Blow 2 to tyranny...!

A divided federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday that President Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."

Within hours, a second federal appeals court, based in San Francisco, also in a divided ruling, declared that the administration's policy of imprisoning some 660 noncitizens captured in the Afghan war on a naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without access to United States legal protections was unconstitutional as well as a violation of international law.

The twin blows to the underpinnings of the administration's elaborate legal strategy erected after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks make it all the more likely that the Supreme Court will have the final say on matters that the administration had argued did not belong in the courts in the first place.

Of course, before we start celebrating too heartily we should remember that the same Supreme Court that annointed Bush president has agreed to definitively decide the issue of the Guantánamo Bay detainees. Court watchers say the Supremes will likely add the question of Padillo's fate to their docket.

Complete story here.

Courts rule against Bush...!

NEW YORK - President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the "dirty bomb" plot suspect in civilian courts. The White House said the government would seek a stay.

[...]

"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," the court said.

"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress," it added.

I wish the court had ruled more strongly and extended its decision to other detainees, such as Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan and also designated an "enemy combatant."

But it's a start.

Complete story here.

More Republican hypocrisy....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The 78-year-old daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond and a black maid said Wednesday that now that she has come forward to disclose her heritage, she is finally at peace.

At a news conference in her native South Carolina, Essie Mae Washington-Williams said she did not come forward earlier because she didn't want to jeopardize Thurmond's political career and family. ``Throughout his life and mine we respected each other. ... I was sensitive about his well-being and his career.''

``I am not bitter. I am not angry. In fact, there is a great sense of peace that has come over me in the past year,'' she said. ``I feel as though a great weight has been lifted. I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I feel completely free.''

I can understand Williams' desire to be free of bitterness and anger. After all, those emotions eat away at a person's integrity and happiness.

What I don't understand is why she and her family concealed the late senator's incredible hypocrisy out of sensitivity for "his well-being and his career." Thurmond's actions in the Senate advanced one of the most racist, homophobic and misogynist agendas in modern times. If ever a man deserved to be exposed for the sort of slimy hypocrite who believed it was ok to take sexual advantage of a 16-year-old family servant, but not eat with, attend school with, sit side-by-side on a city bus with or marry, it was Strom Thurmond.

Complete story here.

So, Hussein is in custody...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 - Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi leader, was captured in a raid on a farm near Tikrit on Saturday night, American military officials confirmed today.

Personally, I don't expect the Iraqi resistance to weaken. But I could be wrong.

Complete story here.