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Posted By: Joann

Ted - I don't exactly pride myself in being a law student. Right now it feels a little more like a status I am stuck with! I've put too much into it to turn back, but have a long ways to go.

As to the logical argument, here goes. Yes, FDR interred the Japanese-Americans during World War II. However, this is seen as a low point in both application of war powers and sanctity of constitutional rights in the US. It happened, but there is a collective national embarassment about it. So I don't think it's a good poster child for justifying Bush's current actions.

There is even some thinking that Lincoln was wrong to suspend habeas corpus although much less than with FDR as described above. I'm not sure how you could conduct a Civil War and retain habeas.

More importantly, though, both of those instances involved traditional warfare in which the enemy was a known country or armed force, with uniforms and territory to take. Imprisonment was going to end when the hostilities ended, and in traditional warfare the war usually ends with a definable act - surrender, taking over the land of the opposition, etc.

The "War on Terror" is almost a euphenism in the same manner as the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. Who, exactly, is the enemy? And more important to the discussion of a president claiming war powers and suspending civil liberties, how will we know when it's over? Who will declare victory? When will it be okay to stop eavesdropping on American citizens? When will the government no longer have the right to get your library or book-buying records without your knowledge, and with no warrants or even ascertainable reason to need them? Bush has never even attempted to describe what an end to the "war" would look like.

The question of what exactly the war is, and what specifically will define the end, are very important when a president is claiming "war powers" to suspend important citizen rights. Since Bush is loosely using the term "war" to claim very substantial "war powers", at minimum he is responsible to define what the war is, when it will end, and carefully limit the scope of his suspensions. Neither FDR nor Lincoln faced such a loosely defined conflict.

Bottom line: Bush's assault on the constitution is far more widespread in the breadth of the rights he is eroding, the much larger net he is throwing in terms of people affected, and the undefined ... undefinable! ... length of time for which he intends to keep these rights compromised. He claims the unimpeded right to listen in on a phone conversation between two American citizens both located within the US. That is far removed from FDR targeting an ethnicity or Lincoln suspending a very particular right in a very particular instance for a defined (at least by event) length of time.

So Ted ... you may not find it persuasive, but I believe it is at least logical. And I still consider you a great guy and walking T206 encyclopedia - despite our obvious political differences.

J