Luttig, Padilla, and Impeachment

Well, I guess we can assume that Michael Luttig won't be getting nominated to any future SCOTUS openings:

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In a sharp rebuke, a federal appeals court denied Wednesday a Bush administration request to transfer terrorism suspect Jose Padilla from military to civilian law enforcement custody.

The three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused the administration's request to vacate a September ruling that gave President Bush wide authority to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without charges on U.S. soil.

The decision, written by Judge Michael Luttig, questioned why the administration used one set of facts before the court for 3 1/2 years to justify holding Padilla without charges but used another set to convince a grand jury in Florida to indict him last month.

Luttig said the administration has risked its "credibility before the courts" by appearing to use the indictment of Padilla to thwart an appeal of the appeals court's decision that gave the president wide berth in holding enemy combatants.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport as he returned to the United States from Afghanistan. Justice and Defense Department officials alleged Padilla had come home to carry out an al-Qaida backed plot to blow up apartment buildings in New York, Washington or Florida.

By the way---and I don't say this sort of thing lightly---George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and all other relevant monarchists should be impeached for deliberately and repeatedly violating federal law as a matter of statute. They did this because, Gonzales says, they wouldn't have been able to convince Congress to change the law.

Got that? Break the law because you want to do something you're certain Congress won't make legal. Doesn't get any more flagrant then that.

I know no one lied about sex, but surely this offense is as impeachable as they come.