Me, back in January about Padilla:

A lot of people who feed off of the power of government ought to be praying that he’s convicted. Because if after all this “dirty bombs!” mess, & him, a U.S. citizen, being held in limbo for years at the behest of the president….mark my words, if the outcome of all this is that a jury finds him innocent, there will be havoc. This is simply too big to ignore, the implications from such would blow the doors open, watch.

Well we’re getting really close to that.  All emphasis mine:

A Republican-appointed federal judge in Miami has already dumped the most serious conspiracy count against Padilla, removing for now the possibility of a life sentence. The same judge has also disparaged the government’s case as “light on facts,” while defense lawyers have made detailed allegations that Padilla was illegally tortured, threatened and perhaps even drugged during his detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

The Justice Department denied the allegations of torture last week and is pursuing an appeal of the conspiracy ruling in hopes that the charge will be reinstated. Prosecutors on Thursday also took the unusual step of revealing that Abu Zubaida, an al-Qaeda lieutenant now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a key source who led authorities to capture Padilla.

But some legal scholars and defense lawyers argue that the government’s case is so fundamentally weak, and its legal options so limited, that Padilla could draw a relatively minor prison term or even be acquitted. The trial has already been postponed once, until January, and is almost certain to be delayed again.

The difficulties have reignited a debate in legal circles over whether terrorism suspects such as Padilla can be effectively prosecuted in regular criminal courts, or whether the Bush administration blew its chances by relying on questionable interrogation methods that cannot be used to build a criminal case.

The Bush Administration assumed there wouldn’t have been so much as a peep about Padilla, despite him being a US citizen.  That apparently influenced their treatment of him, and now it’s possible whatever they did get on him is inadmissible in a real court.

We all know the standard: innocent until proven guilty.  If everything that would suggest guilt is tossed because the US government tortured him, a US citizen, then they have no choice but to acquit.  He’d serve as a living example of just what Bush thinks of the law.

Here’s what the gov’t has been reduced to as its defense:

Among other things, the defense alleges that Padilla was held for 1,307 days in a 9-by-7-foot cell, isolated for days or weeks at a time, physically assaulted and threatened with execution and other violence, kept awake with lights and noises, and forced to take mind-altering drugs, possibly PCP or LSD.

The government counters that Padilla offers no evidence to back up the allegations and that, besides, his treatment by the military is irrelevant to the criminal case against him.

“We didn’t do it, but even if we did who cares?”  Nice…

With the Democrats in control of congress, & some Republicans showing newfound skepticism, I don’t see how Bush escapes this without at least an attempt at impeachment.  The war was never a viable reason because many Democrats supported it, but far as I know this “enemy combatant” thing was all Bush.

Oh yeah, remember that loophole left open by the spinelessness of the Supreme Court?  The one where rather than rule on whether the Administration commited an offense in holding a US citizen without charges they called it “hypothetical”?

Robert M. Chesney, a specialist in national security law at Wake Forest University, said he thinks the government will be able to fend off many of the current challenges to its case, including Cooke’s decision to throw out the murder conspiracy charge.

But he and other legal scholars on both sides of the debate say that the government’s case could prove troublesome in front of a jury because of Padilla’s seemingly minor role in the alleged conspiracy. It also remains to be seen whether the administration might try to rename Padilla as an enemy combatant if its prosecution begins to fall apart.

They’re not going to get the chance.  If he walks from the court that citizens were supposed to have access to in the first place, no one in their right mind is going to go along with Bush if he tries to throw him back in the brig & play Calvinball with the Constitution.  If he’s seriously THAT nuts to attempt it, then you might as well prepare a rubber room for King George.