Terrible Reporting

Yet another example of why the mainstream media is utterly unreliable when it comes to reporting on Supreme Court decisions:

Moderate-liberal justice David Souter, as well as Breyer and Ginsburg sided with Hamdi, joining the more conservative Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy and O'Connor. Supporting the government was liberal John Paul Stevens, joined by the two most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Whoever wrote this paragraph apparently made the simplistic (and false) assumption that because Scalia, Stevens, and Thomas dissented, they all supported the government. Yet anyone who is at all familiar with the decisions knows that Scalia and Stevens dissented from the decision because they disagreed with the government's position even more than the plurality, arguing that only a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus could authorize such a detention. Thomas alone accepted the government's position.

Legal topics just happen to be an area in which I have sufficient personal knowledge to recognize some of these blatant errors. Who knows how many errors pass me undetected in most other stories because I lack such expertise?