Jose Padilla may not know it yet, but his case could be a watershed in the battle between civil libertarians and the Administration over antiterrorism policies. Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil and accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb, has been held incommunicado as an "enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina for 19 months and has been denied access to a lawyer or relatives. An appellate panel in New York ruled, 2 to 1, that the President has no authority to hold him as an enemy combatant indefinitely and without counsel. If he...
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