When the “al-Qaida Seven” and their two DoJ colleagues fought to defend alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, they weren’t fighting to protect jihadist murderers. They were defending the U.S. Constitution—the great whomping chunks of the Bill of Rights that Cheney and her friends are so eager to write out of existence. They did it because that’s what lawyers are ethically obligated to do. They did it because—as Spencer Ackerman points out—the Military Commissions Act of 2006 expressly provided that detainees get defense lawyers. And they did it, as Jay Bookman notes, for the same reason John Adams agreed to represent British soldiers charged with killing civilians during the Boston Massacre in 1770. Because long before Liz Cheney was born and long after she’s gone, the Bill of Rights requires serious people to take it seriously.

Side note: Since when did anyone take Liz Cheney seriously in the first place? It’s not so shocking that media would take notice when Bill Kristol says something cynical (and utterly thoughtless), but Cheney has never been on the radar aside from being a curiosity as the only Cheney daughter that isn’t gay.

Furthermore, you’d think Cheney would understand the Military Commissions Act of 2006, considering she was still working for the State Department at the time of its passage.

Lucy Temerlin (1964–1987) was a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma, and raised by Maurice K. Temerlin, Ph.D., a psychotherapist and professor at the University of Oklahoma and his wife, Jane W. Temerlin…She appeared in Life magazine, where she became famous for drinking straight gin, rearing a cat, and using Playgirl and a vacuum cleaner for sexual gratification.

Learn more about her on this week’s RadioLab.

Also, take the time to read Stella Brewer’s short piece on Lucy and the circumstances surrounding her death:

There is not one single person that I know of who does not come out badly in the whole Lucy saga except possibly Jane Goodall, who was very critical of the venture—but somewhat after the event. What a sorry bunch we are: the woman who sold a two day old chimp; the researcher who bought her for one of his students to experiment on; Maurice Temerlin, who conducted the experiment for almost 12 years; my father and I, for not being effective monitors and ensuring that Lucy just retired as I had planned. Perhaps sorriest of all is Carter, for so personally insisting that Lucy should endure the rehabilitation process—which Lucy so obviously found difficult and confusing—for so long. In truth, Lucy’s whole life was manipulated solely for the benefit of human beings. Her death was probably the only event she suffered that was not manipulated. For her sake can we please just leave it that way?