Police State
President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.
Greenwald and Steven D. have more. LOTS more.
Steven:
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (one level below the Supreme Court) has just ruled that Bush was granted the unlimited power by Congress to detain indefinitely anyone in the United States (you, me, your teenage son or daughter, anyone at all) merely be declaring them an enemy combatant. In a split 5-4 decision the Fourth Circuit also held that said enemy combatant was permitted to “challenge” that detention, but failed to elaborate on what form that challenge should take…
[snip]
So, in effect, we are at the mercy of Justice Kennedy, the one conservative member of the Supreme Court who has shown himself willing to vote with the more liberal justices on issues involving the rights of individuals detained by the Bush administration as enemy combatants. Kennedy was the justice who wrote the most recent majority opinion which held that detainees at Guantanamo Bay had the right to invoke the writ of habeas corpus to challenge their detentions. If and when this case reaches the Supreme Court he will be the one who decides what rights, if any, persons detained by Bush will have.We already know how the other eight justices will vote.
[snip]
Until that happens, be very careful what you say and to whom. For who knows what constitutes evidence of terrorist allegiance in the minds of our national security professionals. Mr. al-Marri still doesn’t know what precise information landed him in prison as a suspected Al Qaeda sleeper agent. All he knows is that someone at the CIA signed an affidavit claiming that he was a terrorist. Because that is all it takes, my friends, to put you in prison and deprive you of your liberty. The opinion of one man. And until Congress or the Supreme Court holds otherwise you live in a police state, different from that of the former Soviet Union or Argentina under the rule of the Generals only by the degree to which that authority has been exercised — so far.
Greenwald:
Thus, the President can order anyone in the U.S. imprisoned in a military brig as an “enemy combatant” — even if they have never fought on a battlefield or with a foreign power against the U.S. Rather, mere accusations by the President of “terrorism” are sufficient to justify the indefinite incarceration of such an individual as an “enemy combatant,” who is then denied basic Constitutional guarantees.
To say that such individuals can be held “for the duration of relevant hostilities” means, of course, that such individuals can be imprisoned by the President in a military brig not just for years but for decades…
[snip]
Most critically of all — as two of the opinions separately recognized, including the one from the swing Judge (Traxler) whose opinion was the only one to attract five votes and is therefore the court’s opinion — this decision applies every bit as much, and to exactly the same extent, to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil as it does to non-citizens (such as al-Marri) who are in the U.S. legally
We are looking at frightfully ugly times coming up. Worse, there is no one, literally no one, to defend our rights. The Democrats in Congress? Don’t make me laugh. President Obama? I told you not to make me laugh.
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