May I remind you this fellow is not being detained for singing too loudly in the choir. He is an enemy combatant.
You've begged the very question I posed. By what standard has he been classified "an enemy combatant"? What did he do? Where was he captured? What was he doing when he was taken? Is there anything objective behind this attribution, or was it just DOJ's decision that, since we can't indict him, we'll turn him over to the Defense Department, since they don't have to?
We have to have rules and standards about this sort of liberty-abridging decision, or we are not a nation of laws. Politicians and bureaucrats must not be permitted to make such decisions arbitrarily. It's unfortunate that a lowlife like Padilla has to be the test case, but it's been said many times that the true test of one's beliefs about rights is whether he's willing to defend the rights of someone he personally finds noxious.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/700861/posts
As I said, this guy wasn't detained to for singing too loudly in the choir.
As many have pointed out, if we apply your standards, then we will have to provide a lawyer to every terrorist who will promptly advise his client to divulge nothing. Quite frankly, this makes as much sense as those who emasculated our intelligence capabilities in the past by insisting we only recruit spies who could meet the standards for sainthood.
So because you assume that politicians and/or bureaucrats have made their decisions regarding padilla arbitrarilly, he should be free to continue his plot to murder as many Americans as possible.
Yeah, that's the voice of reason all right.
Precisely. The rules can and should be somewhat different for these cases (given the legitimate need to keep certain secrets), but they can't be thrown out completely.
Joint Resolution
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United
The congress authorized the president to use the law of war against this guy.
He has the habeous corpus right to have this reviewed by a court.
I can see no other way than to have the miitary determine who is a combatant- subject, for US citizens, to a review by the courts.
Instead of concern over the use of military power on American soil against americans ( which has been constitutionally authorized and is patently unavoidable in this situation), it seems to me that your worry is more over "bills of attainder" by the legislature against US citizens. That is what this matter could be classed as, IMHO, if Padilla was tried by tribunal.