From the L.A. Times:

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.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.

Click here for the full article by Jonathan Turley, a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University. You'll need to register with latimes.com, but registration is free and the article is chillingly worth it. I'm very disturbed by the fact that time and time again our so-called leaders have used the excuse of war or national security to justify the suspension of our civil liberties. Odd. When last I checked the Constitution, there weren't any such provisions to make the President a dictator, somehow no longer restrained by the system of checks and balances that have held our Republic together for well over two hundreds years now. It seems to me that if the Founding Fathers had wanted such a clause, being the keen students of Classical History that they were, they would have written one in, just as the Romans had for their own Republic. But the Founders weren't stupid - they saw that Roman History was replete with incidents of citizens being given absolute power in times of crisis - the Roman Senate could appoint a dictator, whose authority was total but whose term of office was limited to six months - who then refused to step down from office. The idea of being able to limit absolute power must have seemed an attractive one, but as Lord Acton pointed out oh-so-eloquently (and originally in the context of the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrine of Papal infallibility, no less), "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

John Ashcroft is making J. Edgar Hoover look like a teddy bear, I'm horrified to say.