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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (33095)	12/19/2003 3:20:17 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

There is a difference between the rules which govern prosecution of warfare and criminal prosecutions..... What war...There again only Congress can declare war. It did not. Once again the usurper of the Constitution, megalomaniacal president did that. He has also declared war on: fat people, the environment, (not drugs because - hey - he and his family!!!)Hollywood, forests, labor etc. I believe that if the rights the Constitution guarantees for citizens of this country are rescinded for ONE, they will be rescinded for all. Let the guilty pay, but let him have his Constitutionally guaranteed day in court.

To: jlallen who wrote (33095)	12/19/2003 7:33:19 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

the (Padilla)decision correctly found that the president possesses no inherent constitutional authority as commander in chief to detain as enemy combatants American citizens seized on American soil, away from the zone of combat. "egregious presidential overreach..." In a signal 2-to-1 ruling yesterday, a federal appeals court in Manhattan struck a blow against egregious presidential overreaching in the name of fighting terrorism. The court, ruling in the case of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber, denied the Bush administration's sweeping claim that the president has executive authority to hold Americans indefinitely in secret without access to lawyers simply by declaring them "enemy combatants." Mr. Padilla, an American citizen, was taken into custody in Chicago in May 2002. He is being held incommunicado at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C, where he has been denied access to counsel. Not long after his arrest, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Mr. Padilla was part of a plot by Al Qaeda to explode a radiological "dirty bomb." But no charges have yet been brought. While the ruling was in the particular case of Mr. Padilla, the decision's larger message — that there are constitutional limits on the president's power to deny basic civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism — is one that protects the liberty of all Americans. The two-judge majority underscored that it was not denying the serious threat that Al Qaeda poses, nor the president's responsibility to protect the nation. The court also did not address the substance of the government's suspicions about Mr. Padilla. Rather, the decision correctly found that the president possesses no inherent constitutional authority as commander in chief to detain as enemy combatants American citizens seized on American soil, away from the zone of combat. Moreover, the detention of an American citizen under the circumstances of Mr. Padilla's case, the ruling said, citing a 1971 statute, was not authorized by Congress. The dissenting judge, Richard Wesley, disagreed with that reading of the president's power. But he, too, objected to the denial of counsel to Mr. Padilla. The decision now gives the government 30 days to release Padilla from military custody. But that does not mean he will be released. The government remains free to transfer him to civilian authorities, who can bring criminal charges or, if appropriate, hold him as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings. At a critical moment when various aspects of the Bush administration's troubling record of curtailing civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism are working their way to a resolution by the Supreme Court, yesterday's ruling on Mr. Padilla's detention could not have been more welcome. It came just hours before another judicial repudiation of the administration's view that fighting terrorism essentially exempts it from normal constitutional constraints. A federal appeals court in California ruled in a separate case that prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba should have access to lawyers and the American court system. Together, these could be signs that the administration's strategy of aggressively bypassing the traditional protections of the criminal justice system and meaningful judicial oversight is crumbling. At least, that is our hope. nytimes.com