Reaction to Padilla...the rustle of the wind, the creak of a floorboard...was that a cricket I just heard?

Maybe I'm missing something, but the reaction to events surround Padilla these past couple of days has been...underwhelming...from both the left blogospher and the right hyperventilatoshpere.

A U.S. citizen is held in a navy brig for three and a half years, uncharged. Then, just as the deadline for the administration to file a brief on this is due, the government changes it's line of attack, citing far less incendiary (literally) charges (but which carry no less mortal a sentence).

Like Andrew Sullivan (one of the very few posts on the subject I've seen), I don't know whether Padilla's innocent or guilty (though he is now charged with what could be very amorphous -- and possibly more difficult to prove or disprove), but this remains an outrage even now that he is finally going to get his day in court.

If nothing else, the fact that four years after the attacks on the Trade Center and Pentagon, the Bush administration is still uncertain how to legally fight terrorists within our own borders is not surprising but still disturbing.

They so badly want to approach this single-mindedly as a War that they have no idea what to do when it becomes evident that the Constitution doesn't permit the federal government to declare war on one of its citizens.