A must read to have a basic understanding of what is happening and why:
(go to link for beginning)
"By capitulating on this before the election, the present Democratic Party has ratified this as the mandate of the new government.
Breaking the law and then making it legal ex-post facto is precisely the kind of formal violation which establishes the will of a new mandate coming into being. There is not only no going back to the Liberal Democracy, but America now lives in a post-Federal era. There is a national shadow government, and it is not bound by the limitations of the bill of rights.
This is an invocation of the right of governments to self-preservation, an ur-right which is seen precisely at moments of constitutional change. Under normal circumstances, everyone assumes that the government will be there tomorrow and the day after. Under normal circumstances governments do not need to explain this right, nor do they need to do much in the way of justifying the national interest. When sweeping changes were made after the Civil War, it was the eternal nature of the Union to which they appealed. Likewise the abrogation of gold clauses which was justified on the exigent needs of continuing the government.
A paranoid fear of "terrorism" has now joined this elect list of overriding mandates in American history. Americans have decided, by narrow but successive majorities, ratified by members of both parties repeatedly, that the stock market crash of 2000 and the attacks of 9/11 justify a complete dismantling of their structure of rights, and the absolute and permanent change in their status.
Since the Federal government already defines "terrorism" to include domestic acts of vandalism, and the NIE which has been partially declassified declares "leftists" and "anti-globalists" to be on the list of potential terrorists, this is not about catching the perpetrators of a series of terrorist attacks - embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, 9/11, M-11 and 7/7 - but an unlimited and unchallengeable right to detain, try and punish anyone who is deemed to be "an unlawful combatant".
This is not, in short a bureaucratic red tape cutting exercise, but, in essence, and Amendment to the Constitution that reads: "All other rights are superceded by the needs of the state, under the sole discretion of the executive."
This breaks to pieces any doctrine of rights or of proportionality:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/sep/29/the_star_chamber