| Bush: What Constitution?
The Cincinnati Post http://www.cincypost.com/ The U.S. Constitution seems
unmistakably clear on the point: No person shall be deprived of liberty
without due process of law -- to know the charges against him, to see
a lawyer, to summon witnesses, to have a speedy trial. Citing various war powers, the administration says it can hold anyone incommunicado and indefinitely on the president's uncontested assertion that the person is an "enemy combatant." And it did so with Jose Padilla, 33, a petty criminal but also an American citizen and lifelong resident of the United States. In May 2002, the feds took him into custody in Chicago, his hometown, and whisked him off to New York as a material witness. The government can hold material witnesses but they have the right to lawyers and eventually to demand that they be brought before a grand jury or set free. Before Padilla could see a lawyer, he was declared an enemy combatant and shipped off to a brig in South Carolina where he has been held in solitary ever since -- with no access to a lawyer, a judge or his family. The government alleges Padilla was part of a "dirty bomb" plot but has never charged him nor offered any proof. A federal district court ruled that Padilla did have the right to a lawyer and the right to challenge his detention in a court. The Bush administration appealed, and a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court is now hearing that appeal. Two of the judges expressed a healthy and much needed judicial skepticism of the administration's claims. Said Judge Barrington Parker, "Were we to construe the Constitution as permitting this kind of power in the executive with only modest judicial review, we would be effecting a sea change in the constitutional life of this country and making changes that would be unprecedented in civilized society." The Fifth and Sixth Amendments don't seem to leave a lot of room for construing that they don't apply to all Americans. And, in Judge Rosemary Pooler's admirably succinct summation of the issue, "as terrible as it was, 9/11 didn't repeal the Constitution."
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