DGDevin wrote:

The Bush administration decided it could listen to your phone calls
and read your e-mails without a court order, or declare a citizen an
enemy combatant and lock him up indefinitely without a trial, did you
make a peep of protest about that? But now you're incensed that the
Dems passed a law requiring you to have health insurance in the way
you already need auto insurance, and you're echoing Sharon Angle/Tea
Party claptrap that if the ballots don't work, then maybe it's time
for bullets. This cracks me up, democracy works only if your side
wins, otherwise sedition suddenly becomes a virtue, three cheers for
Tim McVeigh. What hogwash.

First, it wasn't just Bush.

Governments have been listening in on enemy communications since The Recent
Unplesantness when both Union and Confederate forces tapped their
adversaries telegraph lines.

Even before that, governments were intercepting enemy couriers carrying
hand-written military orders.

If you have a problem with snooping on enemy communications (without a
warrant?), then you would have objected to our breaking the Japanese
'Purple' code or the British building a decoding machine to replicate the
German Enigma device.

Second, enemy combatants do not get trials. The 6th Amendment states: "In
all CRIMINAL prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy
trial..." Only CRIMINALS get trials, and combatants, either lawful or
unlawful, are not criminals. The 6th Amendment goes on to say "... by an
impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed..." So, an enemy combatant captured in Afghanistan would be tried,
according to you, exactly where?

There are a great number of occasions where people get locked up without
trials: Civil contempt, juveniles, carriers of contagion, mental health
patients, illegal immigrants, material witnesses, and so on. Included in
this list are enemy combatants (think POWs).

Bottom line: Only criminals are entitled to a trial and enemy combatants are
NOT criminals. (They don't get indictments, lawyers, witnesses, etc.
either.)