December 14, 2006, You win some... you lose some
Fresh after his stunning Supreme Court victory last summer, former alleged OBL motor pool member Salim Hamdan (for some background, try our interview with his Supreme Court counsel Neal Katyal), apparently, learned that his victory was just a tad Pyrrhic, as (via TalkLeft) federal judge James Robertson of Washington, D.C., who halted Hamdan's military commissions trial in the first place in 2004 which ultimately led to the Supreme Court's decision... ruled that the new Military Commissions Act ostensibly screws Mr. Hamdan out of any legal process whatsoever, save the kangaroo kourt he can expect from the military kommissions themselves... i.e., notwithtanding the suspension clause, habeas corpus is gone (except for citizens... for the time being, anyway...)
To be fair to Judge Robertson, that's pretty much what Congress intended, and our friend Scott Lemieux agrees that the outcome was as good as could be expected given what Congress did...
(For those wondering, Mr. Hamdan, who has yet to be tried, has, like hundreds of other men, been languishing at Guantanamo and/or other American detention facilities for the last five years, with little or no end in site... while Hamdan has at least been charged with something, only 10 out of nearly 500 men stiill there have been charged at all...)
It seems, that once again, we've all misunderestimated Bush. I have from time to time accused him of a Neo-victorianism, trying to lead us forward... into the 19th Century...
In fact, he's actually trying to lead us forward... into the 12th.