Americans can now be locked away on the basis of fear

However, the SCOTUS as just OK'ed keeping them in the prison system, which is much cheaper, and is totally wrong.

H2O MAN wrote:

Very sad indeed.

Why don't they allow indefinite detentions of captured Islamic extremists and radical jihadists?

They do.

The Obama administration wants to hold terrorists. Did SCOTUS just give them a green light?


By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Tuesday, May 18, 2010, at 6:29 PM ET

Once, when it was fashionable to worry about Congress or the president asserting limitless authority to detain people, we would have been nervous about a Supreme Court decision expanding the authority to do so. But by now we have mainly slept our way though the Obama administration's talk of indefinite detention for Guantanamo detainees, generalized wobbliness on civilian trials for terrorists, embrace of the state secrets doctrine, and recent discussions about "modernizing" the Miranda warning, as well as a host of other Bush-lite war-on-terror powers. Is it possible that most of us haven't noticed that the Supreme Court has just handed Congress broad authority to detain people merely because they show signs of future dangerousness?


I am talking about the 7-2 decision in Monday's United States v. Comstock, a case that asked whether the federal government has the authority to continue to indefinitely detain a person who has served out his federal prison sentence, or who is deemed incompetent to stand trial, if the government has clear and convincing evidence that he is a "sexually dangerous" person. The high court had already granted state governments this power. But precisely because this is the traditional realm of the states, the 4th Circuit struck down the civil confinement federal statute, finding that it "granted the federal government unprecedented authority over civil commitment"an area long controlled by the states."

These people are deemed to be a danger to the public. That's why they're held in secure mental health facilities.

Why do we limit this to sex offenders? Why not murderers? They've certainly been known to strike again. Why not drunk drivers since they are also habitual offenders driving metal bullets on our roads? If you support civil rights, can you really just support them for people you like?

the Forensic unit in Colorado is located on the grounds of the State Hospital nowhere near a prison. It is a totally locked facility as is warranted by the nature of it's population. It is administered by the State Dept of Hospitals and Mental Health, not by the state Depart of Prisons.

That's an argument that the law is flawed, not that the law is unconstitutional.