I spotted this over at IntelDump. I've been dropping by there for a couple of months now and it seems like a reputable sight.
Anyway, it looks like the Department of Justice is gearing up for a possible loss in the two Supreme Court cases (Padilla and GITMO). This was origanally picked it up at Slate. Read for your selves. Sorry if someone already posted. I did a search and did not find a previous posting.
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June 9 - Justice Department lawyers, fearing a crushing defeat before the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few weeks, are scrambling to develop a conventional criminal case against "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla that would charge him with providing "material support" to Al Qaeda, NEWSWEEK has learned.
The prospective case against Padilla would rely in part on material seized by the FBI in Afghanistan--principally an Al Qaeda "new applicant form" that, authorities said, the former Chicago gang member filled out in July 2000 to enter a terrorist training camp run by Osama bin Laden's organization.
But officials acknowledge that the charges could well be difficult to bring and that none of Padilla's admissions to interrogators--including an apparent confession that he met with top Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and agreed to undertake a terror mission--would ever be admissible in court.
Even more significant, administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention--that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological "dirty bomb"--has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used against him in court.
The reassessments of Padilla come amid a growing sense of gloom within Justice that the Supreme Court is likely to rule decisively against the Bush administration not just in the Padilla case but in two other pivotal cases in the war on terror: one involving the detention of another "enemy combatant," Yasir [Hamdi], and another involving the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the Padilla and Hamdi cases, the administration is arguing it has the right to hold the two U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial. In the Guantanamo case, the administration argues that foreign nationals being interrogated there there do not have the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
Lawyers within the Justice Department are now bracing for defeat in both the enemy-combatant and Guantanamo cases, both of which are expected to be decided before the Supreme Court ends its term at the end of the month, according to one conservative and politically well-connected lawyer. "They are 99 percent certain they are going to lose," said the lawyer, who asked not to be identified. "It's a very sobering realization."
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Not that the case itself is really news: its a no brainer. I just never guessed the people working with Ashcroft would ever be willing to acknowledge this up front. I'll be interested to see how this plays out in the arena of public opinion. I always feel a pange of horror when I think about the liberties GW and the boys are taking with my liberties. But I also know there are a lot of folks who seem to be comforted by the loss of civil liberties in uncertain times. It seems like everytime I turn on the news another wild card gets tossed into this election cycle.
Cheers
