Balkin on Padilla

Jack Balkin on the timely (from the administration's point of view) indictment of Jose Padilla:

The Padilla case is a sobering lesson in how much leeway the President has to imprison and detain people for long periods of time in violation of the Constitution. The fact that the government's story about why Padilla was a threat has changed so frequently should give us pause the next time the government asserts that we should trust it when it rounds up U.S. citizens and claims the right to hold them indefinitely for our protection. Padilla may well be a very bad fellow, but we have a method of dealing with such bad fellows. It is called the rule of law, and we should not surrender it so readily merely because the President desires it.

It never ceases to amaze me that more people were not bothered by the Padilla case. It was a such a blatant abuse of power by the president. Essentially, he claimed the authority to imprison any American citizen for any desired duration without having to justify the imprisonment or bring charges against that citizen. Just slap the magic "enemy combatant" tag on someone and away they go. Apparently, this was OK with many Americans. The fact that what the government finally accused Padilla of has nothing to do with why he was supposedly arrested in the first place just shows how this claimed power can be abused. Imagine if Richard Nixon had had that power.