Radical vs. conservative

There is nothing conservative about inventing government powers that weren't prescribed by the Constitution.
And so we find it strange to watch as the Bush administration continues to argue that it has the right to hold people indefinitely, without specific charges being filed against them and without those people having access to a lawyer.
We understand that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, were frightening and that America must remain vigilant against terrorists and terrorism. But it must also remain vigilant in protecting the Constitution and the rules of law that define the United States as a free nation.
In a federal court in Richmond, Va., government lawyers continue to argue in the case Yaser Esam Hamdi that he has no right to consult with a lawyer. The government is appealing a federal court's ruling to the contrary.
Hamdi, 22, a Saudi who served briefly with the Taliban, was a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay until interrogators found that he had been born in Louisiana and could plausibly claim American citizenship. He was shipped to a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., in April and has been held incommunicado in solitary since, with no access to a lawyer or the courts.
What due process?
The Bush administration asserts the right to hold him that way, without charge, indefinitely based solely on its finding that Hamdi was an illegal enemy combatant. That assertion, wartime or not, is a terrible repudiation of the basic American right of due process.
And in New York, lawyers are petitioning a federal district judge to be allowed to see their client, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, arrested in the United States as a material witness. He was supposedly plotting to set off a "dirty" bomb but he has never been charged with that or anything else.
In the Hamdi case, the administration argues that military decisions shouldn't be subject to judicial review. That would be fine if Hamdi was being held as a prisoner of war, but he's not.
In July, circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote that under the government's argument, "any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel on the government's say-so."
That would be a radical expansion of government power, and it is an expansion that should offend the very men who are championing it, President Bush and his attorney general, John Ashcroft.