"Obama Prepares to Authorize Indefinite Detention of US Citizens for First Time Since McCarthy Era"

[JDPriestly]

145. The current law might be argued to permit it.

That's the problem. Which provision matters?

If a court determines that at this time the president has the authority to detain individuals he deems to be Al Qaeda or terrorist (and who knows how a future president might define that), then he can go to court, point to the provision that says that present law is not changed and quite possibly get the court to agree with him.

This is a bad, sloppily written law. It is unclear as to just what power the president has, and, if he has the authority to apprehend and detain people that he, without a showing of probably cause, without review by a civilian court, determines are terrorists then how is "terrorism" really defined.

Every once in a while we see a report of someone planning a terrorist act. How do you really differentiate a criminal act from terrorism? Wasn't terrorism clearly against the law even before the enactment of the Patriot Act and now this?

If the difficulty was that terrorism often involves international networks, that also is not a new problem. Drug trafficking and Mafia activities as well as money laundering, tax evasion and many other crimes involve international networks.

How do you differentiate between violations of law for political purposes that are nonviolent and those that are? Why would you want to?

Who decides whether a person purposely jumping over a fence to protest something is or is not a terrorist?

Those are things that courts should decide, not the president and not the military or our intelligence services. To the extent that existing law grants the president and therefore the military too much authority in domestic legal matters, then it should be changed, but not to affirm or expand the powers of the president and the military.

This law in its contradictions puts protestors and other citizens into a bind. It chills protected speech because under it people who are exercising First Amendment rights can conceivably be detained indefinitely if they seem connected with terrorism. This law and the Patriot Act are just too vague and totally unnecessary as to similar provisions.

Normally, a person is entitled to be told specifically what the charge is against him, to be charged for actual acts, not thoughts or casual conversations. Conspiracies must be proved to have occurred and the accused has the right to a defense.

This law would just ignore those legal requirements, and that is why it should be much more specific and much clearer about the fact that it cannot, under our Constitution, apply to American citizens or residents of the U.S.

The president has the authority to suspend habeas corpus in times of insurrection. We are very far from a state of insurrection. We have protests, but no insurrection.

Terrorists within the US are criminals who can be dealt with within our established legal system. We don't need this sloppily written law. It will just cause us sorrow later on.