From LA Times:
WASHINGTON — Leaders of the American Bar Assn. criticized the Bush administration Friday for jailing several American citizens as “enemy combatants” without charging them with a crime or giving them a fair chance to prove their innocence.
Only Congress has the power to write the laws, they said, and no law has given administration officials blanket authority to arrest and detain U.S. citizens who are picked up on U.S. soil.
“There is genuine reason for concern about a president’s–or anyone’s–power to unilaterally declare that an American citizen who is arrested in the United States, far from any battlefield or combat arena, is part of the enemy and thus may be treated as an enemy seized in battle,” they said.