Yes, it CAN happen here. (Happening right now, in fact)

Begin forwarded message:

From: Randall <[email protected]>
Date: September 28, 2006 2:21:38 PM EDT
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Yes, it CAN happen here. (Happening right now, in fact)

http://htdaw.blogsource.com/post.mhtml?post_id=387160

Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 2:19 PM EDT
"BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a  
real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign  
terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise  
legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the  
president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if  
they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military  
prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the  
normal protections of the Bill of Rights"


  The White House Warden
Congress may give the president the power to lock up almost anyone he  
thinks is a terror threat.
By Bruce Ackerman
BRUCE ACKERMAN is a professor of law and political science at Yale  
and author of "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in  
an Age of Terrorism."
September 28, 2006
BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a  
real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign  
terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise  
legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the  
president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if  
they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military  
prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the  
normal protections of the Bill of Rights.
This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize  
and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an  
armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has  
"purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United  
States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and  
legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they  
have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be  
held indefinitely in a military prison.
Not to worry, say the bill's defenders. The president can't detain  
somebody who has given money innocently, just those who contributed  
to terrorists on purpose.
But other provisions of the bill call even this limitation into  
question. What is worse, if the federal courts support the  
president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be  
required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the  
constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials.
Legal residents who aren't citizens are treated even more harshly.  
The bill entirely cuts off their access to federal habeas corpus,  
leaving them at the mercy of the president's suspicions.
We are not dealing with hypothetical abuses. The president has  
already subjected a citizen to military confinement. Consider the  
case of Jose Padilla. A few months after 9/11, he was seized by the  
Bush administration as an "enemy combatant" upon his arrival at  
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He was wearing civilian  
clothes and had no weapons. Despite his American citizenship, he was  
held for more than three years in a military brig, without any chance  
to challenge his detention before a military or civilian tribunal.  
After a federal appellate court upheld the president's extraordinary  
action, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, handing the  
administration's lawyers a terrible precedent.
The new bill, if passed, would further entrench presidential power.  
At the very least, it would encourage the Supreme Court to draw an  
invidious distinction between citizens and legal residents. There are  
tens of millions of legal immigrants living among us, and the bill  
encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the  
semblance of judicial review.
But the bill also reinforces the presidential claims, made in the  
Padilla case, that the commander in chief has the right to designate  
a U.S. citizen on American soil as an enemy combatant and subject him  
to military justice. Congress is poised to authorized this  
presidential overreaching. Under existing constitutional doctrine,  
this show of explicit congressional support would be a key factor  
that the Supreme Court would consider in assessing the limits of  
presidential authority.
This is no time to play politics with our fundamental freedoms. Even  
without this massive congressional expansion of the class of enemy  
combatants, it is by no means clear that the present Supreme Court  
will protect the Bill of Rights. The Korematsu case — upholding the  
military detention of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during  
World War II — has never been explicitly overruled. It will be tough  
for the high court to condemn this notorious decision, especially if  
passions are inflamed by another terrorist incident. But  
congressional support of presidential power will make it much easier  
to extend the Korematsu decision to future mass seizures.
Though it may not feel that way, we are living at a moment of  
relative calm. It would be tragic if the Republican leadership rammed  
through an election-year measure that would haunt all of us on the  
morning after the next terrorist attack.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe- 
ackerman28sep28,1,138419,print.story



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