Obama caved  to the right on the stimulus bill and now we're living with the consequences. Obama and the Democrats caved on HCR and who knows what(if anything) we'll end up with.

This recent episode is an instant replay of the FISA bill. Obama was adament that he wouldn't give the telecoms immunity until it came to a vote.

If the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty as charged, then the defendant gets convicted.  If the evidence does not support the charges, then the defendant gets acquitted and set free.

That's how it works.

Let's be clear about this. It doesn't matter what "you believe."  The sixth amendment of the constitution of the united states of America does not mandate "right to a trial by a jury of his peers, except if you believe he's guilty as sin."

The due process clause of the Bill of Rights does not say "the right to due process, except if we're really really really scared."

Let me double down on this so you understand it...

If the defendant openly proclaims that he has a vial of "Twelve Monkeys"-style bacteriological weapons that he will use to kill everyone on earth if he's acquitted, then if the evidence fails to support the charges, you acquit the defendant and release him.

If the defendant boasts that he can and will press a secret switch that will blow the entire world up the moment he's released from custody, then if the evidence fails to support the charge, you acquit the defendant and release him.

If the defendant laughs in court about how he has a vial of Kurt Vonnegut's Ice-9 that he's going to drop in the ocean and use to destroy all living creatures on earth the moment he beats the chrage, then if the evidence fails to support the charges, you acquit the defendant and release him.

It doesn't matter whether you like the defendant. It doesn't matter what you think the defendant did or didn't do. It doesn't matter whether you are secretly convinced that the defendant will rape and murder and torture and kill and bite the heads off puppies and beat baby seals to death with a baseball bat if acquitted.

If the evidence fails to support the charges, you acquit the defendant.

That's how it works.

If this report is true, I don't see him as reluctantly abandoning the decision to try the 9/11 defendants in federal court - I see him as regretting not taking the military tribunal course to begin with.

The federal trial decision was a sop to liberals; going back on that decision is a return to where he really wants to be.

Seems to me that when the administration is foretelling a verdict (see Nixon and Manson), that the jury pool might be a a bit prejudiced and a federal judge would be within his/her rights to dismiss the case. (Not that I disagree with the statements themselves).  

Clearly, someone committing a crime on U.S. soil should be tried in a U.S. court.  I suppose one could classify the terrorists as enemy soldiers that should be handled outside the civilian courts...

The key is to have a public trial based on evidence (not hearsay rumors) with the defendants represented by able counsel.  The Nuremberg trials are an example of that.   But that was a unique case where we had to step in because the German criminal justice system had bascially ceased to function.  Yet, if Obama had originally advocated a Nuremberg type process, I could have gone along with that even though that would not have been my first choice.

"...A key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

"Colonel Davis's criticism of the commissions has been escalating since he resigned in October, telling the Washington Post that he had been pressured by politically appointed senior Defense officials to pursue cases deemed `sexy' and of `high interest' (such as the 9/11 cases now being pursued) in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Davis, once a staunch defender of the commissions process, elaborated on his reasons in a December 10, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed. `I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system,' he wrote. `I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively.'"

Source here.

Man...when your own chief prosecutor resigns in protest because the so-called "impartial tribunals" are so outrageously rigged and so grotesquely unfair...at that point, you've got a real problem.

The other issue?

No one ever seems to mention the overwhelming evidence that most of the kidnap victims being held without charges in Guantanamo are innocent. There's now no question about it. Most of these people were innocent bystanders sold by corrupt Afghan warlords to make a quick scam buck off the American army. The Afghan warlords pointed to innocent cabdrivers and said, "Yeah, that guy, he's an Al Qaeda terrorist, now gimme my fifty thousand dollars."

And despite the overwhelming evidence that most of the people in Guantanamo are innocent bystanders like Dilawar the cab driver, some schmuck who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got sold to the U.S. army by a greedy Afghan warlord who lied out his ass to grab the reward money and run...these innocent bystanders continue to languish in prison. Forever. No charges. No possibility of getting a parole hearing. Nothing.

It's unbelievable. We're back to the star chamber in 16th century England, where innocent people got dragged off the streets and hurled into a cell without charges, held and tortured until they confess whatever the prosecutor wanted them to confess to, and then at the secret trial, the only "evidence" was the confession elicited under torture.

Would anyone here be willing to make that decision if you were in charge?

I admit that I wouldn't, because while I believe we need to return our reputation to show that we are a country of laws, I also happen to believe they are guilty as sin and should never see the light of day again. I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for what happens after they are freed and another few thousand people die, or worse.

No, not necessarily.  There are circumstances under which military commissions are appropriate.

Let's take a specific factual example: during WW II, some German soldiers snuck onto American soil after being left ashore via a raft from a German submarine. Their mission was to commit sabotage. One of the German prisoners turned the others in.

The Supreme Court ruled that U.S. civilian courts had no jurisdiction and that the German soldiers should be tried in a military tribunal. That seems sensible.

There is a place for military commissions and military tribunals.

Howeer, we cannot and should not dump trials into the military JAG system merely because Americans are too frightened that the defendants might get acquitted, or because some bloc of gutless voters are so terrified of what allegedly heinous acts the defendants might have committed had they not been captured.

The military commission system has its place. It primarily serves to deal with enemy soldiers in uniform or enemy soldiers in a conventional war who are out of uniform and trying to commit espionage or sabotage on American soil, or American soldiers who commit gross war crimes or violations of orders. In all other cases, the civilian court system has proven entirely adequate throughout all of American history, including a civil war, a war of independence, a world war against existential enemies (the Nazi Third Reich and Imperial Japan) who posed a genuine threat to the existence of the United States of America, and a cold war against a hostile superpower armed with 3,000 nuclear weapons capable of obliterating the United States from the face of the earth.