Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD)
The White House will have to wait a little longer to cross off the first item on its job-creation agenda.

Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT)
U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Thursday that he is now undecided on health care reform — adding that he is concerned that Democrats might use the “reconciliation” process to pass reform with 51 votes in the Senate.

Washington Post (Washington, DC)
President Obama’s advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) is just one of many recently who has made the accusation that we lost “valuable, actionable intelligence” because we decided to issue Abdulmutallab his Miranda Rights. She called it an “irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision.” We will set aside that fact that Abdulmutallab actually is fully cooperating and the Administration has gotten “significant actionable intelligence” from him.

Collins’s statements are just one example of many government officials publicly expressing a complete misconception about Miranda Rights. They seem to suggest that Miranda Rights, once given to a suspect, represent an almost impossible hurdle that will surely damage any investigation. In reality, there are a myriad of exceptions to Miranda rules, including the “public safety” exception. Apparently ignored by Republican critics, Counterterrorism Chief John Brennan has repeatedly stated that the “public safety” exception was used in this case, concluding that giving Abdulmutallab his Miranda Rights has no bearing on whether the FBI can extract valuable intelligence from him.

But the larger problem with this whole debate is something that Republican Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker, said on the Daily Show a few nights ago. Jon Stewart asked Gingrich why, despite almost identical circumstances (a foreign terrorist attempting to light a bomb on a plane, failing, and then being arrested on American soil), he did he not criticize Bush for trying the “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid in civilian court. Gingrich replied succinctly, “Because he is an American citizen.” Again, we’re going to have to put aside that Richard Reid is, in fact, not an American citizen (he is British). Citizenship status has nothing to do with whether some arrested on American soil has Constitutional due process right. The founding fathers and the Supreme Court have emphatically stated that those rights apply to all persons on American soil with no exceptions. Volokh Conspiracy explains that:

The Supreme Court has endorsed Madison’s view at least since Wong Wing v. U.S. (1896) as to the criminal procedure provisions, and in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) (also unanimously) as to the Equal Protection Clause racial equality principle.

The 14^th Amendment, Article I of the Constitution differentiates between “persons” and “citizens” in the same sentence. There are extra rights granted to citizens in the Constitution, like the right to vote and the right to hold office, but the Bill of Rights applies to every person in American jurisdiction.

In fact, this isn’t even up for debate in legal circles—conservative or liberal. As Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, “Justice Scalia, in his scathing dissent [in Boumediene v. Bush, which discussed foreigner not on American soil], approvingly quoted Justice Jackson in conceding that foreigners detained inside the U.S. are protected by the Constitution.”

However, there have been two previous cases of the Bush Administration attempting to label alleged terrorists caught on American soil “enemy combatants.” As Jane Mayer writes in this week’s New Yorker, Jose Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri were initially labeled as such and transferred to Guantanamo. But they won two federal court of appeals cases, on a similar issue (right to access to a lawyer), that sent them back into the civilian system. “The [Bush] Administration, not willing to risk a Supreme Court defeat,” did not even appeal the ruling.

Adding to the irony of the situation, the Federal Judge in Padilla’s case was Michael Mukasey, later Bush’s Attorney General, who recently added his name to the growing list of Republicans who supported civilian trials for terrorists when George W. Bush was President, but now take the opposite view because of the change in Administrations.

Even if labeling Abdulmutallab an “enemy combatant” were legally possibl, trying him in a military court would have severe logistical problems. While the Justice Department has tried and convicted over 150 terrorists in civilian courts since 2001, military tribunals have only been responsible for 3 convictions:

[O]ne defendant received a life sentence after boycotting his own trial; another served only six months, in addition to the time he had already served at the detention camp; the third struck a plea bargain and received just nine months. The latter two defendants—Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as Osama bin Laden’s driver, and David Hicks, an Australian who attended an Al Qaeda training camp—are now at liberty in their home countries, having been released while Bush was still in office.

Because the Supreme Court has already struck down two different versions of military commissions in the past few years (See: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Boumediene v. Bush) over the lack of Constitutional safeguards, there is simply not an adequate mechanism for trying such a high profile case of an “enemy combatant” caught on American soil in almost non-existent military courts.

******

Update: Glenn Greenwald: “Najibullah Zazi was charged in a civilian court with plotting to blow up subways in New York City, was given a lawyer, was Mirandized, was not sent to Guantanamo, was not subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and was not put before a military commission.  Today, he pled guilty, ensuring he will spend much of the rest of his life in prison, and is fully cooperating in an attempt to secure leniency in sentencing.”

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law….(more)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24634.htm

The week flew by…

The work velocity was such that it was Monday, I blinked and it was Friday. Most weeks seem like that these days and I know I’m not alone in the experience. Similarly, events went by, blinking quick, making impressions while it being difficult to discern which day which event had made what impression.

Haiti’s horrors grind on. Medical airlifts to the United States have been suspended while all parties determine who is going to pay for the care of the desperately ill. And following the natural course of events, children are being born, entering life in a sea of uncertainty, in a land that is devastated and destroyed, in a place where hope is in short supply.

Attention is still focused on that sorry land. Anderson Cooper and CNN is still there, focusing attention on the Haitian plight while others proliferate other reminders, letting people know, for example, that if they text “Haiti” to 90999 a donation will be made to Haitian care. Millions have come from text donations. Churches and denominations rally also, sending human and financial resources to the beleaguered nation.

Here in the United States, economic growth in the Fourth Quarter was the most robust it has been in years though many an expert suggested temperance in interpreting these results as a definitive sign we are moving out of the Great Recession. The question remains: is this growth sustainable? We just don’t know. And it isn’t translating into new hiring – employers are finding ways to do more with less. Hence, weeks go by in a blink for more than just me.

And it was economic growth and job creation that was at the heart of Obama’s State of the Union address. Widely considered an effort to “reboot” his Presidency, Obama focused on the economy and efforts to put Americans back to work. He apparently had heard the message: “it’s the economy, stupid.” Economic fear is marching through the fields and the cities and reports of one quarter’s robust growth are not laying that fear to rest and won’t, not until jobs begin to appear again.

In what became a sigh of relief for New Yorkers, it appears that the Obama administration has reconsidered and the 9/11 Terror Trials will be held elsewhere. The probable cost kept rising, to a staggering $200 to $250 million dollars a year for a potential four or five years and that sobered a number of folks up. Plus the nerves of the city are frayed again – the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day underscored New Yorkers fears, feeling that this city has a bull’s-eye painted on it and so why ask for more trouble with trials. The Real Estate industry has been cringing, thinking a locked down portion of the city, watched over by snipers, was not going to be good for business. It’s not official yet. The city will breathe better when it is.
Toyota has issued a recall for a huge number of vehicles, issuing an apology at the same time. They have gone so far as to suspend sales of vehicles until a fix can be found for accelerators that stick. It has been a jarring note for Toyota, once a halcyon of reliability, a reputation now in danger of being tarnished as the recall spreads globally.
In the world of pop culture, Elizabeth Edwards kicked out John; he having moved from political icon to tabloid fodder. According to some, Brangelina is breaking up while others deny and one tabloid has Jen taking Brad back. The world of the tabloids has lots of room for celebrity sensation but not a lot of space for the horrors of Haiti. But perhaps we need our escapism; the world is cluttered with realities hard to fathom and harder still to assimilate into our lives.

The Washington Post reports that Obama has decided not to put 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed on trial in New York City. The pressure has been mounting for reversal of this boneheaded decision to treat enemy combatants as no different than domestic criminals. It’s still not clear whether this decision is to try terrorists in military tribunals or to merely try them as criminals somewhere other than New York.

Moving the trial in the wake of political objections would not augur well for the administration’s plans to bring other leading Guantanamo Bay detainees to other federal jurisdictions. Administration officials have said they plan to put about 35 Guantanamo detainees on trial, either in federal court or in military commissions.

Republicans and a number of Democrats in Congress have demanded that the detainees be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, arguing that they are enemy combatants in a war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, not criminals deserving of the protections of civilian court.

But the decision to bring Mohammed and his cohorts onto U.S. soil for a civilian trial is a linchpin of Holder’s tenure, and an administration official said the Justice Department would not back down on the central principle of trying the men in federal court and inside the United States.

When KSM was first moved from Guantanamo to New York I understood that he had already defiantly said he wanted to plead guilty in a military tribunal at Gitmo. The decision to put him on trial in NYC was especially bad because in a civilian trial his lawyers would be entitled to gain access to all sorts of classified information that is vital to fighting the war on terror. It would then become public and potential terrorists would get it and adjust their planned acts of terrorism, thus frustrating our military operations to stop them. In a military tribunal the procedures are much different. While his military counsel can get the information to use in the military tribunal in order to defend the accused terrorist, the information is not given directly to the terrorist and remains classified and protected so that it does not become public and jeopardize future operations to stop terrorists before they can carry out their terrorist acts.

If KSM had been left in Gitmo to face a military tribunal there is a good chance by now that he would have been put up against a wall and shot, which is what should happen.

The left now has several reasons to go nuts. In addition to this latest KSM development, there is this:

Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe

and on the same, see:

OPR Clears Yoo and Bybee

The left had so hoped to use the KSM trial to pursue their witch hunt of Bush lawyers.

People are celebrating the fact that the Obama Administration is considering relocating the terrorists’ trial from New York to another American city. Yet there’s still no talk of moving the trial out of our U.S. civilian courts to where it should take place – a military tribunal.

Now the administration is backtracking in order to fix its initially blundered decision to try these dangerous terrorists in New York City despite the great danger and cost to New Yorkers. This scenario is all too common in Washington. The tactic is to propose something so outrageous that the public will rise up and demand common sense, and then the White House “concedes” and changes its initial decision to give the impression of newfound reasonability and moderation. But the problem still isn’t solved! The trial location debate becomes a diversion so that we’ll take our eyes off the ball. The point missed is that our President still wants to give these terrorists U.S. constitutional protections in our civilian courts, allowing them to lawyer-up on our dime.

This tactic is in the same vein as another Washington game: creating the appearance of a “crisis” in order to push for a radical solution. (“The health care crisis must be fixed by government now or we’re all gonna die! The earth’s temperature is fluctuating; government must fix this crisis now or we’re all gonna die! Private businesses made poor decisions and bureaucrats claim they’re too big to fail, so government must fix this crisis now or we’re all gonna die!”) Politicians and lobbyists announce that there is a “crisis,” and never letting a good crisis go to waste, they propose a radical solution to fix it. The public listens intently, and in a sincere desire to help, an alternative to the politicians’ radical solution gets put forward. The politicians then “concede” and mellow out their radical solution. The public’s attention has been diverted to tinkering on the periphery, all the while ignoring the real problem at the heart of the “crisis” that started the whole debate.

The fact is our government has a choice as to where to try the terrorists. We don’t have to try them in our civilian courts. The peripheral debate regarding in which city to try these evil, dangerous haters-of-America is a diversion. Let’s get back to the heart of the matter: what choice will our government make – terrorist trials in civilian courts or military tribunals?

- Sarah Palin

My advice to Pres. Obama…LISTEN! She knows what she is talking about.

The Radionian
by Ashton Pittman, Opinions Editor
December 2009, Volume 86, No. 3

The decision of the Obama administration to send five 9/11 conspirators to New York City to stand trial in a civilian court just blocks from the final resting place of more than 2,700 U.S. citizens further highlights that the current president of the United States does not recognize that we are a nation at war.

Left: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad Right: Slain American journalist Daniel Pearl

Of the five conspirators being brought to New York, the most infamous is Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind and, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.” He also claims responsibility for the 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, having confessed to a U.S. military tribunal that he “decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl.”

Mohammad and the other four had been held under the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where they were to be tried in military tribunals as war criminals. Now, under Obama, these “alleged” terrorists will be given the same legal process with the same rights and privileges as any American citizen would for a common crime–by the same justice system that let “alleged” murderer O.J. Simpson go free.

Of all the bad policy decisions Obama has made since January 2009, this is the most outrageous. It is a slap in the face to every soldier who has fought or died in this war, every New York citizen, and most importantly, every family who has lost a loved one in the war waged against the United States and Western society. Indeed, many 9/11 families and others have expressed intense anger over this decision.

Daniel Pearl’s family was especially grieved and shocked. Expressing that he was sick to his stomach by the news, Pearl’s father went on to say that he didn’t “want to hear every morning what [Mohammad] did . . . Danny was killed once. Now he will be killed ten times a day. Leave him alone.”

That brings to light one of the greatest travesties of this decision: Mohammad will get exactly what he wants. The media circus that will be sure to follow these trials will give him the exposure he so craves, ensuring him public martyrdom for the cause of holy Jihad. He will have a pulpit to spew his anti-American venom, in which he will mock the victims in the face of their families and proudly boast of his actions.

Not only that, but he and his defense team are sure to turn the trial around into a trial against the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics. A key part of Obama’s presidential campaign was to accuse the Bush administration of torturing terrorists at Guantanamo. These interrogations, which included water boarding Mohammad, extracted information which helped prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, such as the planned crashing of a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles. Still, it is certain that part of Mohammad’s defense will include allegations of torture.

The legal wrangling will be exhaustive. Because the Bush administration treated the five as war prisoners, rights that a citizen would have were not given to these “alleged” terrorists. Now that they are being tried as civilian criminals, there is ample room for treasonous, money hungry defense attorneys to argue that the evidence collected by the military against them be inadmissible and that they be excused because “their rights” were violated.

Most dangerous of all, this move will make New York City an even greater target for acts of terrorism than it already is. Millions of tax payer dollars will have to be spent protecting the victim’s families, the jurors, the judges, and anyone else involved in this trial, including–yes–the terrorists themselves. Killing anyone involved in the prosecution of this crime would be one of the most emboldening acts since 9/11 to those who hate America.

The most infuriating element at play are the political motivations behind this; Obama is so intent on proving to the world that he is “not like Bush” that he is willing to revert to a pre-9/11, pre-war mindset in order to give these barbarians a “fair trial,” endangering thousands of citizens and causing emotional grief to thousands of families all at once in the name of politics. He has discarded the term “war on terror” in exchange for “overseas contingency operation,” and refuses to acknowledge the Fort Hood massacre as another act of Islamic terrorism. Not only are these actions astonishingly callous, but they are cowardly.

While Islamic radicals are engaged in a holy war against America, Western society, and our values of freedom, diversity, and respect for human life, Obama is treating them as mere rogue criminals whose crimes should be punished in federal court. While thousands of families and friends continue to remember the atrocious acts of war that claimed the innocent lives of their loved ones, our President fails to acknowledge the truth of the enemy we all face. While our soldiers are dying daily in a war for our way of life, with no illusion as to why they fight and die, Obama cannot understand why they fight nor what they fight for as he refuses to be the Commander-in-Chief of a nation at war.

President Obama: Have you forgotten? Or did you ever even know that on September 11, 2001, our nation was at war?

Hey, Chris, this isn't an actual photo.

Friday on Hardball, just after the announcement by Eric Holder that the Justice Department would bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists to New York for a criminal trial, Chris Matthews was the only MSNBC host to express any common sense doubt about the plan.

MATTHEWS (Friday): … a show trial opportunity… Human rights matters, even in cases of the worst people in the world, but sometimes I think we got to treat them a little tougher than we treat your average criminal.

Over the weekend, Matthews was suddenly transformed (by a trip to the woodshed?) into just another MSNBC ideologue spouting the party line that those who objected to this political show trial were “spreading fear,” and enemies of the Constitution.

While trying to prove how smart he is, (and asking paragraph-long questions which he mostly answered himself) Chris Matthews instead embarrassed himself as he, in effect, compared 9/11 to an incident of riot control getting out of hand.

Incredibly bringing up the Boston Massacre, Matthew blathered on about the American system of justice trying the redcoats who “fired on our civilians.”  That’s right, according to Chris, the American legal system applied SIX YEARS BEFORE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

So, I guess that would make expanding the Constitution to include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed no big stretch.  Conservatives say that liberals have a 9/10 mentality.  Matthews apparently is stuck in 1770.

Chris started off his interview with class.

MATTHEWS: Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky is a Democrat from Chicago. And U.S.Congresswoman Judy Biggert is a Republican from somewhere else.

After Schakowsky parroted the Administration line that there was only “irrational fears” in the objection to the trials, and Biggert raised security concerns, Chris went off on what he clearly thought was a clever prosecutorial trap:

MATTHEWS: You know, back in the early part of our country-I want to go back to-stick with Congresswoman Biggert for a second and see if she is consistent here.  Back in the beginnings of our country, we had a trial for the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, and we gave those British soldiers a real trial. And John Adams was their defense attorney. And a lot of them got off.  Do you think that was a mistake, to give them a real trial, or should we just have executed them? What should we have done?

BIGGERT: Well, I’m talking about having a real trial.

MATTHEWS: I mean, was it wrong to give-was it wrong to give a real trial to people who shot down our people in the Boston Massacre? Or was that a good emblem of the kind of country we were going to be, a country of laws?  What was…

BIGGERT: I-I think…

MATTHEWS: John Adams was their defense lawyer. Should he not have taken that job? Should he have not defended the enemies of our country and shown that we have a good system of law in this country? Was that a mistake, historically?

“We” who, paleface?  First, in 1770 John Adams was essentially still a British lawyer defending British soldiers in a British court.

Two, there was doubt both of guilt and motive when it came to the soldiers.  The crowd was threatening and pelting the redcoats with sticks.  Some frightened soldiers opened fire.

The closest comparison in modern history would be Kent State—though I hate to mention it, since the 60s radicals in charge of our government now is apt to drag those people out of the old folks home and conduct a show trial on them, too.

The Boston Massacre was tragic, and it was an example of the heavy handedness of King George, but it was not terroristic murder, nor were those who fired the shots un-uniformed  foreign combatants captured on the battlefield.  Otherwise, great parallel, Chris.

And even if you thought Paul Revere’s famous engraving was an accurate depiction, rather than an attempt at fanning revolutionary flames, comparing 5 civilians killed in a riot control situation to the deliberate murder of 3000 innocents who were going to work that day is morally bankrupt.

This is the kind of silliness that the more thoughtful Chris Matthews of times past used to rightfully skewer hapless politicians and commentators for engaging in.   It’s sad, really.

I know this is the second time today I’ve accused the media of being sensationalist but it really does seem like the media are clutching at straws for a story.

A headline on theage.com.au reads, “Melbourne terror suspect ‘hates Australians’” and is clearly meant to incite some idea of us being collective ‘Aussie’ victims or some other rubbish. But the quote was taken from federal agent David Kinton, who said:

‘‘Mr Aweys is, I suppose (the) common theme is, hatred towards Australia and Australian people and anyone who doesn’t follow Islam,’’ he said.

Whilst the headline seems to imply that the suspect said it, it’s just rubbish coming from the mouth of some ASIO thug.

But what sparked my attention was when it said:

Aweys’ lawyer Rob Stary asked federal agent David Kinton whether investigators had planted a covert operative amongst the group of accused.

Agent Kinton will seek legal advice as to whether or not he will answer that question and may claim public interest immunity so he does not have to respond.

Under the draconian anti-terror laws, suspects aren’t given the right to silence which is a clear breach of civil rights. But ASIO thugs are allowed to shut up in the “public interest.” They want immunity from admitting to more breaches of civil rights.

This is a fraud, makes them totally unaccountable and shows their unwillingness to admit there’s some serious dodgy shit at play, all in the interest of scapegoating young Muslim men and defending their bloody and unpopular war in Afghanistan.

It would actually be in the public’s interest if these anti-terror laws were scrapped because they’re a clear breach civil rights. It would also be in the public interest if ASIO were more accountable and couldn’t do whatever they wanted behind a hysterical smoke screen.

Meanwhile this article about Kasab on the front page of TOI caught my eye first

There are several theories to why Kasab has chosen to confess now. One of them is that India was keen to have a confession while Hillary’s still here. However the most credible explanation came from Kasab himself.

Judge: Aaj achanak aapne kyun confess kiya? Jab pahile charges frame hue toh tab kyun nahi kiya?

Kasab: Pahile Pakistan ne yeh nahi mana tha ki main unka hoon. Aaj maan liya hai. Isliye main bayaan de raha hoon.

Judge: Aapko kaise pata chala ki Pakistan ne maan liya hai?

Kasab: Bas mujhe pata chala. Maine suna ki Pakistan ne kaha ki Kasab Pakistan ka hai.

Judge: Kya tum kisi tarah ke dabav mein ho bayaan dene ke liye?

Kasab: Nahi

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The 26/11 terror trials has been progressing on a day-to-day basis without a summer break, on Thursday had its 70th witness disposing. At a time when trials of earlier terror strikes in the city- the serial train blasts of July 11, 2006, as well as cluster of cases involving blasts at Mulund and Ghatkoopar- are pending or struck, the 26/11 case has made considerable progress, observe legal experts.

Well for me this is a real good news and a cause of celebration. Now I just hope that Kasab get the rightful punishment that he deserve as early a possible. But the negative side of the  story is that the other terror cases still remain pending and don’t know how long it will take for our legal system to solve these cases and punish the culprits. For now I just hope that these cases just pick up the speed of the Kasab trial and the culprits will get punishments that they rightfully deserve.