Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong

[somone]

http://www.slate.com/id/2290359/

Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong
The Obama administration's appalling decision to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a military trial.
By Dahlia Lithwick

Today, by ordering a military trial at Guantanamo for 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, Attorney General Eric Holder finally put the Obama administration's stamp on the proposition that some criminals are "too dangerous to have fair trials."

In reversing one of its last principled positions — that American courts are sufficiently nimble, fair, and transparent to try Mohammed and his confederates — the administration surrendered to the bullying, fear-mongering, and demagoguery of those seeking to create two separate kinds of American law. This isn't just about the administration allowing itself to be bullied out of its commitment to the rule of law. It's about the president and his Justice Department conceding that the system of justice in the United States will have multiple tiers—first-class law for some and junk law for others.

Every argument advanced to scuttle the Manhattan trial for KSM was false or feeble: Open trials are too dangerous; major trials are too expensive; too many secrets will be spilled; public trials will radicalize the enemy; the public doesn't want it.

Of course, exactly the same unpersuasive claims could have been made about every major criminal trial in Western history, from the first World Trade Center prosecution to the Rosenberg trial to the Scopes Monkey trial to Nuremburg. Each of those trials could have been moved to some dark cave for everyone's comfort and well-being. Each of those defendants could have been tried using some handy choose-your-own-ending legal system to ensure a conviction. But the principle that you don't tailor justice to the accused won out, and, time after time, the world benefited.

Now the Obama administration — having loudly and proudly made every possible argument against a two-tier justice system — is capitulating to it...

[indepat]

1. Will the administration ever not capitulate on a major issue that has heretofore defined this

nation as the bedrock of liberty, the rule of law, and equal justice under the law? :shrug: :patriot:

[roguevalley]

2. watch Medicare. I can't wait for him to fuck that up. And who needs

medicare anyway. Right? Right?