"Where you stand depends on where you sit"

For example, there's where you stood when you sat on a stool at a campaign town hall meeting.

And then there's the view from the Big Chair in the Oval Office, which apparently can make you stand in a very different place: U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts.

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies because the troubled system became an emblem of the effort to use Guantánamo to avoid the American legal system.

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies.

Civil liberties and human rights groups accuse President Obama of betraying a key campaign promise.

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that Mr. Obama had pledged to return the country to the rule of law and that “continuing with the military commission system would be a retreat from that promise.”

Gabor Rona, the international legal director of Human Rights First, said military commissions would only be necessary if the administration wanted to assure convictions that might not otherwise be certain.

“The administration is making a huge mistake,” Mr. Rona said, “if they believe getting convictions through suspect methods is more valuable than letting justice take its course.”

I hope that these groups hold President Obama's feet to the fire, unflinchingly and unrelentingly, on this issue. President Obama needs to pay the full political price -- not for continuing a policy necessary to the security of the United States and its citizens, but for opposing it out of ignorance and political pandering in the first place.

Democrats want to protect America from the War on Terror

The Washington Post has a remarkably candid news story on the deep divisions in the Democratic Party between those who see terrorists as a threat to America and those who think that measures to oppose terrorism are an even greater and more pernicious threat: Terrorism Policies Split Democrats -- Anger Mounts Within Party Over Inaction on Bush Tactics.

The American Civil Liberties Union is running Internet advertisements depicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) as sheep.

"Bush wanted more power to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, and we just followed along. I guess that's why they call us the Democratic leadersheep," say the two farm animals in the ad, referring to Congress's passage of legislation granting Bush a six-month extension and expansion of his warrantless wiretapping program.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), who leads a newly created House select intelligence oversight panel, lamented, "Democrats have been slow to recognize they are in the majority now and can go back to really examine the fundamentals of what we should be doing to protect democracy."

Actually, maybe the division isn't between those who think the terrorists are our biggest enemy versus those who think George W. Bush is, but rather those who think that standing up for terrorists just to oppose Bush is political suicide versus those who don't care so long as they take out the Bush War on Terror:

Reid and Pelosi promised last week that they would at least confront the president next month over his wiretapping program, with Pelosi taking an uncompromising stand in a private conference call with House Democrats. When lawmakers return in September, Democrats will also push legislation to restore habeas corpus rights for terrorism suspects and may resume an effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But conservative Democrats and some party leaders continue to worry that taking on those issues would expose them to Republican charges that they are weak on terrorism. And advocates of a strong push on the terrorism issues are increasingly skeptical that they can prevail...

"The most controversial matters are the ones that people use to form their opinions on their members of Congress," said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), who voted for the administration's bill. "I do know within our caucus, and justifiably so, there are members who have a real distaste for some of the things the president has done. But to let that be the driving force for our actions to block the surveillance of someone and perhaps stop another attack like 9/11 would be unwise."...

"If you just say you're standing up for civil liberties, the American people are with you, but if you say terrorism suspects should have civil liberties, it stretches Americans' tolerance," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who along with [Florida Democratic Rep. Alcee] Hastings represents Congress on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a human rights monitor. "It's a tough issue for us."

One of the most interesting things about this article is that it quotes and names so many Democrats (and one Republican, if in name only) as favoring habeas corpus rights for terrorists, shutting Guantanamo Bay, and restricting the ability of intelligence services to monitor international communications of terror suspects:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.)

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.)

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (Va.)

Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.)

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.)

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence committee

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus

And it closes with the most telling quote of all:

"We can do this, but you have to keep in mind Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear."

Leahy: Al-Qaeda terrorists = Japanese-Americans

Senility is not an attractive quality in United States Senators.

Two top US Senators on Tuesday urged lawmakers to back their drive to restore basic legal rights to inmates of the US "war on terror" camp at Guantanamo Bay.

The bill, an amendment to a defense funding measure being debated in the Senate, would restore the writ of Habeas Corpus to camp inmates -- which would allow the accused to challenge their detention in a US court.

"Like the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the elimination of habeas rights was an action driven by fear, and it was a stain on America's reputation in the world," said Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee.

Several hundred inmates at the notorious camp in Cuba were deprived of the right, which legal and human rights activists say is a fundamental underpinning of justice, by a bill passed when Congress was in Republican hands last year.

Senator Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, is co-sponsoring the move, which is expected to face a challenge from a dueling amendment, also from the Republican side.

"If we lose the basic fundamental rights to require evidence before somebody is held in detention, if we lose the right of habeas corpus, it is a very sad day in America," Specter said.

So Senator Leahy is equating al-Qaeda terrorists with Japanese-American internees? How interesting. Perhaps someone should point out to the good Senator that the detainees at Guantanamo are accused of something more than merely being of a certain race or national origin. Whereas the Japanese-American internees were rounded up based on a fear of what they might do because of who they were, the Guantanamo detainees are in custody for what they have already done.

Senator Specter is equally demented. "We" haven't lost the right of habeas corpus. Guantanamo was selected for the purpose of detaining enemy combatants precisely because it isn't in America. And if we have to start treating enemy combatants as criminal defendants, perhaps we had better require our troops in the field to Mirandize the enemy before shooting them.

There is one other interesting point. Despite what the U.S. government did to Japanese-Americans by interning them in relocation camps, a fair number of young men in those camps responded by volunteering for service in the U.S. Army in the Fighting 442nd Nisei brigade, fighting with valor in Europe. Sen. Leahy can ask his colleague Daniel Inouye of Hawaii about his experience in the Nisei Brigade. And then they can ponder, along with Sen. Specter and all of the other Senators so tenderly concerned for the detainees at Guantanamo, why it is that Muslim-Americans did not volunteer in droves in the aftermath of 9/11 to form an Islamic version of the Fighting 442nd.