AMERICANS CONCERNED about the often thin lines between their constitutional liberties and government powers ought to be paying close attention to the cases of alleged enemies of the state, Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.

Mr. Padilla, a convicted murderer and former Chicago gang member, was arrested last May in Chicago after allegedly meeting senior al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan and discussing setting off a dirty bomb somewhere in America. Mr. Hamdi, born in Louisiana and fighting with the Taliban, was picked up by U.S. troops on a battlefield in Afghanistan.

Both U.S. citizens are being detained indefinitely and incommunicado as "enemy combatants" in military prisons - without benefit of charges, counsel or trial.

The issues in their similar federal court cases may well be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, but lower court decisions so far are showing great deference to the expansive powers of the president during war.

True, the most recent decision in the Padilla case, handed down Dec. 4, has been hailed as a compromise - and therefore somewhat reasonable.

U.S. District Judge Michael B. Mukasey in New York found that Mr. Padilla must be allowed to consult with his lawyer, but only to pursue his habeas corpus petition challenging the government's evidence for designating him an "enemy combatant."

And even then, the judge set a low standard for the government to defeat that petition - providing only "some evidence" for designating him an "enemy combatant," a threshold lower than the "probable cause" often used in arrest warrants.

Thus Judge Mukasey critically stopped short of setting the government free from any judicial review in locking away U.S. citizens allegedly involved with American enemies. But his nod to civil liberties was a long way from the Sixth Amendment rights to counsel and speedy trial accorded U.S. citizens accused of criminal acts.

Most fundamentally, the judge affirmed the powers of the president in times of war, formally declared or not. He wrote:

"The president ... has both constitutional and statutory authority to exercise the powers of commander in chief, including the power to detain unlawful combatants, and it matters not that Padilla is a United States citizen captured on United States soil."

This summary dismissal of distinctions for a "United States citizen captured on United States soil" ought to give at least a moment's pause to those who recall this nation's internal strife during the Vietnam War and President Nixon's infamous "enemies list." No wonder Viet Dinh, an assistant U.S. attorney general, says the Justice Department is taking "great comfort" in this ruling. After all, since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration has been working hard at every turn to expand law enforcement powers in the name of national security.

Some legal analysts aren't so alarmed by the Padilla and Hamdi cases and other such assertions of government might, saying the administration's claims of greater powers far outstrip those actually employed. But all Americans should be pleased to see the federal courts not yielding jurisdiction in these two cases or to the dangerous notion of absolutely unchecked government power.