In an unseemly scene, guaranteed to make Conservatives puke, Solicitor General Paul Clement, acting on behalf of President Bush, sat side by side with Donald Donovan, the lawyer representing convicted rapist-killer Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican raised in the United States. The two lawyers were acting to persuade the Supreme Court of the United States to spare the life of the rapist-killer. Why would President Bush intervene on behalf of Medellin, who committed, by his own admission, an extremely brutal crime?

By his own admission, the crime was savage. Jose Medellin and five other gang members were drinking, brawling, swaggering, talking smack and hanging out by the railroad tracks near a Houston apartment complex on a warm night in June 1993. Along came two girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, taking a shortcut home from a friend’s house.

Medellin stopped Pena. When she tried to run, he threw her to the ground. Ertman ran to help her but also was shoved to the ground. They were gang-raped and beaten. Even as the girls begged for their lives, they were dragged to nearby woods and strangled, one with her own shoelace, the other with a belt and then by a shoe pressed on her windpipe. Their bodies were found four days later.

Medellin had no regrets. He bragged about the crime to his cousin and gave one of the girl’s rings to his girlfriend. His brother kept Ertman’s Disney-brand Goofy watch as a trophy.

Bush has lost touch with middle America. Everything he does invokes rage. Conservatives just shake their heads in disbelief. When Ted Kennedy wrote the administration’s education policy, Conservatives were surprised. When the administration took small steps towards socialized medicine, they were shocked. Watching Republicans spend like drunken Liberals, for six years, drove Conservatives to despaire. Harriet Meyers, the incompetent Liberal Supreme Court nominee, invoked laughter. Amnesty for illegal aliens stirred up a rebelion. Now, Bush is trying to impose a decree of the International Court of Justice on the state of Texas. Team Bush is telling Americans that a ruling by a UN court, staffed by Arabs and chaired by that beacon of justice – China, supersedes the Constitution.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a case involving a Mexican national who was arrested in Texas and confessed to murder without being told of his right, under U.S. treaty, to be given access to diplomats from his home country.

At issue in the case is whether the White House or an international court has the authority to order a state to comply with provisions of a legally ratified treaty between the United States and a foreign power.

The treaty in question was ratified by the Senate in 1969. It was meant to guarantee that when foreigners were arrested, they would be allowed to meet with diplomatic representatives from their country of origin. Although the provision was inserted at the insistence of the United States to protect its citizens abroad, U.S. state and local governments were slow to honor it.

Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican raised in the United States, was one of many foreign nationals not told of his right to consular access. He was arrested and confessed to the brutal rape and murder of two teenage girls. State and federal courts ruled that because he had not raised the denial of his consular rights at trial, he was barred by state law from raising objections later.

In 2004, the Mexican government went to the International Court of Justice on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexican citizens on death row in the United States. By a 14-to-1 vote, the court ruled that the U.S. had violated the treaty and ordered that the death sentences be reconsidered.

President Bush then decided to withdraw from the portion of the treaty that submits such disputes to the international court.

He concluded, however, that the U.S. was bound by the provision while it was in force and signed a memorandum instructing that the state courts reconsider 51 cases. When the Texas courts refused to comply with the president’s order, Medellin, backed by the Bush administration, appealed to the Supreme Court.

Outside the court on Wednesday, Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz framed the case as a test of whether U.S. sovereignty is paramount, or “is it a foreign tribunal attempting to set aside the laws of the United States,” he said.

Medellin’s lawyer, Donald Donovan said the case was about whether the U.S. can keep its word on treaties signed by the president and ratified by the Senate.

“When the United States deals with the world, it deals as one nation with one voice,” he said.

Inside the courtroom, the argument was so animated and interesting to the justices that they did something unheard of in recent times: They extended the time for argument by a half-hour.

Defense lawyer Donovan took a beating from Chief Justice John Roberts.

“Your position seems to leave no role for this court,” Roberts told Donovan. “For example, supposing the international court ordered a five-year jail term for anyone who didn’t comply with this treaty; would this court have a role?”

When Donovan fudged his reply, Justices Anthony Kennedy, and John Paul Stevens demanded an answer.

When Bush was Governor, he knew the difference between good and evil. He defended the position that he now attacks.

In the months before Texas executed Canadian Stanley Faulder in June 1999, George W. Bush made it crystal clear what he thought about outsiders who challenged his state’s right to carry out the death penalty.

“Foreigners can’t expect to get away with murder in the state of Texas,” said Bush, then the governor of Texas.

That was then, this is now.

In a surprise legal turnabout, President Bush intervened with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday to save the life of a Mexican citizen facing the death penalty in Texas, claiming his execution would violate international law.

The legal principles in the case are almost identical to those Bush rejected when the Canadian government appealed for clemency on behalf of Faulder, a 61-year-old Alberta man who was executed eight years ago for murdering an elderly Texas oil matriarch.

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court Wednesday, Bush administration lawyers said that Texas cannot execute Jose Ernesto Medellin for the rapes and murders of two teenage girls because state authorities failed to notify him of his Vienna Convention rights to contact Mexican consular officials after his arrest.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement argued that Texas must adhere to a 2004 decision by the International Court of Justice, which found that Texas violated Medellin’s rights to consular access. The ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered the U.S. to review Medellin’s conviction and sentence.

After Texas initially balked, Bush personally intervened by issuing a presidential order in February 2005, instructing the state to comply with the ICJ ruling.

“The president’s role is critically important,” Clement told the justices.

In a prior written brief to the court, the administration argued that any rejection of the ICJ ruling would “place the United States in breach of its international law obligation … and frustrate the president’s judgment that foreign policy interests are best served by giving effect to that decision.”

Bush’s position in the Medellin case stands in stark contrast to his views as governor of Texas, when he oversaw the executions of Faulder and 151 other death row inmates.

Faulder, originally from Jasper, Alta., was executed for the 1975 stabbing death of 75-year-old Inez Phillips, a widow from a wealthy oil family in Gladewater, Texas.

Although Faulder was not notified of his consular rights at the time – and Canadian officials never learned of his 1978 conviction until 1992 – a Texas review board determined the oversight was a “harmless error.”

Bush turned aside appeals from then-foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy to grant Faulder a reprieve because of the consular rights violation.

The only issue for Bush at the time was whether Faulder killed Phillips.

“People can’t just come into our state and cold-bloodedly murder somebody. That’s unacceptable, regardless of nationality,” Bush said at the time.