High alert for holidays

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season that we are fighting a war

against a different kind of enemy.

In many discomforting ways, this will be an Orange Christmas in America. Despite festive events and thoughts of peace and good will, Americans are enduring heightened security measures and bracing themselves for another terrorist attack that is considered inevitable — if not over the holidays, at some time in the future.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced Sunday that the national terror threat level had been raised from yellow, or "elevated," to orange, or "high." The danger of an imminent attack, Ridge warned, was "perhaps greater now than at any point since Sept. 11, 2001."

Security measures have been increased at airports, causing even more delay for holiday travelers, and at key bridges, tunnels, seaports and landmarks. Intelligence agencies have picked up chatter that indicates terrorists continue to plot "spectacular" attacks against key targets.

The heightened terror alert serves as a grim reminder that the United States is still at war with an enemy that operates in the shadows, doesn't wear the uniform of any country and plots the mass murder of innocent civilians. As President Bush has said before, the war on terrorism will require time and patience and sacrifice.

In light of this ongoing threat against Americans, it was particularly disturbing to see two federal appeals courts issue serious challenges last week to President Bush's ability to detain those deemed a threat to our nation and deal with them outside of the civilian court system. In the first ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, said the president, without specific authorization from Congress, could not detain Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant and deny him access to a lawyer and civilian courts. Padilla was arrested in June 2002 and is held by military authorities on grounds that he is suspected of being associated with al-Qaida and was planning to explode a radiological "dirty bomb" in the United States.

The second ruling came from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, another 2-1 decision, in which the court declared it had jurisdiction over the military detainees (from the Afghanistan war) who are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both of these lower court decisions beg review and correction by the U.S. Supreme Court, which surely will recognize the truth in the dissent from Judge Richard C. Wesley in the Padilla case, who said, "In my view, the president, as commander in chief, has inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency on U.S. soil that would cause harm to U.S. citizens ...."