In an interview with this reporter, law professor Marjorie Cohn says that president's new Military Commission Act of 2006 "gives Bush the power of a dictator."

According to the Thomas Jefferson School of Law prof, "the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration which began with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, as 'unlawful enemy combatants' and to detain them indefinitely. In the case of non-US citizens the bill voids their right to Habeas Corpus.'"

"What this means," she said, "is that anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant."

"It is essential to understand," she said, "that those that wrote the Constitution intended to give Congress the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus 'only in times of rebellion or invasion.'" (Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution of the United States.)

2. If you oppose it will you pledge to revoke it if elected?

Stay tuned for their responses (or lack there of).

In her opinion, "the habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it."

She is joined in that opinion by two Yale professors of law, Bruce Ackerman and Jack Balkin

The problem with waiting for the Supreme Court to put Bush and Co. back in its constitutional place is multi-fold:

First, for those American citizens snatched off the streets and "renditioned," (or "disappeared" to use the South American term for government sanctioned kidnapping.) That means that person is renditioned to Syria, Iran, Egypt, Gitmo, Alcatraz, Siberia, or the great Southwest desert. They may only then be known to friends and relatives and local police as a "missing person" after 48 hours of torture.

Secondly, there is no assurance that the Court would hear the case. Thirdly, they may uphold it: It is now a stacked Bush-Cheney-Rove court.

But the measure could not have become law unless Congress passed it. The argument among Democrats was that Bush would have gotten a much more imperial bill, allowing for a more "aggressive" torture of suspects if McCain and Co. had not concocted a compromise and they had to "give the president something." The best take on that was: we can't vote it down - we can't veto it so we will compromise.

So the Military Commissions Act passed allowing the President and the President alone to decide who is and is not suspect. domestic suspect incognito for an indefinite period of time without contact with either legal counsel or ... anyone else.

I am now posing the following questions to those Congressional and Senatorial Candidates who oppose Bush and will post their reponses, or refusal to respond in my next blog:

1. What is your interpretation of this section of the bill?