According to the Washington Post, Bush has decided to have the military hold Jose Padilla, US citizen, indefinitely, and not to put him on trial. Bush claims "even citizens can qualify as "enemy combatants" the legal term the Justice Department argues allows a person to be held without trial" and "the executive branch alone has the power to decide when a person qualifies as a combatant".
It turns out, according to another Washington Post article, that Ashcroft had planned to try Padilla, but didn't have enough evidence. The Justice department held him for a month in jail, but two days before the Justice department was going to be required to bring him to a secret hearing in front of a judge, they declared him a "enemy combatant" and transferred him to the military.
When the President can declare a citizen an enemy and have the army grab him and lock him up, we aren't living in a democracy.
Posted by Geodog at June 14, 2002 09:36 AM | TrackBackMy apologies, but my web hoster has turned off commenting, due to a flood of obscene spam bringing the server to its knees. I hope to have this weblog transitioned over to Wordpress in the near future, so that I can have commenting up and working again. Until then, please feel free to send me your comments via my email contact form.. Please ignore everything below this comment.