Simply Politics & News

[StephanieVanbryce]

The White House Warden

Congress may give the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat.

By Bruce Ackerman, BRUCE ACKERMAN is a professor of law and political science at Yale and author of "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism."
September 28, 2006


BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,1,1031691.story?track=rss