We highly recommend John Payton's op-ed piece in today's Washington Post, "The Rule of Law"

Among its finer points:

"In two federal cases the Department of Justice is asserting that the president has the power to detain, indefinitely and without any charges, any person, including any United States citizen, whom it designates an "enemy combatant." The Justice Department claims that persons so designated may be denied counsel and held incommunicado. Furthermore, as the U.S. Court of Appeals noted with clear surprise, "The government . . . submits that we may not review at all its designation of an American citizen as an enemy combatant." This claim of unreviewable power is unprecedented and extraordinary."

Payton tells us to put aside thoughts of Hamdi and Padilla for the moment.

"I want to talk about the rest of us. I want to talk about our liberty and our rights. What would happen to any of us if we were somehow designated an enemy combatant and detained without charges, denied counsel, and held incommunicado at a military facility? In these circumstances would you have any rights? Could someone on your behalf successfully challenge your detention in court? (Obviously, you could not do so yourself if you were held incommunicado.) It is the position of the Justice Department that no such challenge should be allowed -- that the decision of the president to classify you as an enemy combatant is not subject to any meaningful review. Simply put, an innocent person falsely accused of being an enemy combatant would have no recourse."

We also agree with Mr. Payton that:

"This is an extraordinary moment. If, in response to the challenge of terrorism, we transform ourselves into a society that eliminates the rule of law and concentrates in the president unchecked power to detain people without charges or judicial review, we will have become our antithesis. The irony would be profound."