Most people don’t even realize it, but an alleged al Qaeda terrorist – deemed among the most dangerous terrorists in US custody by US counterterrorism officials – has been quietly appearing in a U.S. federal court in downtown Manhattan for pretrial hearings for weeks now.

Lyndsey Graham is unable to produce positive results on an idea that no one supports.

Allowing the 9/11 suspects to be tried through military commissions is unacceptable. The proper venue is still the federal courts.

With the news that Military Commissions are likely to be our “First Line of Defense” for GWOT detainees including KSM, it appears that Chief of Staff “Beauregard” Emanuel has convinced President Obama Lincoln that in order to be “moving forward, not backwards”, he only has to nullify a good part of the Constitution, the Federal Judiciary and then surrender at Appomattox to South Carolina in order to form “a more perfect union confederacy”.

Respected members of the U.S. Military are speaking out against military commissions for suspected terrorists and supporting the use of civilian federal courts instead.

In March, 2003, the US waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times. It is now clear that a primary reason for this treatment was to extract a confession of a link between al Qaeda and Saddam just as the evidence for Saddam having WMD’s was crumbling. The US invaded anyway, knowing its justifications were false.

We learn today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees at Guantanamo will now face criminal trials in the Southern District of New York. Because his children are still missing, should any statement made by KSM at the trial be considered to be delivered under duress?

Oxdown’s Kangaroo Court of Justice leaves Condi punch-drunk.

There are many things which are legal as long as one consents to having it done. This is the failure of the new Republican meme that because we train our soldiers with some of the torture techniques, QED they can not be torture. What this fails to take into account is consent.