Padilla Conviction Leaves Unanswered Questions

Padilla Conviction Leaves Unanswered Questions - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com: "Padilla had been arrested at a Chicago airport in May 2002, after returning to the country from Pakistan via Switzerland. One month later, armed with sketchy (and what turned out to be disputed) intelligence that he had been dispatched by Al Qaeda to set off a dirty bomb inside the United States, President Bush in one stroke of the pen essentially declared Padilla an “unperson,” a man with none of the basic constitutional rights that is guaranteed to every other U.S. citizen. As an enemy combatant, who Bush said posed a “continuing, present and grave danger” to the country, Padilla was to be held indefinitely without being charged with a crime or given any right to defend himself while the U.S military interrogated him."

The Left has precious few remaining arguments against the current administration's handling of terrorists, but this is the one you'll probably hear most often. This dubious argument intentionally omits key facts. First of all, the "unperson" claim is an appeal to Habeas Corpus "rights." In fact, Habeas Corpus is not a right but a privilege under the Constitution, and it is subject to revocation. "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." According to this principle, public safety and preservation of society trump individual liberties under certain cases of arrest of dangerous actors. Second, the fact of WWII precedent is omitted. The USA captured German spies in the US during the war, and the FDR administration "in one stroke of the pen" secretly remanded the spies to a trial by a special tribunal of 7 US Generals who sentenced several of them to death, one to life in prison, and others to decades in prison. I'd wager few on the Left would ever remind us of FDR's secret pen-stroke precedents.