Thomas Jefferson said our Creator. The UN is a little more murky and implies that people should just treat each other right because that’s the right thing to do. Either way, there have always been limits built into constitutional rights, and true “human rights” are far more limited than many people would like to believe.

That is, yes, you have a basic human right to not be brutally whipped each day. There’s no limit on that right. OTOH you do not have a human right to have a legally-sanctioned marriage to whomever you wish. You may have a legal right, or a moral right, but not a human right (cf. Canada’s recent debacle with trying to define gay mariage as a human right).

And while you have a constitutional right to free speach, the government has always had the ability to limit what speech is protected. Yes, I know that’s a sore spot for Coyote. However, it’s also a legal fact of how things are, not how things ought to be.

After all, now that “anyone anywhere can be locked up forever without access to counsel, just as long as the president says he’s an ‘enemy combatant’…oh, and ‘enemy combatant’ is defined as meaning whatever the president wants it to mean on a moment-to-moment basis, since neither the policy nor any specific detention case requires the presentation of a definition or evidence of any kind” is the apparent law of the land, the only thing standing between America and the mass arrest of people with out-of-favor political beliefs is the indulgence of the occupant of the White House.

Padilla hasn’t been charged with a crime because he’s more of a prisoner of war than a criminal. He’s called an unlawful combatant because his role in the war is more like a spy or sabator, not a uniformed soldier. As such he’s not entitled to a pack of cigarettes or his weekly paycheck under the Geneva Conventions.

But, yes, I agree that the simple fact he’s a US citizen shouldn’t confer any extra rights that any Afghani picked up in a US airport on a trip from Pakistan should have.