A federal appeals court has ruled against Bush's enemy combatant policy.

"The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention," the panel found.

Judge Motz wrote, "To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country. We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic.”

What's amazing is that it took an appeal to recognize the obvious: what this administration has been trying to get away with -- and thus far succeeded -- was all along fundamentally un-American and unconstitutional. The fact that our judicial system finally worked to admonish this wrong is a relief, albeit long overdue.