The long ordeal of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, one time driver for Osama bin Laden, is almost over. The Washington Post reports within 48 hours he will be returned to his home country of Yemen to finish the last month of his sentence imposed by the military commission jury.

The U.S. military has decided to transfer Osama bin Laden's former driver from custody at Guantanamo Bay to his home in Yemen, ending the seven-year saga of a man the Bush administration considered a dangerous terrorist but whom a military jury found to be a low-level aide.

The Pentagon is trying to spare itself another loss in the Supreme Court. Had it refused to release Hamdan after his sentence was up, he surely would have litigated the question of whether the U.S. has the right to indefinitely detain those it deems enemy combatants after they've served their sentences.

"Legally, we absolutely have a right to hold enemy combatants, but politically is he the guy we want to fight all the way to the Supreme Court about?" said a defense official familiar with the release negotiations. "I think we came to the conclusion that, no, he wasn't. This is a win for everyone."

Patrick Ruffini berates his fellow Republicans for obsessing on the "threat" of the return of the Fairness Doctrine. It does seem a strange crusade, given that Democrats certainly are not clamoring for the return of the Fairness Doctrine and Republicans (rightly in my view) believe the Media was pro-Obama. In any event, I thought I would look to see who was a proponent of the Fairness doctrine and why. (My recollection of the Fairness Doctrine was some ranting citizen on for 5 minutes at 1 in the morning, but maybe it did more than that.) I found this article at the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a sort of liberal answer to the late Reed Irvine's old conservative Media "watchdog" organization, AIM (Accuracy In Media) site. This is the argument they presented in 2005:

Lillo Brancato Jr., who played Matthew Bevilaqua in the Sopranos and the young kid alongside Robert DeNiro in the movie Bronx Tale, is on trial in the Bronx on second degree murder and burglary charges.

His attorney (and long-time TL pal) Joe Tacopina told the jury Brancato is a drug addict, not a killer.

[Police]Officer Enchautegui, who lived next door and was asleep at the time, awoke when he heard a window break, prosecutors said. He confronted the men and shot both, but was killed when Mr. Armento shot him in the chest, prosecutors said. Mr. Armento was convicted of first-degree murder last month and sentenced to life in prison.

What the prosecution has to prove: [More...]

President Bush pardoned 14 individuals and commuted 2 sentences sentences today. The press release with list of names and offenses is here.

The commutations are for two drug traffickers who got big sentences they are currently serving:

• John Edward Forte -North Brunswick, N.J.

  Offense: Aiding and abetting possession with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; 21 U.S.C. Section 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(A)(ii), 18 U.S.C. Section 2.

  Sentence:Nov. 20, 2001; Southern District of Texas; 168 months in prison, five years' supervised release and a $5,000 fine.

  Terms of commutation: Sentence of imprisonment to expire on Dec. 22, 2008, leaving intact and in effect the five year term of supervised release with all its conditions.

[More...]

Matt Yglesias criticizes the Left flank of the blogs (specifically Chris Bowers.) I want to speak in defense of them. While on policy I am to the right of all of them (Sirota, Stoller, et al), I simply love that they speak strongly in favor of the policies they believe in. That they worry about it. That they pressure about it. A while ago I wrote at Corrente my view of what the Left blogs should be about:

Lambert invited me to discuss what the blogosphere should do now. My short answer is that it should do what it should have been doing before - fighting for the issues each particular blog believes in through the mechanisms it feels are most effective. The short answer is to do what is most effective to advance the cause of the issues you believe in.

That is what Chris, Matt, David and the rest of the "concern trolls" are doing. And Gawd bless them for it. We need more people fighting for what they believe in.

Speaking for me only

Canadian Omar Khadr, facing a military commissions trial, got no relief today in federal court when the judge refused to block his trial. Now 22, he's been held at Guantanamo since age 15 when captured during a gunfight in Afghanistan.

Khadr argued in pleadings in U.S. District Court that the Military Commissions Act doesn't give the military the ability to try juveniles. He also challenged his status as an "enemy combatant" saying U.S. law doesn't recognize juveniles as members of groups like al-Qaida; and he said that he should have been detained in "a rehabilitation and reintegration program appropriate for former child soldiers" instead of being mixed in with adults at Guantanamo Bay.

He has also alleged previously he was tortured. [More...]

A Dallas jury has returned guilty verdicts against the Muslim charity Holy Land Foundation and five men associated with the group. Last year a mistrial was declared when the jury failed to reach a verdict.

The defendants today were convicted on all 108 counts related to the "illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas." The jury deliberated 8 days.

Holy Land was formed in the late 1980's. The Government shut it down in 2001. Hamas was declared a terror organization in 1995. Of the $60 million allegedly funneled to Hamas, all but about 12 million was sent before 1995. [More...]

There's a law post just below this one.

Go Gators!

This is an Open Thread.

NYTimes reports:

The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit holds for the first time that government agents may obtain admissible evidence against United States citizens through warrantless searches abroad. The searches must still be reasonable, as the Constitution requires, Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote, adding that the government had met that standard in its search of the home and monitoring of the telephone of one defendant, Wadih El-Hage, a close aide to Osama bin Laden, who was a naturalized American citizen living in Nairobi, Kenya.

“The Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness — but not the Warrant Clause — applies to extraterritorial searches and seizures of U.S. citizens,” the judge wrote.

More when I read the opinion (PDF).

No surprises. Geithner at Treasury. Summers to head NEC. Romer to head CEA. And Melody Barnes to head the domestic policy council.

Key quote imo "We can not help Wall Street and not help Main Street."

I'll fill in more info as I get it.

Obama looking good in this press conference and fully committed to a massive stimulus package. Refuses to be pinned down on the amount but he clearly is signaling a huge investment. Good.

One thing for sure, whether Obama gets it right or wrong on everything, we will have a thinking, intelligent, engaged President again. Boy do we need that right now.

A near perfect press conference from my view.

Speaking for me only

As the Establishment Media and the Establishment blogs intersect, I was struck by this screaming headline at TPM:

Pricetags for Bailout So Far: 2.8 Trillion

That headline is bolstered by a post by David Kurtz that states $7.4 trillion has been spent on bailouts. The link goes to this Bloomberg story. What does that story say?

Through his deeds, President-Elect Obama is proving himself to be a worthy feminist, imo. Today, the President-Elect will name Cristina Romer the Chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers:

ABC News has learned that President-elect Obama had tapped University of California -Berkeley economics professor Christina Romer to be the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, an office within the Executive Office of the President.

Romer, a widely respected economist with an expertise on the U.S. economy, will be one of the key economic advisers whom Mr. Obama will introduce to the nation this morning, along with New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner, tapped to be Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who will serve as the director of the National Economic Council.

More . . .