(2003-08-10) Presidential Liberty Abuse Terrorism

Jacob Sullum on George W Bush's abuse of the US Constitution in Dealing With Terrorism. * The detention authority claimed by the Bush administration is completely unconstrained by the Rule Of Law. As Cato Institute's brief notes, "The Executive's novel argument would allow it to exile anyone from the protection of our US Constitution and our laws simply through the artifice of labeling him - without any visible standards - as an Enemy Combatant." Neither the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed after 9/11 nor the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act gives the president the detention powers he is trying to exercise... The requirement that the Executive Branch detain people only as authorized by US Congress is grounded in the US Constitution as well as in statute. The Separation Of Powers means the president is supposed to enforce the law, not write it. The US Constitution specifically gives US Congress, not the US President, the authority to suspend the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus, which allows citizens to challenge their detention... That does not make them (the Lackawanna Six) innocent, but it suggests they did not deserve the sentences they received, which ranged from six-and-a-half to nine years. They decided that pleading guilty was preferable to risking indefinite confinement as Enemy Combatant-s. As one attorney told The Washington Post, "The defendants believed that if they didn't plead guilty, they'd end up in a black hole forever." That sort of threat, which has no legal or constitutional basis, makes a mockery of justice.*