(2003-08-02) Voice Civil Liberties

The Village Voice is tracking its pieces on Civil Liberty issues.

• Nat Hentoff on FoxNews' Judge Andrew Napolitano - "The president - using standards not legislated by Congress, not approved by any court, and never made known to the public - has claimed the right to incarcerate Enemy Combatant-s until the war on terrorism is over. But when will that be? . . . Who is an enemy combatant? Today, it can be anyone the president wants. And that is terrifying."

• Nat Hentoff on Diana Gribbon Motz's minority opinion in Hamdi V Rumsfeld - "I fear that (the Fourth Circuit Court Of Appeals) may also have opened the door to the indefinite detention, without access to a lawyer or the courts, of any American citizen, even one captured on American soil, who the Executive (US President) designates an Enemy Combatant, as long as the Executive asserts that the area in which the citizen was detained was an Active Combat Zone, and the detainee, deprived of access to the courts and counsel, cannot dispute this fact." (This case is going to the Supreme Court.)