Judge orders Padilla charged or released

From AP:

In a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration, a federal judge ruled the case of "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla is a matter for law enforcement not the military and ordered the government to charge him or let him go.

Padilla's more than 2 1/2 years in custody, most of it spent in a Navy brig, don't seem closer to an end, however, because Justice Department spokesman John Nowacki said the government will appeal the ruling.

U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd in Spartanburg, S.C., ruled Monday that the government can not hold Padilla indefinitely as an "enemy combatant," a designation President Bush gave him in 2002. The government views Padilla as a militant who planned attacks on the United States, including with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.

Floyd wrote in his 23-page opinion that to rule in favor of the government "would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition," it would be a "betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

Floyd, appointed by Bush in 2003, gave the administration 45 days to take action.

Your government wants to appeal the ruling that it is required to uphold the constitution. Rather than do what the court says, they will continue to argue that Padilla, and by extension you and me, have no rights whatsoever against indefinite detention. What a bunch of Nazis. Thankfully at least some of their lackies, like Judge Floyd, still possess consciences.