PunkAssBlog.com

What ho, is that a check and/or balance I see over yonder?

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that the Bush administration violated the Constitution when it froze the assets of more than two dozen alleged terrorist groups after the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins, in a ruling released Monday, held that an executive order Bush issued Sept. 24, 2001 — designating 27 groups and individuals as “specially designated global terrorists” — was “unconstitutionally vague.”

The citizens of Wingnutteria are probably adding an extra stockpile of Ramen to their bomb shelter shelves now that the main Kurdish political party in Turkey and a rebel group fighting for a separate homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka have had their assets unfrozen. It’s only a matter of time until a Turkish-Kurdish/Sri-Lankan-Tamil alliance joins with Darth-Vader-esque Osama bin Laden and French overlord Jerry Lewis to pour through our unguarded borders and rob us of the few remaining rights and privileges not already stolen by our current administration.

Hopefully, we may get a few of those rights back:

Earlier in the case, Collins struck down portions of a law that made it a felony to provide “material support” to terrorists, saying that language in the Patriot Act, which had amended the law, was ill-defined. The Justice Department has often used the material support law in prosecuting terrorist cases.

Will it stand? Who knows. But for one day, at least, we can celebrate a defense of the processes and individual protections promised us.