Bush team wins on power to detain, for now

Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to review the Jose Padilla case. So, at least in this case for now, Bush retains the power to detain American citizens indefinitely, without legal recourse, innocent or not, just because he wants to.

Today's Christian Science Monitor contains an interesting article about the case.

An excerpt:
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The US Supreme Court has handed the White House a temporary victory in a legal battle over the war on terror by declining to take up the appeal of suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla.

Mr. Padilla's lawyers were waging a potential landmark appeal challenging President Bush's power to indefinitely detain American citizens arrested on US soil as enemy combatants.

Rather than argue the case on the merits, the Bush administration had undertaken an array of procedural maneuvers that appear to have been calculated to avoid Supreme Court review of the case. Many legal analysts were watching closely to see if the high court would permit the government to benefit from such tactics.

But in its Monday order, the justices made clear that while they were divided on whether to take up Padilla's case, a majority was prepared to hear the case should the administration attempt to shift him back into open-ended military custody.

The move means that the justices have left for another day consideration of one of the most controversial aspects of the Bush presidency - whether Mr. Bush has the power to order the open-ended military detention of a US citizen seized on US soil.

In addition, the order comes less than a week after the high court heard oral argument in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden. Mr. Hamdan and his lawyers are challenging the legality of the military commission process at the terrorism prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Legal analysts say the high court may have waited to hear arguments in the Hamdan case before deciding whether to take up Padilla's case.
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[Read more.]

Who will they come for next? Someone you know, perhaps?