The Washington Post: has a follow up on the new bush push for detention policies.

A leading Republican senator yesterday condemned as "a bad idea" a reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them.

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it is unwilling to set free or turn over to U.S. or foreign courts, The Washington Post said in a report yesterday that cited intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

Some detentions could potentially last a lifetime, the report said.

Influential senators denounced the idea as probably unconstitutional.

"It's a bad idea. So we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this," Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, cited earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions. "There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process . . . if you're going to detain people, whether it's for life or whether it's for years," Levin said, also on Fox.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department declined to comment, and a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke of the Air Force, had no information on the reported plan.

As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, plans to ask Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told The Post.

imagine that. lack of evidence, so what in God's name are they using to hold them in the first place? and anybody who tries to muster up the gall to pass off the excuse that 'back during world war twooooo, they did it to the japanese? remind them of Rep. Matsui. God rest his soul.

The New York Times > Obituaries > Representative Robert T. Matsui, 63, Dies: "A third-generation Japanese-American, Mr. Matsui was less than a year old when he and his family were taken from Sacramento and interned. He stayed in camps until he was almost 4. In one camp, his pregnant mother contracted German measles and, as a result, gave birth to a blind daughter, Barbara. Mr. Matsui's wife, Doris, was also born in an internment camp.
When he got to Congress, Mr. Matsui helped lead the fight for compensation for the 120,000 people sent to the camps. In August 1988, President Ronald Reagan, saying he was moving to 'right a grave wrong,' signed an act that apologized for the forced relocation and established a $1.25 billion trust fund to pay reparations to those who were placed in camps and to their families."