--- "W. Kiernan" <wkiernan at ij.net> wrote:
> Jordan Hayes wrote:
> >
> > 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
>
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