Recently, the president signed into law H.R. 2863, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. Deep within the gargantuan omnibus spending bill is a section called Title X, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. This little piece of legislation does a good thing. It's the amendment that McCain wanted, the one that prevents any U.S. operative from using torture. Well, actually, it says:

No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.

But the government still has the problem of people trying to contest their status as enemy combatants. What is an administration involved in a not-war war to do about this? Well, fortunately, the Constitution allows Congress to determine what cases federal courts can hear (Art. III, § 2). And, with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, they have exercised this power. Read and be dumbfounded:

(e) Judicial Review of Detention of Enemy Combatants-

(1) IN GENERAL- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(e) Except as provided in section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider--

`(1) an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; or

`(2) any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention by the Department of Defense of an alien at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who--

`(A) is currently in military custody; or

`(B) has been determined by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in accordance with the procedures set forth in section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant.'.

In the tradition of Orwellian names for Bush administration legislation, the "Detainee Treatment Act" does deal with detainee treatment, but it also assures that no foreign detainee can ever demand a writ of habeas corpus, meaning he will never be able to (1) contest his status or (2) be charged with a crime or (3) know why he has been detained. A foreign enemy combatant can only receive a review by a military tribunal. Many of the people in Guantanamo Bay are not terrorists, but illegal aliens or people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were rounded up with terrorists. Now, those people have no right to object to their incarceration or go to court to prove that they are not terrorists.