http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/31/Columns/To_Bush__courts_don_t.shtmlBy ROBYN E. BLUMNER, St. Petersburg Times
Published October 31, 2004
Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court drew some lines in the sand. The court said that the president, despite his claims to the contrary, could not hold Americans as enemy combatants without giving them a range of due process rights. And, it said that noncitizen prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to go to court to challenge the legality of their confinement.
While the rulings were technically narrow, many of the justices expressed alarm over the breadth of the Bush administration's posture, almost pleading with it to start playing fair.
"(A) state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," snapped Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the case involving Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American enemy combatant who had been held without charge and incommunicado for years. The administration had claimed it could hold him this way indefinitely.
But it appears that President Bush and his Justice Department minions care little about the court's admonitions. In filing after filing in the enemy combatant cases currently wending their way through the lower federal courts, the Bush administration has taken positions almost identical to its prior stance.
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