Basically the ridiculous Hamdi decision, in which the court invented an entirely new system of evaluating executive detentions out of thin air based on a vauge authorization for the use of force, is combined here with the obvious conclusion that once you are an enemy combatant, you are always an enemy combatant insofaras the conflict is ongoing.

The result is that the entire Constitution magically unravels before your eyes. The executive needs to be able to use the military without a declaration of War, so Congress authorizes the use of force. This use of force involves actual battles. The executive needs to be able to capture people on the battle field. The executive needs to be able to detain those people while the conflict is going on. This conflict will go on indefinately. If a combatant makes it from the battlefield back to America they are still a combatant and the executive still may need to detain them.

The potential for abuse here is absolutely unlimited. The executive need merely assert that an individual was on the battlefield and they may be detained with absolutely no oversite, with the exception of a quick military tribunal where guilt is presumed. The detainee would presumably have to prove that he or she was not on the battlefield, without any access to any means of doing so.

The fact is that this line of reasoning cannot be acceptable, because the Constitution does, in fact, impose limits on the power of the executive, and this perspective does not.

I see three options:
1. Constitutional Crisis.
2. Congress acts NOW to clarify that they did not authorize this kind of detention, and creates an actual, workable framework for dealing with domestic terrorists, thereby saving the issue.
3. The Supreme Court finds some reason to disagree with this analysis.

I'm predicting the later. I think the court will decide that location IS relevent for military detentions. Someone detained on a battlefield was clearly on a battlefield. Someone who wasn't detained on a battlefield may not have been on a battlefield, and the risk of doing military detentions in that context is too great. The military should be forced to demonstrate to a court that the individual was on a battlefield beyond a reasonable doubt before they can be turned over to the military system.

Of course, the objection here is the possibility that if given a lawyer the suspect might use that lawyer to communicate messages while in prison. I think there are better ways to control this scenario then doing away with Constitutional rights. Its one of those vauge risks that people asking for law enforcement power always raise without ever being required to specifically articulate and defend.

If I was captured by the military and I wanted to communicate a message to compatriots I could do this through my captors in nearly the same way I would do it through a lawyer ... By convincing my captors to investigate particular things based on information I give them. If my operatives haven't seen me for a while and patsy one gets arrested, do X. If my operatives haven't seen me and patsy two gets arrested, do Y. Any procedures interrogators might employ to reasonably prevent themselves from being used in such a matter can also be employed by attorneys dealing with this kind of suspect.

The Volokh Conspiracy - The Military Detention Case:

A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.

Sweet! Kiss your checks and balances goodbye!

Court Rules U.S. Can Indefinitely Detain Citizens

The default reaction to the Rave bust in Utah from a number of people has been of the form "blah, blah, Republicans, blah, blah, Bush, blah, blah, Police State." This is more then a little annoying. Raves have been targetted federally by a bipartisan coallition led by Democrats. Yes, Virginia, Democrats have jack boots too.

In 2002 Democratic senators Biden, Leahy, and Durbin along with Republicans Grassley and Hatch proposed the Rave Act of 2002. Biden was the primary sponsor.

This law included a findings section, essentially a list of justifications, which is basically a collection of paranoid rantings that have little or no connection to reality. For example:

Many rave promoters go to great lengths to try to portray their events as alcohol-free parties that are safe places for young adults to go to dance with friends, and some even go so far as to hire off-duty, uniformed police officers to patrol outside of the venue to give parents the impression that the event is safe.

There is no way they might actually have a legitimate interest in hiring security guards!

Because rave promoters know that Ecstasy causes the body temperature in a user to rise and as a result causes the user to become very thirsty, many rave promoters facilitate and profit from flagrant drug use at rave parties or events by selling over-priced bottles of water and charging entrance fees to 'chill-rooms' where users can cool down.

You'd think maybe people who were dancing at an all night party would, you know, not want to drink a lot of alcohol, need bottles of water, and want to chill out, irrespective of whether or not they were on drugs, wouldn't you? Furthermore, I've been to a LOT of raves and I have never ever seen a separate fee charged for access to a chill room!

Apparently Leahy and Durbin dropped their cosponsorship, possibly when they started getting angry faxes. But Biden pushed on. He was joined by Presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and everyone's favorite Democratic Senator, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The thing was rolled up into s.151, an omnibus protect the children law that, among many other things, calls for 2-4 year prison terms for anyone who puts sexually explicit material on a "misleading" internet domain name. It is now law.

Now, yeah, people do drugs at Raves. Some aspects of the rave culture are drug related. However, the same thing can be said of any pop culture in the past 50-80 years including Rock, Jazz, HipHop, etc... These laws don't target drugs specifically. They target Raves. They specifically target culture.

When I left Atlanta in the late 90s there was a vibrant rave culture in the city with a real community that corrdinated online and threw parties. Its completely gone. There is nothing left but a few high priced clubs that play similar music. This website stub is all thats left of a once vibrant mailing list of people who threw parties on a regular basis that I participated in for years. The police wiped it out. They wiped out a culture. They did it with strong support from the Democrats.

FOXNews.com - Views - Straight Talk - Raving Lunacy

Rattle wrote:

Krick of Evol Intent offers a firsthand account of the events that took place at a party that he was scheduled to play August 20th in Utah. The event was fully licensed, fully legal, and non-violent. Halfway through the party, authorities arrived in full riot gear and ended the event like a full-scale riot (tear gas, attack dogs, and assault rifles).

This link to the video being shot on the stage at the point the show was shutdown appears too be working.

More details about this are desired...

Google news has some coverage. So does Wikinews. Mostly the police seem to be loosing the early PR battle on this one. I imagine the video is the reason why. Also the blogosphere is putting the information in front of a lot of eyes who wouldn't otherwise see it.

For years police in various communities have played the "tear gas and riot gear" approach to shutting raves down, and mostly the press has ignored the rumor mill of drugged out teenagers in favor of the perspectives of the local soccer moms. This time there is proof and alternative media. Its really hard to say that it makes sense to send people into a party dressed like Marines. The tactic is obviously designed to intimidate people. I hope they find the backlash similarly intimidating.

RE: Post RAVE act, post PATRIOT act America | MetaFilter

It took less than two hours after the bombing attempts in London's transit system on Thursday for the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, to decide to begin random checks of passengers' bags in the city's mass transit system. But he said Friday that his decision had been nearly a year and a half in the making.

Mr. Kelly said he started to focus more closely on the vulnerabilities of the city's transit system in February 2004, after a deadly explosion in the Moscow underground... But Mr. Kelly, who has long thought that searches would be necessary in the transit system, said he realized that the measure might be seen as invasive. The time, he said, wasn't right until Thursday.

"The reality is, you need an event such as London for people to realize this is a procedure put in place for their safety," Mr. Kelly said during an hourlong interview in his office at 1 Police Plaza. "Searches are intrusive. The issue is what the public will accept. You still need an event to get public support."

This is an interesting datapoint. I'll save the cynical commentary.

Time Is Right for Searches, Police Official Tells New Yorkers - New York Times

President Bush said on Wednesday that he has chosen Stewart Baker, one of Washington's most influential technology lawyers, to be assistant secretary of homeland security for policy.

Former NSA lawyer, Clipper Advocate, runs Patriotdebates.com...

Bush picks tech lawyer for homeland security post - Government & Law - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

Days beforehand, I had made an internal report of unethical and apparently illegal behavior by the company: Use of open proxies for web harvesting to avoid blockage by web site operators. HMS apparently decided that working with me to address their use of open proxies was not an option.

Health Market Science is a large corporation with, compared to me, effectively infinite resources. My legal bills have topped $40K already over just two months. If HMS succeeds in tarring me with their false accusations, what's to stop your employer or client from doing the same to you, should your relationship sour?

Slashdot | Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that she would "support federal legislation that would outlaw flag desecration, much like laws that currently prohibit the burning of crosses, but I don't believe a constitutional amendment is the answer."

I have a rant about this matter that I will deliver if this effort is successful. For the time being I'm holding my touge because I think this is a bunch of political grandstanding and this won't actually come to pass.

My cynical perspective on Clinton's comment above is that she is opposed to the amendment, but she doesn't have the guts to come out and clearly explain why. Cross burning is not prohibited by law, nor can it be. Intimidation is prohibited by law. Burning a cross in order to intimidate people is illegal in several states and those laws have been upheld when carefully applied.

Is Hillary asking for a ban on flag burning in the context where it is used to intimidate? One could certainly imagine such a context, were a violent islamist group to burn a flag while chanting "death to the infidels." However, this isn't really what this is about. In fact, almost no one burns flags in the U.S. When it happens it is usually an expression of frustration with the system rather then a threat of violence against the people. Is American Recordings attempting to intimidate you? Was Johnny Cash anti-american?

Intimidation isn't really what this is about, and Hillary knows that. Thats is why I see this comment as an attempt to avoid discussing a matter which I feel is vital to our identity as a nation.

This is a grave decision we face. Choose wisely.

House Passes Constitutional Amendment to Ban Flag Burning

Sen. Hillary Clinton, that weathervane of modern Democratic Party politics, complained about video games in March: "Probably one of the biggest complaints I've heard is about some of the video games, particularly 'Grand Theft Auto,' which has so many demeaning messages about women and so encourages violent imagination and activities and it scares parents."

It's no surprise, then, that Clinton and other like-minded senators (Democrat Joe Lieberman, Republican Rick Santorum) are behind a bill to spend $90 million in tax dollars on a study looking at the "impact" of video games and other "electronic media" on minors.

I just don't understand what the hell the Democratic party's "position" on the First Amendment is. On the one hand, they handily defend the National Endowment for the Arts when they use my money to make publically available works that some people find offensive, and yet on the other hand they stand opposed to allowing ME to use my money to consume something they find offensive in the privacy of my own home! When prominent Dems like Clinton line up with the fundamentalists on the wrong side of the first amendment they provide a clear counterpoint to those who think Democrats are good guys. If you support big government and legislated morality you're not a liberal, you're an authoritarian.

But, of course, it sure works politically. People in this country don't beleive in freedom. They vote to take things away from other people, not because they want to be left alone. They vote to prevent gay people from getting married or to prevent poor people from owning guns or to prevent teenagers from playing video games. We talk a lot about freedom in this country but we don't actually care for it.

What's behind the video game witch hunt? | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips.The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.

This is interesting.

House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules