The AP reported yesterday on private talks going on with the new transition team about the fate of the GTMO prisoners. The ACLU is trying to push Obama left, and the details of the facts about GTMO should be driving Obots crazy. To wit: (emphasis mine)
Under the plan being crafted inside Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials. But, underscoring the difficult decisions Obama must make to fulfill his pledge of shutting down Guantanamo, the plan could require the creation of a new legal system to handle the classified information inherent in some of the most sensitive cases.
Many of the about 250 Guantanamo detainees are cleared for release, but the Bush administration has not been to find a country willing to take them.
Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.
The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But as details surfaced Monday, it drew criticism from Democrats who oppose creating a new legal system and from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. mainland.
I have long been a proponent of a separate circuit of courts specifically to deal with enemy combatants and domestic terrorists, and I've been called a bunch of names because of that. Now that Obama is considering the very same concept, I expect the same ranters to whistle and stare at the ceiling.
Here's what I said:
It is also becoming clearer to me that between what we have at Gitmo, old treaties, the Hamdan decision, it's a patchwork. I think there is a strong case for a new type of circuit court with new powers of investigation to handle the kinds of cases we are likely to encounter with Jihadists and non-state actors going forward. I think those who have, even under the influence of BDS, suggested that there is too much Executive power arrogated by GWBush are backing into the truth. I say that the Congress clearly isn't doing a decent enough job, and that anybody with gripes about Gitmo should be behind a new sort of judiciary power.
This is one thing that Obama can do right, he's probably halfway there. But the ACLU is going to fight him tooth and nail because they already fight the centrists and the DLC. Their new campaign aims and dumbing down the issue to 'reverse Bush', and I suspect that Obots will be challenged to take the issue seriously. In the meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt has finally become useful again, taking a lawyer's eye to the detail.
Also note this essay in which I said:
What is convenient about my construction here is that it reflects with some accuracy the scenario which Judge Posner has stated and the sort of exception that demonstrates the weaknesses of conventional criminal indictments and search warrants. If one can presume that there can be a reasonably high standard of scrutiny applied to determine the appropriate court for criminal facilitation of organized crime - ie RICO vs American MI5, then we would be fine. The problem is that this is now an exclusive province of the executive branch. The absence of a counter-terrorist court system incents the executives to make a military case out of everything - to fight terror as if it were state on state war. It clearly is not and it clearly is not mere organized crime.
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