The president of the United States does not have the power to detain an American citizen seized on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, in a serious setback to the Bush administration’s war on terror. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, said only the U.S. Congress can authorize such detentions and it ordered the government to release Jose Padilla from military custody within 30 days. “Presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the President is obligated in the circumstances presented here to share them with Congress,” the court said. Full Story