Great headline

Balkinization:U.S. Government: You can't believe Padilla when he says we tortured him because he's crazy from all the things we did to him

EDIT:The day after I made this post I heard a story on NPR about the Padilla case. The story quoted an anonymous government official as saying that it would not be a bad thing if Padilla was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a Psychiatric prison because "the goal all along was to incapacitate him".

So we are dispensing punishment now before the trial, or really I guess I should say, in lieu of a trial (being as the government only charged Padilla after being smacked down by the courts). Even being a citizen is not a defense against being imprisoned without trial on vague ever changing charges and tortured until you are broken.

What happened to my country?

The Republicans have forgotten principles and so do things because they are expedient, the long term consequences to the Republic be damned! (Of course the Democrats have their own blind spots too). [sarcasm]I mean, those idiots that wrote the Bill of Rights certainly had no recent experience with an existential struggle so we can obviously cast them aside as out of date for the dangerous world we live in! [/sarcasm]