The (Ironically) Static Suicide Pact

clipped from powerlineblog.com As Congress recognized, our mortal enemy at this point in history is al-Qaeda, which happens not to be a nation. Our front in this war is everywhere, which is not a battleground. And the combatants who are intent on killing Americans are civilians -- right up until the moment when they hijack our planes or detonate a dirty nuke on the mall in Washington, D.C. It's a pity that so many judges seem oblivious to this reality, insisting that modern circumstances yield facts patterns identical to those that obtained in World War II or even the Civil War, and ruling against the government when, inevitably, they don't. It's also ironic that the same judges who, when it comes to inventing new rights, embrace the concept of a living constitution that evolves to fit the conditions of the day, refuse to look beyond narrow (and in this case, I think, erroneous) interpretations of Civil War and World War II cases when the issue is protecting our national security.