…on the lunacy of Eric Holder:
…why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.
Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.
…Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, (accused) mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.
By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.
What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war that the United States itself has engaged in countless times?
By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?
This will not end well.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And speaking of the corrupt political hack running the Department of Injustice, Andrew Breitbart has a warning: investigate ACORN properly, or I’ll release a lot more tapes just before the election next year. You know, I think he has them by the short hairs. I wonder if they’re too stupid to realize it, though.
And in a sane world, Breitbart, Giles and O’Keefe would be getting a Pulitzer.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Oh, this is precious, too. Breitbart totally pwned a hack columnist at the LA Times as well.
It’s intentional. It’s a form of asymmetric warfare against the US from the highest office of the land.
See, where you’re mistaken is in assuming that Eric Holder was chosen based on competency.
He wasn’t.
He was chosen because first, he’s got the right concentration of melanin; and second, because he’s enough a “Movement Democrat” that he’s not likely to get an attack of ethics and, say, order an investigation into ACORN’s multistate child-prostitution activities.
Hope and Change! (and 14-year-old Guatemalan hookers…right, Barry?)
The Left really doesn’t understand how America works. They don’t understand deference to precedent and institutional tradition. They don’t understand that “the rule of law” is a process, not an outcome. They are so far outside the bounds of our agreement that they do not even prepare to answer basic questions about precedent or consistency, because it simply doesn’t occur to them that might matter.
On each occasion the Left approaches a situation and says “What outcome do I want to achieve?” and then does the first thing that comes to mind, regardless of how it might play out in other situations.
That plus their religious faith in the improvability and perfectability of Man (New Soviet Man, Ubermensch, etc.) equals the Second Fall of Rome, if they get their way for too much longer. Western Civilization ebbs and flows on our ability to hold to equality before the law and free markets; all other roads lead to ruin.
Now if only I had any confidence the Republican Party understood what’s at stake …
DaveP.,
I don’t doubt that Holder was selected for the reasons you gave, but ultimately it’s not a question of competence. However dumb he may be, he’s not that dumb. I didn’t graduate from Harvard, or in the top 10% of the law school I did go to, and I could have answered the questions that flummoxed Holder. I was the President of my Federalist Society Chapter at law school, and I know for a cold fact that anyone in that club would have done better.
It’s about caring about the law, and our Constitution. The Constitution isn’t that long, and even reading all the core case law and treatises on its interpretation would take (max) six months. But to put in even six months of work requires that you care.
Holder just doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution, and neither does his boss. That’s the only explanation. Obama clearly knows the Constitution (I’ve read his sample exams from U. Chicago), but I suspect he holds it in as much reverence as I do the the Corpus Juris Civilis (the Roman law codified by Justinian I in AD 529).
Probably less reverence, actually. I at least recognize how hard assembling a body of law is. I’d rather live under a fairly enforced Corpus Juris Civilis than in Obama’s Egoarchy.
According to this the Pentagon is a civilian target? I would think that would all you need to declare 9/11 a military attack and trigger a military tribunal as with the USS Cole proceedings.
>…why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this?
I wonder if its a show trial for international geopolitics? Or he wants to give KSM a platform to attack the Bush admin and CIA?
Certainly from any legal and practical sence its nuts. They do not see it as a general policy, since the other terrorists are going to be tried in mil courts. So its some political advantage to making a show trial out of him and the other select group. Either they think this will get them applause internationally — but really, only the terrorists would applaud at giving them a podium. I don’t even think Obama thinks theres a plus side to that. So I’m betting its to give his ubber-left base a chance to see the CIA and Bush admin demonized.
Charles Krauthammer is a psychiatrist. While having gone through medical school his area of expertise is psychiatry. It would be nice if you could for once get something accurate…it that is not asking too much.
And one last thing…you may want to cite the website or transcript service for your copying before the TN gets hit with a copyright charge. I know that’s a rather hard thing to comprehend for you but it does count in the real world.