Tuesday Roundup: Lawful Enemy Combatants

Boy, there's one nice thing about the White House quickly shoving through legislation to hold people in Guantanamo without the right to habeas corpus: haste makes waste.

Military courts have thrown out two cases of prisoners held in Guantanamo: one accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, another of driving around Osama bin Laden. The reason? The two prisoners, as well as most of those in Guantanamo, were classified as "enemy combatants" — yet the legislation that the Republican Congress passed and Bush signed required them to be "alien unlawful enemy combatants" for them to be subject to the military commissions trying them. Sadly for the Bush administration, not one of the detainees in Guantanamo has been classified as an "unlawful" enemy combatant. Even better, the White House has specified that they will appeal the decision — but the court that would hear the appeal doesn't even exist. I suppose it was originally thought that the only people appealing would be the detainees. And if they're detainees, they've clearly done something to deserve that, right? Clearly no need for an appeals process there. I wonder how quickly the administration can will that court into existence. Well, no, maybe I don't wonder — I have the funny feeling that I just don't want to know.

It is no secret that some Democrats were a bit disappointed at Congress passing a bill with war spending that wasn't tied to strict timetables for ending the war. Fortunately for us, Congressional Democrats are calling the fight far from over. The appropriations bill was an immediate and pressing concern, and I can understand how they would've felt pressured to get something through that could be signed and passed into law — especially when the minimum wage increase was tied to it — and I suppose there will be many, many more times that we can beat the administration over the head with the Iraq issue. And with Republicans concurring that the September report will be a turning point for the call to war, it is also sounding like there is indeed effectively a timetable in practice, even if it's not spelled out in the bill. I can hope.

Before leaving federal news, we must note that Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) lost the battle with leukemia yesterday. Thomas was 74. Our deep condolences go out to Sen. Thomas' family.

There seems to be yet another little snag in the implementation of the border fence. Apparently it doesn't seem to hug the border very well, much to the chagrin of UT Brownsville. The fence cuts through the UT Brownsville and Texas Southmost College campuses, putting parts of the universities "on the Mexican side of the fence," as Vice President of External Affairs Antonio D. Zavaleta states. I guess everybody was right in being upset about the secrecy with which the fence was being handled, and how local officials were not let in on any of the fence's details. Who would've thought?

On the bright side, real progress seems to be coming about with regards to the Congressional immigration bill. The CNN story goes into some of the compromises and current sticking points of the bill. A related story notes that some Republicans are surprised at their constituents' vehement response against the immigration bill, while most Democrats seem, after consideration, to think the compromise bill isn't so bad after all. And yes, "vehement response" was the nice way of putting those opinions. We try to avoid name-calling here at the Blue. But I will say that immigration is a far more complex issue than many make it. The Washington Post impressed me today with one of those rare pieces that illustrates the depth and complexity behind issues of the day. Their piece touches on some issues such as certain industries seeing an increase in jobs available to Americans from increased immigration, and other ramifications of immigration that you don't see in the public eye every day. Kudos to the WaPo (who, in the interests of full disclosure, are indeed friends of the show).

And finally today, since we have gotten a few "haven't heard of him" responses to our articles profiling him as a contender and reporting on his announcement of an exploratory committee, we'd like to point you to Eddie Rodriguez at BOR, who writes about some personal experiences with Mikal Watts.