You would think that judging by the recent election results, the Bush administration has gotten the message that their same-old tired policies are starting to wear thin on the American people. Apparently that’s not the case because as the Associated Press writes, the administration has just declared that similar to its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, non-citizen immigrants in the U.S. can also be treated as if they have no rights and detained indefinitely without being charged with anything:

The Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an “enemy combatant,” a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes. “It’s pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right,” said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri. “It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention.”

The new law says that enemy combatants will be tried before military commissions, not a civilian judge or jury, and establishes different rules of evidence in the cases. It also prohibits detainees from challenging their detention in civilian court.

I should be shocked to learn about this particular development but the more I think about it, the more I am not surprised that apparently the Bush administration thinks it’s fine to treat certain Americans with the same kind of disdain and hostility that it treats foreign enemies. Apparently it doesn’t mean anything that such immigrants are here in the U.S. legally and may be conducting their lives and contributing to American society just as any other American would.

On top of that, the administration also wants to keep its torture tactics a secret by asking judges to forbid detainees from discussing how they’ve been treated while imprisoned with their lawyers. As many of have before, “Fascism -- are we there yet?”