“But does it open the door in the future for an abuse of power? That totally depends on how paranoid you are, but in my opinion as long as you don’t conspire with terrorists, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
First, our representative republic is based on paranoia. Power attracts the tyrannical. It is our system of checks and balances that distributes power and then incentivises the group to make sure no one among them gets more power than the others. Any effort to consolidate power should be met with paranoia for the history of tyrannts is far longer than the history of free societies.

Second, I take issue with your logic that if you don’t conspire with terrorists then you don’t have anything to worry about. This type of argument poisons the well in that you have taken the position that anyone who disagrees with the government’s position must be conspiring with terrorists. Perhaps this is not what you meant but it is the logic of your argument.

Beyond that, your argument falsely assumes two points. First, similar to poisoning the well, your argument implies that only those intending to break a law have a valid worry about the law’s text. This logic serves you well in arguing that Padilla case has, so far, been decided correctly. But what about when the law falls short and doesn’t meet your expectations? Since, according to your logic, only those intending to break a law have a stake in arguing about a law, then you’ve not only eliminated yourself from these discussions (assuming you don’t intend to break the law in question), but you’ve essentially argued in favor of putting the fox in charge of building the hen house.

Lastly, your argument implies that laws are inherently good and, therefore, the more we have the better off we are. Afterall, if only bad guys are affected by laws then how can laws be bad. Your position on this point, I presume, is more an argument of convenience rather than something you actually intend to carry to its ultimate conclusion. At least, I hope that’s the case.

Well here’s the gist of it.

Firefighters conducting a routine inspection in a Brooklyn supermarket found 200 automobile airbags and a room lined with posters of Osama bin Laden and beheadings in Iraq. An element in the airbags can be used to make pipe bombs. The owner of the building, according to the New York Post, ?served jail time in the late 1970s and early 1980s for arson, reckless endangerment, weapons possession and conspiracy, according to the records.?[1] But officials were definite: this has nothing to do with terrorism.
It doesn?t? What does it have to do with, then? Was this a local Rotary Club chapter that decided to sell pipe bombs as a fundraiser and thought that a few posters of Osama and Iraqi beheadings might liven things up?
Similarly, when explosions killed fifteen people and injured over 100 at an oil refinery in Texas City, Texas on March 23, 2005, the FBI quickly ruled out terrorism as a possible cause.[2] When a group calling itself Qaeda al-Jihad and another Islamic group both claimed responsibility, the FBI was still dismissive.[3] But then it came to light that investigators did not even visit the blast site until eight days after the explosions ? and eight days after they ruled out terrorism as a possibility. One more independent-minded investigator asked, ?How do you rule out one possibility when you don’t have any idea what the cause is??[4] Still later came the revelation that initial reports of a single blast were inaccurate: there were as many as five different explosions at the refinery.[5]

It may still be possible that these blasts were accidental, and that five distinct things went wrong at the refinery to cause five separate explosions at around the same time. And maybe there was no terrorist involvement. But how did the FBI know that before even investigating?

These are just two examples of a consistent pattern. Last Thursday, federal authorities revealed the revealed the existence of a three-state scam that enabled over two thousand illegal immigrants to get driver?s licenses. Michael Garcia, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, explained: ?With a valid driver?s license, you establish an identity. There?s no way to identify whether that identity is valid ? that you?re not on a terrorist watch list, that you?re not a criminal. It gives you a bona fide.? However, although he did not explain how he could be sure that no jihad terrorists obtained any of the fake licenses, he assured reporters that this case had no connection to terrorism.

Daniel Pipes has recently pointed out that denial and obfuscation of obvious terror-related cases has been going on for years.[6] He enumerates a number of telling examples, including these: when a Muslim named El Sayyid Nosair murdered Israeli political activist Meir Kahane in New York City on November 5, 1990, authorities ascribed the killing not to jihad but to Nosair?s depression.[7] On March 1, 1994 on the Brooklyn Bridge, a Muslim named Rashid Baz started shooting at a van filled with Hasidic boys, murdering one of them.[8] The FBI ascribed the shooting to ?road rage.?[9] On July 4, 2002, at the Los Angeles International Airport counter of El Al, the Israeli national airline, a Muslim named Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet started shooting at people. He killed two. The FBI initially said that ?there?s nothing to indicate terrorism.? However, after it came to light that Hadayet may have been involved with Al-Qaeda and was known for his hatred for Israel, the FBI finally did classify this as a terrorist act.[10]

[1] Murray Weiss and Rich Calder, ?Stash ?Bagged? at Market,? New York Post, April 27, 2005.
[2] Pam Easton, ?Terrorism Ruled Out in Oil Refinery Blast,? Associated Press, March 25, 2005.
[3] SITE Institute, ?Qaeda al-Jihad in the United States Claims Responsibility For Texas Refinery Bombing,? March 25, 2005; ?Terror cover-up in Texas City?,? WorldNetDaily.com, April 5, 2005.
[4] ?Terror cover-up in Texas City?,? WorldNetDaily.com, April 5, 2005.
[5] ?Multiple blasts struck refinery,? Associated Press, April 29, 2005.
[6] Daniel Pipes, ?Denying Terrorism,? New York Sun, February 8, 2005.
[7] Pipes, ?Denying Terrorism.?
[8] Uriel Heilman, ?Murder on the Brooklyn Bridge,? Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2001.
[9] Pipes, ?Denying Terrorism.?
[10] Daniel Pipes, ?Terror & Denial,? New York Post, July 9, 2002.

I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOU!

Now I am supposd hope I am not legally bound to tolerate the presance of those that wish me dead. We gurantee life first, then we persue happiness. And we do not have to tolerate those that wish us to live in fear. What the hell is an enemy combatant? Is he a vigilante, a soldier, a subversive, a spy, a terrorist, a religeous mercernary, a transient warmonger? Let the military handle them as they se fit as they are capturing them as well as fighting them and dying.

Who damn thinks our laws are supposed to subject us to danger or protect potential murderers. Are we to become to stupid to survive.

This article shows just a little example of what’s going on in this country. Law enforcement, the FBI and the CIA are looking the other way when there are pretty obvious terror attacks.

If we continue to do this–and continue to deny what’s going on, we’ll be living under sharia law.

Islam teaches that Muslims wage war to impose Islamic law on non Muslim states. American muslim groups are engaged in a huge coverup of Islamic doctrine and history. Today’s jihad terrorists have the same motives and goals as the muslims who fought the Crusaders.

And they’re converting guys like Padilla who are American born to perpetrate crimes against his own people.

Padilla has a hunk of bad stuff–evidence–against him. He wasn’t some innocent standing in a field picking daisies with a seeing eye dog. This is a dangerous guy who was trained in Afhganistan to kill people.

Are we to wait for him to succeed and then slap ourselves that we could have stopped him? I’d rather err on the side of caution.

Law abiding citizens who aren’t flying in and out of the country with the numbers of Al Qaeda members in their pocket and $10,000 in cash, with a history of training in bomb making have nothing to worry about.