You've no doubt heard that President Obama has decided that trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York City was a political albatross he didn't need hanging around his neck going into the 2010 elections and has overruled his Justice department's plans for a Manhattan media spectacle. The White House insists that KSM will still be tried in civilian rather than military court although the venue has yet to be determined. Bill Burck and Dana Perino at National Review Online give eight reasons why, on the contrary, the trial will indeed be held before a military tribunal and will be held in, of all places, Guantanamo Bay.
Meanwhile, it seems likely that Attorney General Eric Holder will soon "resign" from his office. Overruling his decision to hold the trial in civilian court in NYC will surely be received by him as a slap in the face and an expression of no confidence. Indeed, the man has been a constant source of distraction and embarrassment to the Obama administration since he took over the post. Burck and Perino remind us of some of his most infelicitous decisions:
It is a remarkable turn of events [being overruled on the KSM trial] for Attorney General Eric Holder, who, the White House has said for months, made the decision alone and was running the show. The White House tired, far more quickly than many expected, of the AG's bungled plan and realized that public opinion had turned decisively against the trial. Maybe the White House grew frustrated with the AG's mistakes on national-security matters, from releasing the CIA interrogation memoranda last spring over the vociferous protests of former CIA directors who served under Presidents Bush and Clinton, to commencing a criminal investigation of CIA interrogators who had previously been informed by career prosecutors that they would not be subject to prosecution, to deciding to Mirandize the Underwear Bomber without consulting the intelligence services and charge him as a criminal defendant with all the rights of an American citizen.
To these I would add his decision to not prosecute, against the advice of top Justice officials, the New Black Party thugs who were intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place in the 2008 election. I might also add his impolitic accusation that we are a nation of cowards about race, a claim that won him few admirers among the general public.
Eric Holder is a liability to the administration and patience with his missteps and pratfalls will, I think, soon run out. The last thing the Democrats need going into November is yet another Holderism sucking up media oxygen and forcing Democrat candidates to defend the indefensible. It certainly has been difficult for the White House to project an air of competence with Eric Holder running the Justice Department.
RLC
