Not a Snowball's Chance

Does Padilla have a snowball's chance in hell? The prosecutor and former Attorney General Ashcroft have already judged him in the press before the trial (''Jury Selection Begins fir Padilla Trial.'')

"They [Padilla and other Gitmo defendants] certainly supported al-Qaida, there's no question about that," Shipley said. "We're not going to try them for their specific involvement in 9/11."

So much for the concept of innocent until proven guilty for the federal courts.

Padilla, as always, is described here as a ''former Chicago gang member.'' Maybe so, but how is that relevant? GWB is a recovering substance abuser, but that doesn't appear in any articles about him. Padilla is not om trial for gang membership.

Ranger can't help but wonder how our ''best and brightest'' can take a miserable loser like Padilla and turn him into a sympathetic figure and a hero to segments of the world's population.

''Critical pieces of evidence include thousands of intercepted phone conversations and an application Padilla purportedly completed in 2000 to become a "mujahedeen" trainee at the Afghan camp.''

The critical evidence is thousands of phone conversations. That's dandy--where are the warrants and probable cause for the intercepts? Guilty or not, Padilla, as a U.S. citizen, has every reasonable expectation to ''due process of law.'' To date, this has not happened.

''Padilla was hastily added to an existing case in Miami in November 2005, a few days before a Supreme Court deadline for Bush administration briefs on the question of the president's powers to continue holding him in military prison without charge.''

Imagine ''hastily'' being applied to this prosecution when Padilla was arrested in May 2002. If this is a definition of hasty, Ranger must buy a new dictionary.

This Padilla case is a screaming indictment on GWB's abuse of power and the Department of Justice's and federal judiciaries compliance in the case. And of course, let's not forget our wonderfully democratic enabling Congress.

What a great place America used to be. . . ''with liberty and justice for all.'' The words stick in my throat, with the current red, white and blue hypocrisy.