The great thing about our system of government is that, even if it takes a few years, abuses of power eventually get corrected .

Protestations from the Bush administration aside, anyone with a smidgen of background in constitutional law could have foreseen this ruling.

I mean, seriously, if the Bill of Rights means anything at all, it means (at the very least) that an American citizen can't be held indefinitely without charge, trial, or access to a lawyer in America. Most would argue that it goes well beyond that.

The real question is, what were they smoking when they decided to even attempt to get away with this?

Bad Law, Bad Politics
Indefinite detention without charge isn't just unconstitutional, it could drive a wedge between two branches of the Republican party.

On the one hand, there are the "Law and Order" conservatives, as well as the religious conservatives. These people lie somewhere on the spectrum between indifference and approval for this kind of detention.

On the other hand, there are the libertarians and the "Get Government Out Of Our Lives" conservatives. For these people, detaining someone without charge or a lawyer is about as un-American as you can get.

This wedge comes on top of the wedge Bush has been driving between the fiscal conservatives and other mainstream Republicans with his exploding deficits.

(as an aside, I would group myself with both the fiscal conservatives and the "Get Government Out Of Our Lives" conservatives. So I'm doubly disenfranchised by Our President)

If a Democratic candidate can position himself as (a) the candidate of balanced budgets, and (b) the candidate of limited government power, then he could appeal very strongly to a big chunk of the Republican base.

Why isn't Karl Rove more worried about this?