad as hell that the Court is preventing Bush from effectively carrying out military operations.

Bottom line: The Times easily wins for completeness of coverage on this story. The Journal doesn’t quote anybody besides the Justices and Mr. Bush, while the Times talks to several players, including Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy JAG attorney representing Mr. Hamdan, another member of the defense team, and an attorney from the Washington Legal Foundation, which filed a friend of the court supporting the Administration. The Journal does score points for its informative page dedicated to this year’s most divided Supreme Court decisions with summaries and quotes from the majority and dissenting opinions.

See:

Court Disallows Guantanamo Trials, In Setback for Bush Antiterror Policy, posted 6/29/06 at 7:54pm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115158233093494103.html?mod=home_whats_news_us