Robert Levy, senior fellow at the CATO Institute, reviews the Jose "Dirty Bomber" Padilla case in a smart op-ed in today's Chicago Times. By now, we're all familiar with the facts: Padilla, an American citizen, has been declared an enemy combatant and held in a military brig for over a year without charges or access to counsel.

Padilla may deserve the treatment he is receiving--perhaps worse. That is not the point. When Americans are taken into custody, they have the right to retain an attorney.

Congress must first set the rules. Then an impartial judge, not the president, should make the ultimate decision as to whether the arrest and imprisonment comport with the Constitution.

James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, put it succinctly: ''The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.''

We are letting Bush, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, our own favorite axis of evil, take all the power. They are weakening the judiciary, both by taking power away from federal judges and by nominating only conservatives who agree with them to the bench. Their cronies dominate Congress. Unless we get our act together and vote this triumverate out in 2004, we won't recognize our own system of justice in five or ten years--it truly will have become a system of injustice.

Give a little to the Democrats, give often and do your part to get out the vote.