Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle on Part of U.S. anti-terror law may be nullified:
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision Thursday to strike down a California child molesting law may have also overturned part of a federal terrorism law.
Like the California law, a section of the USA Patriot Act changes the statute of limitations for certain crimes — in this case, a variety of terrorism-related offenses — and allows charges to be filed after the deadline under the previous law has expired. For the same reason that the state law didn't pass constitutional muster, the Patriot Act provision on terrorist suspects is likely doomed as well.
The court said the 1994 state law, which allowed prosecution of decades-old molestation cases, was unconstitutional because it allowed defendants to be charged beyond the deadline that was in effect when the alleged crime occurred.
It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. If the amount of 'libertarians' who've defected to the side of big government anything-Bush-says-is-golden interventionism in recent months is any indicator, I'm loathe to hope. However, Cato, the Future of Freedom Foundation and the Independent Institute are on still the ball. We'll see.
Link courtesy of Patrice McDermott via the In Defense of Freedom mailing list.