East coast, west coast, all around the US

In what can only be hoped is a one-two punch against the Bush administration, hard on the heels of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in New York that Jose Padilla must be charged in a civilian court or released, the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco has ruled that the 660 "enemy combatants" being held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base should have access to lawyers and the courts.

"Even in times of national emergency indeed, particularly in such times it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike," Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in ruling in favor of a Libyan captured in Afghanistan and held in Cuba. ...

The administration maintains that because the 660 men confined there were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land, they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial.

But Reinhardt ruled: "We cannot simply accept the government's position that the executive branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access to counsel, regardless of the length or manner of their confinement."

The decision also comes less than a week after Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Maria Cantwell, (D-WA) visited Guantanamo and followed up with a pointed letter to Donald Rumsfeld, saying that the continued indefinite detention of those held there violated basic human rights. Try them or send them back to their home countries, the Senators wrote.

Maybe, just maybe, Andrew Cohen was right. Maybe the tide is turning. We can at least hope.

Translations Dept.: When they say

The Justice Department this week said such a classification [as an "enemy combatant"] allows detainees to be held without access to lawyers until U.S. authorities are satisfied they have disclosed everything they know about terrorist operations,

they mean

"They are guilty until proven innocent. They can have lawyers after they confess and spill their guts. Or after we in our sole discretion decide they don't actually know anything, however long that takes. In either event, after we're done with them."