Where terrorists -- but not citizens -- roam free

Ah, the Upside Downism of our Dept. of Justice.

Dahlia Lithwick provides a brief civics lesson and reminds us of why we have a Constitution.

In his comments accompanying the release of the Padilla document, Deputy Assistant Attorney General James Comey offered the following weird little tribute to the joys of suspending the Constitution at will: Had the government charged Padilla criminally, he said, "He would very likely have followed his lawyer's advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right. ... He would likely have ended up a free man." Comey's point seems to be that constitutional protections produce bad evidence, in which case we should probably get rid of the Constitution in every criminal case. What he was really saying was that if you permit them to perform unconstitutional interrogations, the administration can get the accused to say exactly what we all wanted to hear.

Phil Carter has more on this.

And while they are more than comfortable denying a U.S. citizen -- however reprehensible his intentions may be (though, remember, we really have no idea what his intentions were beyond what the DoJ tells us) -- his rights, we are letting this guy go free. And to Syria, no less?