More Detailed Account of the <em>Hedges</em> Argument

 Invoking the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II, a federal judge on Tuesday appeared ready to uphold her injunction against the law that lets the U.S. military detain indefinitely anyone it suspects of committing or aiding terrorism. At a Tuesday hearing, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest pointed to the potential consequences of such authority, citing a dissent in Korematsu v. United States, which initially upheld the constitutionality of internment. "[E]ven if they were permissible military procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional," Justice Robert Jackson wrote in dissent in 1944. "If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any military order will be constitutional, and have done with it." In May, Judge Forrest forbid the government from enforcing one paragraph of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a 565-page military appropriations bill that sailed through Congress late last year. That paragraph, Section 1021(b)(2), lets the military hold anyone accused of having "substantially supported" al-Qaida, the Taliban or "associated forces" until "the end of hostilities." Despite "reservations," President Barack Obama signed the bill on New Year's Eve. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges sued to stop it weeks later.