Remember also that the Torture Act purports to strip all courts of jurisdiction over habeas petitions.  Hamdan's papers set forth there are numerous reasons to state the Torture Act is unconstitutional, not the least of which are that habeas has not been lawfully/constitutionally suspended and that the distinction between aliens and citizens vis-a-vis the availability of habeas violates Equal Protection.

State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Orange County Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.

...

The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

Just a note from those days we remember, when silly news items like that, were good for a few laughs around the watercooler.

Back to the more depressing news of the day -
in response to the earlier comment re the "Military Commissions Act of 2006", the proper name of which (so far as I am concerned) is the "Torture Act".

Hamdan's motion practice in the District Court is one of the two (that I'm aware of) proceedings already underway which will test the Constitutionality of that Act.  The other is in the D.C. Circuit, which I also noted, somewhere on this site.

Hamdan was in the Supreme Court on one issue, but the other issues about his habeas petition were still in the District Court, being held in abeyance pending the resolution of the other issues in the Supreme Court.  

This is somewhat common, in that many times resolution of one issue will lead to the resolution of others.  Courts look for that first issue and try to resolve it.  For instance, a car accident case might be bifurcated into liability and damages portions.  If the plaintiff loses on liability, there's no reason to bring in the expensive damages experts (i.e., doctors, economists, etc.).  

Something similar was going on in Hamdan - if the tribunals previously established were decided to be constitutional, then arguably the remainder of his habeas petition might have been resolved there. Since the tribunals were not constitutional, the remaining issues of his habeas petition were still waiting to be tried.  Hamdan was somewhat out of the ordinary, because the government sought, and got, an interlocutory appeal to the D.C. Circuit after losing on the tribunals issue in the District Court.  The usual rule in federal (and many state) courts is that an appeal will not be considered until all issues are resolved in the District (trial) court.  That prevents "piecemeal" appeals and promotes judicial efficiency.  

Of course, the new Torture Act complicates this scenario, because now both issues are open, after a fashion.  The new tribunals are open for consideration as are the issues left over from before the appeals resolved this summer.  But, to get to either of these sets of issues, Hamdan has to get through the parts of the Torture Act which purport to take jurisdiction over habeas and detainees from the Courts.  If the Court has no jurisdiction, then the rest of the issues are irrelevant, because it would have no power to decide them.

So, what Hamdan is moving to have considered now, is the issue of whether the Court has jurisdiction and this discussion implicates the constitutionality of the Torture Act, in part.  This, because open constitutional questions exist (to some degree) over whether Congress can strip jurisdiction over classes of cases from the federal courts, whether habeas is among those, whether this can constitutionally be done absent a valid suspension of habeas corpus (i.e., a suspension made on the grounds specified in the Constitution) and, ultimately, whether Congress can even limit habeas.