Can The President Now Legally Send A Senator To Gitmo?

I think so.

I believe I am correct in thinking that a "proper" military tribunal or other court able to decide on whether American citizens can be shanghaied under the detainee bill only has to be approved by Congress once. Certainly law professor Marty Lederman thinks so.

If so, then given an approval for an easy test case on some guy like Padilla, that same court can then continue to blithely designate other Americans to be "enemy combatants" and its off to Gitmo they go. Its legal, the law is there now. NYTimes journalists, leaking whistleblowers, liberal bloggers - the lot.

In fact, given the uber-right's penchant for calls of Dem "traitors" and "aiding the terrorists", how long do you think it will be before the ominous phrase "purposefully and materially supporting hostilities" is deliberately used by some puppet pundit or administration official to describe a Dem Senator or Congressman who speaks up against any part of Bush's plans?

Our political leaders have presided over passing a bill that allows the President to put any one of them in the Gulag, no arguments and no appeals - and it would all be legal! Sure, there would be an outcry from the Left but that's all - the GOP aren't going to turn around and demand that Bush return someone detained legally as an "enemy combatant" in the war in terror and it isn't the kind of thing likely to start a civil war, as Germans of the 30's will attest.

Not just Bush, by the way - any President. Suppose Hilary were next, how safe would Hastert or Frist feel?

Although to be honest, I figure the odds of there actually being elections in '08 are now about 50% and dropping fast. Perhaps Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx) had it right last year when he warned that Bush is setting the U.S. up for martial law, using whatever happens to be the most convenient excuse. Rep. Paul was one of the few Republicans who voted against the detainee bill and I salute him for that.