Howard Gleckman of Business Week is the latest comparison-impaired journalist to lose his mind: From Bush, Saddam-Style Justice.

Sometime in the next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the case of Jose Padilla. The decision will mark an important test of the Constitutional protections Americans have enjoyed for most of the past 220 years against abusive, arbitrary action by government officials. It’s no overstatement to say that if Padilla loses, many of the rights all Americans take for granted will be in jeopardy.

By most accounts, Padilla isn’t a nice guy. Once a member of a Chicago street gang, he may later have trained with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. The Bush Administration first claimed Padilla was plotting with Muslim terrorists to detonate a “dirty bomb” — a low-level radioactive explosive — somewhere in the U.S. Now, the government says he was plotting to use natural gas to blow up apartment buildings in New York and Washington.

Is the feds’ latest version of the story true? Who knows? But even if their claims are credible, Padilla should have the right to defend himself in court. The American legal system is designed to guarantee such due process for all citizens, even those suspected of being terrorists.

The Bush Administration believes that it alone has the right to decide who is protected by the legal system. Which brings us to Brandon Mayfield, who’s a pretty lucky guy, all things considered. Luckier for sure than Padilla.

Mayfield is a lawyer from Aloha, Ore. Like Padilla, he’s an American citizen who converted to Islam. And, like Padilla, he was accused of being involved in a bombing plot. In some respects, the allegations against Mayfield were even more serious. The FBI claimed that a fingerprint found on an explosive device used in last March’s Madrid train bombing — which killed 191 people — was Mayfield’s. As a result, he was arrested and held for two weeks as a material witness.

But, unlike Padilla, Mayfield had access to the legal system. He retained an attorney and invoked his right to due process. And thanks in part to his aggressive defense counsel, the FBI was forced to admit it had the wrong guy. The fingerprint on which the government held Mayfield for two weeks…well, it wasn’t his. A judge ordered Mayfield released immediately.

The government was way out of line in Mayfield’s case. It leaked word of his arrest to the media, trashed his reputation in public, and by holding him as a material witness, it tried to limit his legal rights. And why did it take two weeks for the FBI to correctly read a fingerprint in such a high-profile case. Still, Mayfield’s ordeal was over in two weeks, while Padilla remains locked up after two years.

Does that have to do with the fact that Mayfield is white and middle class, while Padilla is Hispanic and poor? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Yep, this is exactly the same as Saddam’s rape rooms and amputation chambers.

Paralyzed by liberal guilt, absolutely unable to acknowledge any difference between common criminals and terrorists bent on mass murder, journalists like Gleckman become willing tools of the terrorists—the very definition of “useful idiots.”