[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 28 (Thursday, March 10, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   RULING IN PADILLA CASE: A PROPER CHECK ON ATTEMPTED DENIAL OF DUE 
                                PROCESS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 10, 2005

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, terrorism must be fought, but we 
must resist the temptation to answer the extremism of terrorists with 
denials of the very principles the terrorists are attacking.
  That is why many of us have been so concerned about the way the 
Administration has dealt with two American citizens they identified as 
``enemy combatants.''
  Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that one, Yaser Hamdi, must be 
tried or released. But it found a technical reason to avoid a similar 
decision regarding the other, saying that the case had been brought in 
the wrong district court.
  Now the case has been renewed in the correct district court, and has 
brought a ruling that an editorial in the Rocky Mountain News says 
``dealt, one hopes, a fatal blow to the assertion of an unchecked 
presidential power to jail a citizen indefinitely and with no access to 
due process.''
  I share that hope.
  For the information of our colleagues, here is the complete text of 
the editorial:

              [From the Rocky Mountain News, Mar. 2, 2005]

                   Justice, Finally, for Jose Padilla

       The most egregious assertion of power in the Bush 
     administration's war on terror was the president's right to 
     jail any American indefinitely without trial. The president 
     merely had to designate that person an ``enemy combatant.'' 
     That unwelcome unilateral expansion of presidential 
     prerogatives was used only twice--on Yaser Esam Hamdi, a 
     U.S.-born Saudi; and Jose Padilla, an American petty 
     criminal.
       Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, sent to 
     Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then shipped to a Navy brig when 
     the feds learned he could claim U.S. citizenship. Last June, 
     the Supreme Court ruled that the administration had to either 
     try him or release him, and even though Hamdi, now 24, was 
     presumably so dangerous that he had to spend over two years 
     in solitary, the administration tamely sent him back to his 
     parents in Saudi Arabia on the grounds that he no longer had 
     any information to give.
       Padilla, now 34, wasn't so lucky. Even though an appeals 
     court had ruled that Padilla, too, should be tried or 
     released, the Supreme Court said his case should have been 
     filed in South Carolina instead of New York. Now a federal 
     judge in South Carolina, Henry Floyd, has ruled and dealt, 
     one hopes, a fatal blow to the assertion of an unchecked 
     presidential power to jail a citizen indefinitely and with no 
     access to due process--a judge, lawyer, habeas corpus, 
     charges, a trial, all the basic constitutional safeguards.
       ``The court finds that the president has no power, neither 
     express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to 
     hold petitioner as an enemy combatant,'' Floyd wrote.
       Well said.

                          ____________________