"So to characterize this legally dubious deal as "a way out of this standoff" is, at best, wishful thinking".

So what else is new? Welcome home from whatever planet you've been on since about 1/20/09. Were Obama, Blue Dogs, and many other Dems with you??

Obama, Blue Dogs, and far too many other Dems appear much more hopeless than Neville Chamberlain in refusing to recognize that you cannot negotiate with intransigent opposition whose main (maybe only) goal is your destruction. it's not JUST in health care or the stimulus package. Read and interpret your next article [TWO SPEEDS:SLOW AND STOP] in this context. Geez.

Were there a yet-stronger Progressive block in the House and Senate, even if the overall total of Dem seats were smaller, the only viable route for Obama and the Dems is to use reconciliation and/or break the filibuster pdq rather than constantly chase will-o-the-wisp bad-policy compromises with Blue Dog Dems or Republicans.

Imagine where we could be now if that strategy had been used from the get go: An adequate stimulus bill that has unemployment at 8%, headed to 6% and real health care reform that is not that hard to sell as a real improvement. Medicare Part E(everyone) is real easy to understand,sell, and probably gain public approval pdq once passed. Should that really be tougher for Dems to pass than Republicans to pass massive tax breaks for the top 1%?

You think voters have miserable emotional IQ's to not detect wimps, chumps, wusses [pick your favorite term] when they see such repeated behavior. Given the Hobson's choice, most voters will pick strong and wrong over right and weak.

There is this little thing called the U.S. Constitution. The following was shamelessly ripped from Glenn Greenwald's most recent post:

No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . . In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. -- Fifth and Sixth Amendments, U.S. Constitution.

Military tribunals are an abomination of all I held sacred and of my solemn oath to "protect and defend . . . from all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Bush or Obama, we must live by the constitution or we are no better than our enemies.

Amen to that, Chief. I often find Glenn Greenwald annoyingly shrill about his ideological purity these days, but on the subject of a proper trial for the 9/11 plotters, he's absolutely right. Treating the American system of justice as a bargaining chip, treating a major prosecution as something on which Eric Holder needs to be schooled in better "political" dealings, is disgraceful.

There was a front page article in the New York Times awhile back about how Holder had displayed a political tin ear in deciding to hold the trial in New York, and was learning from his errors. I wrote a furious letter to the editor asking since when political considerations were supposed to enter into any decision by the Attorney General, and remarking that a military tribunal rather than a trial would be a resounding victory for Al Qaeda. Of course, they didn't print my letter.

One must always remember that Dana Milbank is frequently full of shit.

"Treating the American system of justice as a bargaining chip, ...."

That is what the previous administration did. Why would the present even think that has potential?

Better yet. Why would the American people trade away anything in their Constitution for the promise of a little less (self-generated) fear?

Since when has our favorite neocon-masquerading-as-a-liberal - Dana Milbank - not been on board with the Republicans? The newspaper he works for is not known as The Washington Pest without reason.

I am very disappointed in President Obama - military tribunals are generally set up by authoritarian governments to ensure that people they don't like are convicted. These particular military tribunals were set up because the Bushies knew they didn't have enough evidence to convict these folks in civilian courts.

It is a profile in cowardice and stupidity to propose negotiating away someone's constitutional rights in exchange for a worthless promise from yet another "Just Say No" Republican negotiating in bad faith.

To move it to merely a profile in cowardice (and remove the stupidity), I'd at least make the Senator show his earnestness by having him publicaly promise to vote for health care reform. I'd also point out that prominent Republicans have been negotiating in bad faith for some time now, gaining concession after concession from the Democrats, and getting nothing in return.

It's bad enough to sell your soul to the devil - it's humiliating to find out the devil paid you in counterfeit bills.

For God's sake, Obama, grow a pair and stop looking like the political wuss you are apparently growing to be. What a weak leader...and such a disappointment ....

Selling our justice out is not an option to anyone who takes Justice seriously.

It is not Park Place on the monopoly board.

We supposedly elected a leader not an auctioneer.

This idea of "cutting deals" regarding people's civil rights makes me want to puke. That a supposed "constitutional law professor" would entertain the notion that some should get all the rights afforded under the constitution while others get some or none baffles me. It is yet another example of the twisted logic that is borne from the "war on terror" fallacy.

There are just some issues that you can't compromise on.

It never ceases to amaze me how little people who live in Washington know of history.

Some of the postings above -- and the author -- should study the history of the Constitution and the international treaties with regard to the rights of combatants. The US Constitution says "no person;" but it does not protect every person on the planet. It was intended to apply only to persons on US soil. It does not apply to Nazi soldiers captured by the Americans, it does not apply to enemy combatants. It does not apply to persons who take refuge in US embassies.

We had this debate in the 1980s, when Cubans and Haitians were fleeing their countries for the US. They discovered that once they hit US soil, they could arrange for habeas hearings, etc. The Supreme Court agreed, so the Coast Guard started intercepting them at sea, before they hit the 12 mile mark. The Supreme Court agreed prospective immigrants had no rights that far out. Then Guantanamo was used as a staging area, and seemed to be in line with Supreme Court precedent. (For that matter, there are cases in the 1890s that are relevant as well.)

The Supreme Court seems to have slightly changed its mind now with respect to the rights it wants to grant enemy combatants at Gitmo. But military tribunals can be lived with, even if they fly in the face of the history of the international legal agreements in this area -- which would deny these combatants all rights to a trial.

Remember that the Geneva Convention was designed to protect only combatants who wore uniforms and were agents of a particular "state." It was modified -- again in the 80s -- to provide protections of the conventions to persons (like the Viet Cong) who were not wearing uniforms and might or might not represent a state. But those persons are not entitled to be treated as well as we treat our criminals -- they are only entitled to the protection of the conventions. That is, they can be detained humanely until the cessation of hostilities.

The military tribunal route is not the best route -- the route that is most consistent with the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war would be to keep these combatants as prisoners of war until there is some state that is formed to take responsibility for them in a peace treaty - or until they die. But military tribunals at least don't give them the full privileges and immunities that attach to them once they become resident in the US. They are not entitled to confront their accusers, to have Miranda rights read to them on the battlefield, to have the right to counsel at taxpayer expense. All this banter from Washington is, like so much from Washington, crazy talk.

That's right, enemy soldiers can be detained humanely until the cessation of hostilities, but if you want to send them to the chair for blowing up 3000 people, you put them on trial. Sending KSM to court is not a gift to him.

Lucy, Charlie Brown, Football anyone?

A much better plan...wait and change the abused filibuster rule in the senate and finally quit being blackmailed into submission and allow the nation to be governed by the majority as Obama and the dems were elected to do.

Graham is and always will be a hypocrite who only cares about power. If Obama gives in the repubs will still vote against funding the closing of Gitmo. Right, wrong, the good of the nation are all second to political power for the GOP leadership. End the filibuster rule and watch the nation glow again.

Looks like Millbank wasted little time shifting his prime mancrush from McCain to Graham.

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