Bush Accused by Lords of the Bar
They Put Him in a Legal Black Hole
by Nat Hentoff

No citizen shall be . . . detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress. —18 U.S.C. 4001 (a) a law passed by Congress in 1971

The [president's] constitutional argument [in the case of Jose Padilla] would give every President the unchecked power to detain, without charge and forever, all citizens it chooses to label as "enemy combatants." —friend-of-the-court brief, Padilla v. Rumsfeld, by the Cato Institute, the Center for National Security Studies, the Constitution Project, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, People for the American Way, and the Rutherford Institute.

Ignored by most media, an array of prominent federal judges, government officials, and other members of the legal establishment has joined in a historic rebellion against George W. Bush's unprecedented and unconstitutional arrogance of power that threatens the fundamental right of American citizens to have access to their lawyers before disappearing indefinitely into military custody without charges, without seeing an attorney or anyone except their guards.
[...]

While the rest of the media failed to vigorously ring the liberty bell on Padilla v. Rumsfeld, The New York Observer came through with Greg Sargent's front-page August 11 story, "Bush's Tactics in Terror Case Called Illegal." It focused on the brief by the former judges, government officials, and renowned lawyers alarmed by the president's bypassing of the Constitution. Quoted was Harold Tyler, a former federal judge, and deputy attorney general under President Gerald Ford, who brought him in to cleanse the Justice Department after Watergate:

"They should charge this man if they've got something against him. And they should give him the right to counsel. These are all constitutional rights. . . . I have been a longtime Republican, but I'm a disenchanted Republican in this case."

The amicus brief he and the other members of the establishment bar signed declares: "Throughout history totalitarian regimes have attempted to justify their acts by designating individuals as 'enemies of the state' who were unworthy of any legal rights or protections. These tactics are no less despicable, and perhaps even more so, when they occur in a country that purports to be governed by the rule of law." And George W. Bush regularly intones his allegiance to "the rule of law."
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  thanks to Information Clearing House