There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.
They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
So now a thoroughly and unabashedly uninformed Congress has given its seal of approval to the White House’s terror detainee plan with the passage of a federal law that begins to harden into legal doctrine most of what President Bush has sought all along in the legal war on terrorism. The so-called GOP "compromise" that was much ballyhooed last week turns out to be a fraud. So was all the talk about the legislators taking their time this time to understand the complex issues involved and to give us a long-term solution to this problem. They gave us a "solution" all right. It’s just the wrong solution.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/09/28/legal_residents_rights_curbed_in_detainee_bill/
“…changes made over the weekend during negotiations between the White House and key Republicans in Congress go even further, making it legal for noncitizens inside the United States to be detained indefinitely, without access to the court system, until the “war on terror” is over.
It is unclear who initiated the changes…
The White House did not respond to questions asking why the restriction was extended to people in the United States.”