As we all know, Padilla was charged with "provided material support to terrorists" last week.  But it turns out, SCOTUSBlog reports, that Padilla is still an emeny combatant.  Cute legal trick, charge him so everyone thinks that they've decided to allow him due process.  But it turns out that they now claim that they can charge him with a crime, but continue to hold him as an enemy combatant so that it doesn't matter if they win their case against him or not.

I'll begin by stating the obvious, a filibuster will be necessary here. Yesterday, Gallup  released a poll about the Alito nomination, which has some pretty promising numbers within it.  However, in order to take advantage of those numbers Democrats must establish a clear coherent reason that the public can easily wrap their hands arround and understand as to why we would oppose this nomination. Alito's opposition to Roe would be a reasonable such argument, but convincing the public that it is true may prove to be a difficult task. Whatever we do Democrats cannot continue to do what we've already begun.  We cannot continue to assert that he's an "extremist" or that he's "out of the mainstream." That sounds like what it is (be it true or not) a talking point. Anybody can recognize this, and the lack of subtlety or coherent definition will make it very difficult to convince the public that Alito is in fact "out of the mainstream. A better, more coherent explanation is needed to support a necessary Democratic filibuster.