Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber" has finally been indicted, ending the Bush administration's strange effort to detain an American citizen on American soil indefinitely without charge.

Bloody well about time. This should have happened years ago (literally!).

It seems that, having lost in every single court, and facing the prospect of a charge-him-or-free-him deadline and an inevitable loss in the Supreme Court, Bush blinked.

All Americans should be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Had the administration won, it would effectively mean that any American citizen could be detained for any period of time without being charged with a crime and (potentially) without access to a lawyer. All that would be required would be a determination that the individual is an "enemy combatant," a designation which is not defined anywhere in our laws, and which requires no evidence, no trial, no judge, no hearing, and indeed nothing more than the President's say-so.

To say that such a system is ripe for abuse is putting it mildly. Maybe you trust the current President to only designate true enemies as "enemy combatants," but do you trust the next President? Or the one after that? Or the one after that?

I've written about this case many times in the past: Why the Jose Padilla Case Is Important, and The System Works! are the two biggies.