Jose Padilla, center, is escorted to a waiting police vechicle by federal marshals in this Jan. 5, 2006, file photo. He has been on trial in Miami for most of this year, charged with conspiring with al Qaeda to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. Photo by J. Pat Carter, AP

On Thurday August 16 2007 A federal jury convicted Jose Padilla of three counts of conspiracy in a trial that was the culmination of five years of a criminal proceeding that is among the most shameful in the history of the United States justice system.

I am not an apologist for Jose Padilla, I belong to no "Free Jose" organizations nor am I a member of any "Jose Padilla defense funds," although maybe I should have been, maybe we all should have been because when they throw away the keys to Padilla's cell we will also throw away any pretense to being a nation of laws, a nation that respects human rights, we will throw away a large measure of what once made us a great and civilized nation.

I am also not a terrorist, nor am I a member of any terrorist organization and that declaration alone, in the modern, mandatory, cocoon of fear within which we are now required to live by governmental decree, is probably enough to have a tap placed on my phone and a couple of guys who look like the Blues Brothers parked in front of my house at odd hours. After all, if I have nothing to hide, why would I bring it up. Under the new Department of Justice rule book I must be indictable for something.

Jose Padilla was arrested over five years ago in May of 2002, picked up in Chicago after returning  from Europe and allegedly carrying over 10 grand in cash. He was held for  about a month as a material witness before Attorney General John Ashcroft delayed a trip to Moscow in order to announce that the US had discovered a plot to explode "dirty bombs" inside the country. Padilla was branded as the "Dirty Bomber" and George Bush declared him to be an illegal enemy combatant.

Note: Originally posted here.

Jose Padilla, as you may know, is an American citizen detained by the Bush Administration for being an enemy combatant. He was aggressively treated/tortured, and since then he's been using the legal system to fight back (in his first two years of incarceration, he didn't have access to a lawyer).

How the courts treat Padilla will set a precedent on future hearings, and may even have an impact on the Anti-Habeas Corpus bill that was passed before the November elections. So it's in the Bush Administration's best interests to "nip this thing in the bud" as soon as possible.

When Dick Cheney was in Congress representing Wyoming he voted against a resolution calling for the release from a South African prison of Nelson Mandela.  That vote is consistent with his activities in the Cheney-Bush Junta.  With the aid of a submissively cooperative Congress, Cheney has used his position as acting prime minister as a bully pulpit to destroy constitutional liberties.

It was Dick Cheney who took the unprecedented step of traveling to the CIA to pressure operatives to make a strong case for war against Iraq.  He has recently been cited for his efforts to remove restrictions that have been in place for years for the military in interrogating prisoners, calling for greater latitude in the use of torture.

The Senate's shameful 49-42 vote on Thursday, November 10, to remove access to federal courts challenging the captivity of detainees in federal courts was an effort to reverse a landmark Supreme Court decision in the war on terror.  The vote prompted focus on the case of Jose Padilla, who was arrested on May 8, 2002 and has been held as an "enemy combatant" for the ensuing three and a half years in a South Carolina brig without any charges being filed against him.