Quick Hit

As an exercise, try to guess where the following quote came from:

Pick your favorite constitutional amendment or right: its survival during the war on terror cannot be assumed if the legitimacy of these indefinite detentions [of enemy combatants] is sustained.

The actual answer may surprise you: the quote is from a report by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, which is considered fairly non-partisan as bar associations go.

The report, "Indefinite Detention of 'Enemy Combatants': Balancing Due Process and National Security in the Context of the War on Terror" [link], was issued in early February, but I haven't found many media sources that picked up on the report. Still, it's worth reading, particularly as the Supreme Court prepares to hear the cases of Yasser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla.

I was particularly struck by the last paragraph of the report, which reads as a good soundbite to refute the argument that times have changed and so must our conception of civil liberties:

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, as a Supreme Court justice once famously declared. But neither is it a mere compact of convenience, to be enforced only in times of civic tranquility. It should take far more than the monstrous brutality of a handful of terrorists to drive us to abandon our core constitutional values. We can effectively combat terrorism in the United States without jettisoning the core due process principles that form the essence of the rule of law underlying our system of government.

Insistence on the rule of law will not undermine our national security. Abandoning the rule of law will threaten our national identity.

Couldn't have said it better myself.