Unpack Your adjectives BY JAMES TARANTO / wsj blog

[Demeter]

POSTED ON http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010201 IN RESPONSE TO A NYTIMES EDITORIAL:

BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:24 p.m. EDT



So-called civil liberties advocates who are cheering this ruling:

( Al-Marri v. Wright, in which the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that the U.S. lacks the authority to detain as an enemy combatant one Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national and U.S. resident alien who was captured in Peoria, Ill., and found to be "engaged in conduct that constituted hostile and war-like acts, including conduct in preparation for acts of international terrorism")

ought to take a moment to ponder its possible consequences. The Constitution gives the president the power to suspend habeas corpus in the event of rebellion or invasion, as President Lincoln did in 1862. President Bush is not about to suspend the writ.

But let's say that two years from now America suffers another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, carried out by people who, like Al-Marri, did their planning within America and never set foot on a conventional battlefield. In the face of such an "invasion," does anyone doubt that, say, a President Hillary Clinton would suspend habeas corpus in a New York minute?


WHY WOULD THAT BE NECESSARY? WAS HABEUS SUSPENDED WHEN OKLAHOMA WENT DOWN? DURING THE FIRST WTC BOMBING? DURING WACO? WHAT'S IN THE WATER OVER AT THE WSJ? PURE KOOL-AID, I THINK!