Constitution? We don’t need no stinkin’ Consitution

How do Republicans live with themselves these days?  Seriously?  Complete and massive denial of reality?  Capitulation of all decent values in order to support the torturer-in-chief?  I'm especially curious how all the conservative Christians reconcile Jesus' message (he didn't spend a lot of time preaching against gays) with this pro-torture administration.  Anyway, thanks to Kevin Drum for highlighting this Bruce Ackerman column which concisely sums up the problems with the Republican bill to deal with suspected terrorists:

The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House,
authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy
combatants, even if they have never left the United States….It also
allows him to seize anybody who has “purposefully and materially
supported hostilities against the United States.” This grants the
president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be
designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a
Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military
prison.

Not to worry, say the bill's defenders. The president can't detain
somebody who has given money innocently, just those who contributed to
terrorists on purpose.

Get that?  United States citizens can be arrested and held without the right to prove they have been unjustly imprisoned.  This is not America!  This is the sort of practice of every totalitarian regime that has ever existed.  This could not be a more disturbing and blatant undermining of core American values.  I believe there is a word for a leader who can imprison his citizens on his own say-so and keep them their indefinitely: dictator.