So much for the Magna Carta.

The worst thing about the Military Commissions Act--recently passed by Congress to permit the Bush administration to bring the Guantanamo detainees to trial--is that it deprives detainees of the right to habeas corpus. What that right means is that, within a reasonable time after they are detained, their attorney can go before a judge to test the legitimacy of their detention. What can be wrong with that? The only risk is possible exposure of the fact that the government does not have good reason to keep the detainee in prison.

For evidence that the government is capable of making terrible mistakes in who it accuses of terrorism, I recommend you see "The Enemy Within," a "Frontline" special for PBS that tells how the Justice Department totally fabricated the exposure of a supposed al Qaeda cell in Lodi, Calif. At the end of the broadcast, Lowell Bergman, the producer, asks the U.S. attorney who originally brought the case, "So if I get this accurately, there has not been, nor is there now, an al Qaeda cell in Lodi, California?"

The U.S. attorney: "That's correct."