Minority Report, anyone?

President Barack Obama in a May 21 speech outlined a new policy of preventive detention, without trial, for people he suspects might commit crimes in the future. Flanked by copies of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence in the address at the National Archives, Obama’s speech would have been more appropriately given at the Blu-Ray release of the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report.

Obama’s new policy proposes the same thing: to imprison people — not for crimes they’ve already been tried for, or even for crimes that have already been committed — but for crimes Obama suspects that these persons might commit some day commit. Who would decide such a thing? The same man whose Department of Homeland Security put out a terrorist threat report in April that termed pro-lifers, people who buy a firearm, political conservatives and military veterans as “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

How does he know if someone presents a threat to the American people? Does he possess some special psychic powers like Spielberg’s “precogs”? Obama apparently thinks so, and he failed to outline any difference between foreigners deemed to have committed "pre-crime" and American conservatives deemed to be "the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat in the United States." The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights makes no such distinction, it should be noted. All it says is that everyone is entitled to a jury trial. But the institutions of our criminal procedures need an "update," Obama has reminded us.