coming from presidential critics right now, is the mixture of signals from the activist media regarding the Military Commissions Act signed by Bush last Tuesday.Friday night, on Bill Maher's Real Time, Maher indicated that, as the result of the so-called "Detainee" bill (aka the Military Commissions Act) passed by Congress on September 28th, we could all get tossed into prison indefinitely without recourse according to the whim of the President. Maher panelist Representative Barney Frank seemingly seconded Maher's opinion. A September 30th New York Times article quoted Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, as saying that the bill "allows the administration to declare even a U.S. citizen an unlawful combatant subject to indefinite detention."An All Things Considered piece on NPR broadcast on September 29th by Ari Shapiro, titled, "Bill Lets U.S. Citizens Be Held as Enemy Combatants," attempts to parse the distinctions between the treatment of non-citizens and citizens who are declared "enemy combatants." Bradford Berenson, a former White House lawyer for the current President Bush, is quoted as saying, "U.S. citizens can be detained as enemy combatants if they take up arms on the side of al-Qaida. But they get some extra judicial protections in that case." Shapiro comments, "The legislation that Congress passed does not say enemy combatants are people who 'take up arms on the side of al-Qaida.' The bill instead refers to people who provide 'material support' to the enemy. The language of the bill says that is the standard for both citizens and non-citizens."In a September 29th discussion on Amy Goodman's popular lefty broadcast show, Democracy Now , Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, "what it gives him [the President] is the power... to detain any person anywhere in the world, citizen or non-citizen, whether living in the United States or anywhere else. I mean, what kind of authority is that? No checks and balances. Nothing." But Ratner does acknowledge, "Now, if you're a citizen, you still get your right of habeas corpus."Over on the right, on Instapundit , Glenn Reynolds reassured that, "I've seen some people calling this an abolition of habeas corpus, but as I understand it, habeas is suspended only with regard to non-citizens. This removes a key danger of abuse, since the potential politically-motivated abuses that are most worrisome involve U.S. citizens, not aliens."Reynolds also pointed to a piece by Jack Balkin on Balkinization , that analyzes what aspects of the bill apply to US citizens. Balkin, according to Reynolds, shows that, "the habeas-stripping procedures only apply to aliens, but other provisions regarding unlawful combatants may apply to U.S. citizens."Drifting further from the mainstream, on October 4th on the Information Clearing House site , Chris Floyd wrote, "It was a dark hour indeed last Thursday when the United States Senate voted to end the constitutional republic and transform the country into a Leader-State, giving the president and his agents the power to capture, torture and imprison forever anyone — American citizens included — whom they arbitrarily decide is an 'enemy combatant.'"Given the confusion regarding the direct legal impact of this bill on US citizens, I contacted Caroline Fredrickson, the Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, to get her take on the bill. Although Fredrickson dispels some of the more alarmist views regarding this legislation, I would hesitate to say that I found Ms. Fredrickson's responses reassuring.Even before the Bush administration began gnawing on the carcass of our constitutional liberties, the ACLU said this about a 1996 anti-terrorism bill passed by President Clinton . "With the stroke of a pen, President Clinton today crippled the century old authority of the federal courts to enforce the Bill of Rights," the ACLU said in a statement. At that point, banks were authorized to freeze assets of American citizens and organizations suspected of being agents of a declared terrorist group. Citizens, even then, apparently had no recourse to challenge that designation. Since then, of course, from the 2001 Patriot Act to this so-called "Torture Bill," the hits have just kept coming. The new wrinkle seems to be legalizing anything the Administration does after the fact. I don't know about you, but I demand a sweet deal like that for myself.There is some hope that the next president may not want all that power. Of the potential presidential candidates currently in the US Senate, Democrats Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Feingold, Kerry, and Obama all voted against the bill. Republican John McCain voted in favor of it. Power, however, tends to do strange things to people (particularly people named Clinton), so I wouldn't place much faith in a change of administrations.RU SIRIUS: While most of the news coverage of the recent "Detainee" bill focused on its impact on torture and on the detention of non-citizens, very little has been said about those things that apply to US citizens. As I read it US citizens can be held indefinitely without any recourse.RU: The definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" is applied to those who have "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." By my reading, this could be used against dissidents and whistleblowers. For instance, it could have been used against the New York Times for their revelations about the administration's global financial surveillance program. (See NY Times apology ) Would you agree?RU: According to one report I've seen, "the bill criminalizes any challenge to the legislation's legality by the Supreme Court or any United States court." Is this true and can they get away with this?RU: Most citizens may assume that the government only uses the Homeland Security apparatus and the various anti-terrorist laws against terrorism suspects. Can you counter this assumption, and can you name one or two particularly egregious cases?RU: Have we lost habeas corpus at other times in U.S. history?RU: In 1996, the ACLU said Clinton's anti-terrorism bill "crippled the Bill of Rights." How much worse has it gotten under Bush?RU: What can you, or we, do about it?