A NYTimes editorial says:

From the WaPo:

A federal judge ordered the release today of a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the government's evidence was too weak to justify the man's continued confinement.

It is the second time U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon has ordered the release of a detainee after hearing the government's evidence. In today's ruling, Leon said the Justice Department failed to prove that Mohammed El Gharani, 21, was an enemy combatant because it relied almost exclusively on statements made by two other detainees whose credibility has been called into question by government personnel.

Via Yglesias and one of his commenters:

BARNICLE: [S]omeone ought to tell Governor Palin that there’s a distinction between blogging and what she refers to as journalism. Blogging . . . I would say 95%; maybe 99% of blogging is basically therapy for the blogger.

True enough. At least it is not this:

Andrew Sullivan is keeping mum about his meeting with the president-elect but he couldn't resist a little swipe at Paul Krugman.

Obama's post-partisanism, Sullivan writes is a "challenge...as real for a Krugman as for a Kristol." Please.

Bill Kristol is a shallow, error-prone propagandist behind just about everything awful in our politics, from the Iraq invasion to Sarah Palin. Krugman, conversely, is a Nobel Prize winning economist who has been pretty prescient on everything from the real estate crash to the comeback of Keynesian economics. [More...]

The Newsweek article I have been focusing on this week also makes some assertions regarding the import of last year's Boumediene Gitmo habeas decision. Newsweek asserts that:

The Supreme Court ruled last June, in a case involving some Gitmo prisoners, that U.S. courts should review the cases of detainees who deny being enemy combatants.Does that mean summoning military commanders away from the battlefield to testify? In a case in 1950, Justice Robert Jackson wrote that it would be "difficult to devise a more effective fettering" of a field commander than to allow the very enemy he is trying to defeat to cause him to be called home to defend his actions in court. Obama might do well to heed Justice Jackson's words as he referees the debates that pop up in his own administration.

Does Boumediene require that "enemy combatants" held overseas who deny their status be granted a habeas proceeding in the US? Not exactly. I'll explain on the flip.

In a 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court further eroded our Fourth Amendment protections by holding that the exclusionary rule does not apply to searches that follow an unlawful arrest pursuant to a warrant that, although withdrawn, still appears to be active in police databases. On its surface the result seems reasonable -- the police do not deliberately violate rights when they make arrests in the good faith belief that their databases are accurate -- but in practice the decision will lead to pernicious results.

The problem that the decision addresses is not uncommon. Warrants are issued for all sorts of reasons (including missed court appearances and failures to pay fines) and are routinely withdrawn when the reason for their issuance is rectified (the defendant appears in court or pays the fine). But since databases are not centralized, a police database of outstanding warrants is frequently populated with warrants that are no longer active. Individuals are routinely arrested in the belief that a warrant is outstanding, only to be released when the court verifies that the warrant has been withdrawn.

The Supreme Court's decision gives the police little incentive to keep their databases up to date and thus encourages wrongful arrests. [more ...]

The enterprise known as Newsweek magazine dedicated its cover story this week to apologizing and advocating for torture. I have covered this issue here, here and here. The Newsweek article, authored by Stuart Taylor, Jr and Evan Thomas, states:

It is a liberal shibboleth that torture doesn't work—that suspects will say anything, including lies, to stop the pain. But the reality is perhaps less clear.

Yet Newsweek reporting, by EVAN THOMAS no less, came to a different conclusion in 2006:

Does torture really work? Most intelligence experts say no.

More . . .

For the first time, a Bush Administration official has admitted a Guantanamo detainee was tortured.

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

More...

Smart political maneuvering by Jesse Jackson, Jr:

Jackson supported Burris’ effort to claim the seat to which he was appointed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich but criticized him for allowing his supporters to play the race card. This “racialization of the Senate seat is going to be a profound problem for Democrats,” Jackson told Politico.

It seems fair to assume that Jackson wants to be the next Senator from Illinois. Criticizing the "racialization" of the Blago/Burris Affair BY Burris while at the same time supporting Burris' seating is shrewd political positioning by Jackson.

Well played sir.

Speaking for me only

Back in 2007, we wrote about Sargent Binkley, an army officer and PTSD victim, facing a 12 year mandatory minimum sentencing in California for robbing a Walgreens for drugs he became addicted to in Bosnia. A jury Tuesday found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

Binkley, 33, is an Army veteran from Los Altos who attended Los Altos High School and West Point military academy. Psychiatrists testified at the trial that Binkley developed PTSD during his time in Bosnia and Honduras and developed an addiction to painkillers after a hip injury that went untreated for years.

While it remains to be decided if he needs in-patient treatment, the probability is he will be given out-patient treatment. He won't go to jail. Sometimes the system works. Or as his supporters' website says, "A Victory for all veterans
with PTSD!."

The Inspector General's report on the civil rights division of the Department of Justice is out. The findings: Bush appointee Bradley Schlozman broke the law.

Among the newly hired lawyers whose political or ideological views could be discerned, 63 of 65 lawyers hired under Schlozman had Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

[More...]

Update: Evidence in Terror Trials in Chaos: Military defense lawyers say the the re-referral of charges may have been an "accidental mistake." Several cases are in evidentiary chaos.

Teen soldier Omar Khadr, a true child of Jihad, has been set for trial by military commission at Guantanamo on January 26. That would give President Obama 7 days from his swearing in to abolish the unfair tribunals created by the the Bush Administration under the Military Commissions Act.

Unlike closing Guantanamo, which could take Obama months or a year -- even if he enters an executive order commanding the closure upon taking office -- stopping the military commissions trials can be done immediately.

Today, in an unexpected move, the official overseeing the military commission trials withdrew the charges against Khadr and the other four detainees facing trial by military tribunal and refiled them, which has the effect of voiding all proceedings that have taken place to date. In other words, the trial dates are off as they start from scratch. [More...]