:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 4.28.2004 ::
:: The Enemy Combatant issue ::
Supreme Court Weighs Enemy Combatant Case
WASHINGTON - The war on terrorism gives the government power to seize Americans and hold them without charges for as long as it takes to ensure they are not a danger to the nation, the Bush administration told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Lawyers for two men detained by the government argued in reply that fighting terrorists cannot mean a president has unchecked authority to snatch U.S. citizens and hold them without a chance to plead their case.
"We could have people locked up all over the country tomorrow," said Frank Dunham, lawyer for a Louisiana-born man captured while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Two-and-a-half years after the Sept. 11 jetliner attacks that killed thousands, the nation's highest court considered far-reaching questions about civil liberties, law and America's security in a changed world. By their words in court, a majority of justices seemed to give at least qualified support to the Bush administration.
The justices heard two cases about U.S. citizens being held as "enemy combatants." Yaser Esam Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge while his Saudi father worked there, but grew up in the Middle East. Jose Padilla was born in Brooklyn and raised in Chicago.
The American-born men, like foreign fighters also labeled enemy combatants and held abroad, have been in near solitary confinement, without access to courts, lawyers or the outside world.
Only in the past month, with the Supreme Court about to hear their cases, have they been allowed to meet with lawyers.
"We've had war on our soil before, and never before in our nation's history has this court granted the president a blank check to do whatever he wants to American citizens," lawyer Jennifer Martinez argued on behalf of Padilla, a former gang member and alleged al-Qaida associate arrested at O'Hare Airport on suspicion of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 8:21:00 PM [+] ::
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