17 Guantanamo Detainees Ordered Into U.S. By Friday: Ben Winograd at SCOTUSblog has a post on federal Judge Ricardo Urbina's order that the government release a group of 17 Chinese Muslims, the Uighurs, into the United States by Friday, October 10, 2008. Judge Urbina has ordered the government to present the Uighurs to his courtroom by Friday for a handover to local caretakers. The order is a part of Judge Urbina's conclusion that the government's authority to detain the Uighurs has "ceased" since the government has conceded that the Uighurs are are not enemy combatants, and that the government had provided no alternative grounds for detention. A hearing will take place next Friday, October 16th, to allow members of the Department of Homeland Security the opportunity to speak the conditions they wish to apply to the Uighurs’ presence in United States. Winograd reports that in advance of this Friday's deadline, the government could seek a stay of the order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Wisconsin District Court Upholds Ban on Firearms Possession by Unlawful Users of Controlled Substances: Eugene Volokh at Volokh Conspiracy reports on the October 3rd decision from in United States v. Yancey (WD Wis. 2008). The court's Yancey decision upheld 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), the ban on possession by anyone "who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act." Volokh provides the relevant analysis of the case in his post. The district court found that Heller stands only for the proposition that the District of Columbia cannot constitutionally ban handgun possession in the home for use in self-defense by persons not otherwise prohibited from gun possession. The Heller decision did not address whether the state could impose restrictions on handgun possession. Therefore, consistent with the decision of the Wisconsin district court in United States v. Kilgore, 2008 WL 4058020 (W.D. Wis. Aug. 26, 2008), Heller did not make the firearm restrictions of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) constitutionally suspect.