President Obama's $3.8 Trillion budget goes to Congress tomorrow.

Given the Republican threat to pass a bill that prevents DOJ from using funds to try terror suspects in federal court, Obama has one other option: trying them not in military commissions as the scaredy-pants Repubs want, but trying them in military courts under the Uniform Code OF Military Justice, a procedure far more fair that the military tribunals.

If that is done, the Department of Defense can use some of its bloated budget to pay for the trials, instead of the DOJ and Homeland Security.

The Republicans and right-leaning Dems can scream all they want, but Obama made a promise: Those that could be tried in civilian courts would be tried in either civilian courts or under the Code of Military Justice. [More..]

Could Lady Gaga's dress be any more strange? That's her arriving on the red carpet for tonight's 2010 Grammy Awards. (Photo by Herman Flores.)

There will be the big three (yet again): Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, all of whom will perform. And a Michael Jackson tribute -- a 3-D broadcast of his orchestral ballad "Earth Song". His kids will be there.[More...]

Yglesias writes:

[T]he US House of Representative is a fairly well-functioning legislative body. It’s a body organized around two major political parties that outline competing, somewhat coherent agendas that command large-scale support from their own members and little support from the opposition. [. . .] There are biannual elections at which the American people put either one party or the other in charge, and having won an election the winning party attempts to govern in a way that maintains the confidence of the voters.

It’s a perfectly good system. [. . . John] Boehner’s ideas are different from Nancy Pelosi’s ideas, and if he wants his ideas to prevail he needs to assemble a majority prepared to support him. That’s his responsibility as an opposition leader, whereas Pelosi’s responsibility is to frame a successful governing agenda that maintain’s the public’s faith in her co-partisans. It’s a system where power aligns with responsibility, and where those with power are held accountable for their use of it. The Senate, by contrast, is a mess.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is obviously true. And the Presidency, especially since the Imperial Presidency, SHOULD work in the same way. That's why Obama's post partisan unity schtick is so annoying. It is ridiculous and wrong.

Speaking for me only

Why bother with a trial? Just call out the firing squad. Here's Obama Press secretary Robert Gibbs today:

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he’s going to meet his maker," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told John King on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning. "He's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed," he added.

Former SDNY AUSA Cynthia Kouril at Firedoglake weighs in on this one. (Extra props for mentioning defense counsel.) [More...]

Here's the transcript of White House Adviser David Axelrod this morning on Meet the Press:

DAVID GREGORY: First the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind 9/11. Has the administration reversed its stance and decided not to transfer him to New York for trial?

DAVID AXLEROD: We've made no decisions on that David, I've seen the reports. We've no made decisions on that yet. Look here's the situation, the attorney general and the defense department worked out protocols about how these cases should be handled. Under those protocols, the attorney general decided to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed back to New York to stand trial for his crime, for the murder of 3000 innocent people. And he wanted to do it near the site of the crime itself. He wanted to do what the Bush administration did over and over and over again, and try these people - try these murderers in article three court, or these uh .. and that's what he decided to do.

[More...]

Via DougJ, Norm Ornstein touts the accomplishments of 2009:

There seems to be little to endear citizens to their legislature or to the president trying to influence it. It's too bad because [. . .] this Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president -- and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. [. . .]

Ornstein's idea is that passing legislation, ANY legislation, is accomplishment. The trouble with that perspective is the country does not look at "passing legislation" as accomplishment. They look at effects on their everyday lives as accomplishment. Ornstein is a smart guy, but he is of the Village, where "accomplishments" are measured differently than in the country. More . . .

Forget the Geek Squad, here comes the Grow Squad. Are these the Best Buys of the future?

Tonight is the final night of the X Games . ESPN will have live coverage at 7pm MT (as soon as the basketball game ends.) The schedule:

• 7:00 pm: Snowboard Big Air Elimination
• 7:30 pm: Snowboard SuperPipe Women's Final
• 8:30 pm: Snowboard Big Air Final

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The AP reports that on Monday, President Obama will release a budget request that includes $200 million in security for the city that ends up hosting the 9/11 trials. While no official announcement has been made, it appears Manhattan has been scrapped.

The other day I set out the applicable constitutional and statutory provisions on venue. Most likely, the Government will pick a city in which an overt act in furtherance of the 9/11 conspiracy was committed. Here's a partial list: [More...]

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility report on whether the authors of the Bush era torture memos violated professional ethical standards is going to reverse course and absolve John Yoo and Jay Bybee of wrongdoing. Now, it will say they simply exercised poor judgment.

Newsweek broke the story. How the change came about: [More...]

Digby writes:

[E]ither Rahm is a brilliant legislative strategist, in which case he didn't bother to use his great powers to pass health care reform for reasons we can only speculate about, given the stakes --- or his reputation for brilliance is extremely overrated.

(Emphasis supplied.) It's the latter. What Rahmbo is actually brilliant at is self promotion. Always has been and always will be. Consider the sell job Rahmbo did about the 2006 elections. To hear Rahmbo and his Village mouthpieces tell it, Rahmbo engineered the big Dem win. The reality is Rahmbo almost blew the 2006 election by his refusal to focus on Iraq until it was obvious to anyone that that was the way to go. Rahmbo wanted to run a "culture of corruption" campaign. After the big win in 2006, Rahmbo got in front of the parade and pretended running on Iraq was his idea. It wasn't. He was against it.

Speaking for me only

Via SusanG, this is an interesting formulation by the President:

I’ve also proposed a spending freeze, so that as we increase investments in things we need, like job creation and middle class tax cuts – we cut spending on those we don’t, like tax cuts for oil companies and investment fund managers [. . .]

This is not bad as political framing. We'll see if there is any follow through on this. Anyway, here is the President's Saturday address: