Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision: Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace. Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

My, you go on vacation for a week, and all the loons break out.

I have absolutely no problems believing that our Lord High Minister of Injustice would do this. Internment camps for citizens are precisely the sort of thing that would appeal to his narrow, little mind.

Unfortunately, LA Times and Common Dreams aside, I can't actually find one single solitary comment, one single solitary textual citation to the fact that Ashcroft actually said that. According to Turley, sometime between July 31 and August 14, when the editorial appeared, Ashcroft said ... something. He doesn't quote the man, he doesn't give a date or a time, he doesn't say anything. I know full well that Turley's piece was commentary and not an actual news article, but you'd think that in a commentary piece that provocative, the LA Times editors would bounce back to him and say, "Source this. We need actual quotes. What did the man say, and when did he say it?" I've searched both alltheweb and Google, I searched directly in the NY Times, SFGate and tried the Washington Post (its search engine is down), I searched directly in the LA Times itself (and might I add that the people writing Letters to the Editor about that editorial are a scary lot themselves), I've used every applicable keyword I could think of, and there's just NOTHING.

Assuming that Ashcroft did indeed say such a thing ... I know the press is still somewhat in "roll me over, lay me down, kick me again" mode, but why haven't they reported on this? Why isn't anyone saying ANYTHING?

Having said that, I note that Justice is conceding that it essentially has no legally supportable reason to hold Jose Padilla, and yet it continues to do so anyway. So, frankly, it's not at all hard to believe that Ashcroft thinks that internment camps for citizens are just fine and dandy.

Hey, maybe with a little luck, he'll institute prison camps for song swappers. (Really, Congress should be ashamed of itself for this one. And Feinstein needs a good bitchslappin'. Surely Justice has one or two better things to do with its time. Like putting everyone into prisons without justification. Telling Congress to go screw itself when it tries to exercise its proper oversight powers.)

INS will begin fingerprinting "higher risk visiting aliens" on September 11. (I think I would tell all nonwhite peoples planning to visit the US anytime soon to avoid this country during September. Getting in will be ugly.) And the head of INS is leaving. There's an agency with a firm hand on what it's supposed to be doing these days, eh?