Lawrence Livermore Lab On The Chopping Block?

guttentag writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bush's Homeland Security plan calls for transferring $1.2 billion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $1.5 billion budget to a new Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge. However, the plan transfers only 4 percent of the lab's employees. Ridge's explanation of the numbers: "I cannot give you the kind of explanation you need to deal with that imbalance." LLNL funded and houses the ASCI White supercomputer, among other cool projects." While Livermore has an impressive research record, we would miss most the laser lab from Tron.

Comments

Re:Don't worry. Yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Precedent was established in 1942 during WW II.

The only WWII precedents that I can think of are 1) interning Japanese-Americans, for which a recent Congress apologized, to the tune of giving survivors and their descendants big heaps of money. Presumably no one, even in the Bush government, wants to go around rounding up citizens based solely on their descent anymore.

And 2) the case of a sub full of German soldiers and spies who landed in NY (?) and were tried in front of a military tribunal. Their lawyer presented a spirited case and appealed it to the Supreme Court demanding that they be given a fair jury trial. The appeal was denied, and most of the men were sentenced to death. But they weren't citizens.

If you know of any legally affirmed (by Congressional law, executive order, or judicial decision) precedent for holding citizens with no lawyers and no trial, present it here.