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IP: General Ashcroft's Detention Camps Time to Call for His Resignation
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 07:46:35 -0400
From the Village Voice NYC By Nat Hentoff Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional and public-interest law at George Washington University Law School in D.C. He is also a defense attorney in national security cases and other matters, writes for a number of publications, and is often on television. He and I occasionally exchange leads on civil liberties stories, but I learn much more from him than he does from me. For example, a Jonathan Turley column in the national edition of the August 14 Los Angeles Times ("Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision") begins: "Attorney General John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be 'enemy combatants' has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace." Actually, ever since General Ashcroft pushed the U.S. Patriot Act through an overwhelmingly supine Congress soon after September 11, he has subverted more elements of the Bill of Rights than any attorney general in American history. Under the Justice Department's new definition of "enemy combatant"which won the enthusiastic approval of the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeldanyone defined as an "enemy combatant," very much including American citizens, can be held indefinitely by the government, without charges, a hearing, or a lawyer. In short, incommunicado. Two American citizensYaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padillaare currently locked up in military brigs as "enemy combatants." (Hamdi is in solitary in a windowless room.) As Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe said on ABC's Nightline (August 12): "It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way. . . . And no court can even figure out whether we've got the wrong guy. <snip> ttp://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0236/hentoff.php For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: General Ashcroft's Detention Camps Time to Call for His Resignation Dave Farber (Sep 02)