>
> But what do we do about people like Padilla? He's not a
> "criminal" (per se): he hasn't committed a crime. So he
> can't be charged and tried. But they are _absolutely
> convinced_ that he would commit one.
Unless the U.S. police agencies have got some kind of technical mind reading apparatus, whatever so strongly convinced the Feds that this particular Mr. Padilla is the Tennessee Twister O' Terror himself must be either a.) all on his lonesome he was carrying out hard preparations for some ghastly deed of mass destruction ("the fiend! he was _that close!_ when we busted into his garage he only had one more wedge of high-explosive left to fabricate before his home-made plutonium implosion bomb was ready for detonation!") or b.) he was spied upon while chit-chatting with sympathetic friends about his desire, conviction, and at least the vague outline of a plan to inflict terrorism upon us infidels in Amrika, or both. a.) is obviously actionable right on the face of it; b.) is well-covered by the statues concerning criminal conspiracy.
What I'm saying is, if the Justice Department's prosecution of Padilla makes any sense at all (i.e. if it isn't just a publicity stunt) he _has_ committed a crime. Or rather, the evidence of whatever he is accused of _is_ adequate to justify indicting him on criminal charges. So why then, in order to deal with the Padilla problem, would we need to create some brand-new legal category of punishable infamy, midway between crime and war? Why can't we simply shackle this ultra-fiend extra-tight and drag him off to trial before an ordinary court of law, the same inveterate mechanism that has been successfully used by prosecutors to send another two million American miscreants off to American jails?
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net