Through the disclosure of prisoner abuse, to the release of the torture memo, I've been having this growing feeling deep inside. Yes, disgust that American soldiers would torture the very people they're supposed to be liberating. And anger that the Executive branch apparently thinks that declaring war gives it the right to ignore not just the law but decent humanity.

But another feeling too: a deep undercurrent of pride. Pride that in America, The System Works! It may be frustratingly slow sometimes, but eventually, abuses of power are checked. Dirty laundry is aired. Political dynamics ensure that things don't spin out of control.

Today, the rumor is that the Supreme Court is about to hand the Bush administration a crushing defeat on its various enemy-combatant legal theories. Part of the reason being the disclosure of prisoner abuse and the torture memo, both of which undermined the argument that "you can trust the Executive to handle these things properly."

These events, in combination, show that the legal artifice the Bush administration had constructed to bypass constitutional safeguards post-9/11 is cracking, and may soon come crashing completely to the ground. In the not-too-distant future, it will become difficult if not impossible for the Executive to do things like detain people without a trial, judge, or lawyer; or finesse around a narrow legal definition of torture.

In other words, our rights as Americans to be free of The Knock In The Middle Of The Night are being upheld. Remember, if it can happen to Jose Padilla, it can happen to you or someone you love. Even investigators with the best of intentions make mistakes. We have constitutional rights to protect against both abuses of power and simple errors.

Since the Republic survived Nixon and Roosevelt and other Presidents Who Would Be King, it shouldn't be a surprise that the Republic will survive 9/11, too. But sometimes, the forces which make The System Work aren't obvious:

The System Works because of the First Law of Conspiracies
The First Law of Conspiracies states that the larger and more dangerous the conspiracy, the harder it is to hide. The more people who write, review, and read things like the torture memo, the harder it is to keep secret; especially for things which people will likely think are unethical or illegal. It only takes one person to blow the lid by, for example, faxing an incriminating memo to a reporter. As the number of conspirators increases, and the nature of the conspiracy gets worse, the odds increase that at least one person will be willing to take the legal and career risk of leaking.

Not being privy to the reporters' relationships with their sources, I would guess that this is close to what happened with the Torture Memo. At least one person (and maybe several) was disturbed enough by what he saw that he felt morally compelled to bring it into the open.

The System Works because We Have a Truly Free Press
In America it is almost impossible to be put in jail for publishing anything. There is a downside to this, as any celebrity will attest, but the important benefit is that reporters and publishers know that they are free to publish whatever information they have, no matter how explosive or damaging to the government. We saw this with the Pentagon Papers back in the Vietnam era, and we're seeing it again now. The risk to the publisher is only to his or her reputation and credibility. As a result, once damaging information is in the hands of the media, it almost never stays secret for long--and once information is published, no amount of legal action can put the genie back in the bottle.

The System Works because The Military and Police Are Loyal to the Office of the President, Not the Person
A weakness of governments where the President controls law enforcement and the military is that sometimes the soldiers and police are more loyal to the person serving as President than to the Presidency itself. In this situation, it is easy for a President to become President For Life. In the United States, however, a career soldier or FBI agent is likely to serve under several different Presidents. As a result, you don't get a situation where most soldiers owe their jobs, promotions, etc. to a particular president. If the President were to issue an order which clearly went against the system which embodies the President's power--for example, ordering the Marines to seize the Supreme Court and arrest all nine justices--most would likely refuse to obey, and some would actively work to undermine the operation. This makes a military coup almost impossible.

The System Works because Everyone Wants Power
With three branches of government, each competing for power, no branch can dominate for long. If an imbalance ever develops, one (or both) of the other branches will reassert its authority and restore the balance. For example, the only way the Executive can hold prisoners without access to a judge or lawyer is if the Judiciary allows it. That requires the Judiciary to explicitly give up some of its power to the Executive, and most people ambitious enough to achieve high office won't willingly give up their authority without a very compelling reason. The Executive may be able to stall for a year or two, but eventually there will come a point where it has to make its case to the Judiciary, and the Judiciary will decide whether or not to cede some authority.

The System Works because We Believe It Works
When everyone believes the system works, and will self-correct, it is much less likely that anyone will attempt to undermine it. As the Founding Fathers perceived, the biggest risk is in the Executive, since that is where the power of an entire branch is concentrated in one person. If the President believes that the odds of a military coup succeeding are small, he's unlikely to make the attempt. Similarly, if Congress thinks that trying to assert direct control of the armed forces is futile, the issue will probably never even come up.