‘Enemy Combatant’ Sham (NYTimes Editorial)

The Bush administration insists that it can hold American citizens in secret as long as it wants, without access to lawyers, simply by calling them ”enemy combatants.” … The administration’s position makes a mockery of the Constitution and puts every American’s liberty at risk. It is important that the court strike it down….

Of all the post-Sept. 11 denials of civil liberties, the enemy combatant doctrine is among the worst. It gives the president untrammeled authority to lock up Americans merely by asserting that they are part of a terrorist plot. …

The framers of the Constitution knew that if the government was allowed to act on those impulses (to detain in secret), the result would be tyranny. That is why they built into this nation’s founding document the very rights the Bush administration is intent on taking away.