At least someone has some balls:

Judge Robertson ruled that the administration could not under current circumstances try Mr. Hamdan before the military commissions set up shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but could only bring him before a court-martial, where different rules of evidence apply.

In the 45-page ruling, the judge said the administration had ignored a basic provision of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaties signed by the United States that form the basic elements of the laws governing the conduct of war.

The hubris of our “leaders” never fails to astonish me. Apparently:

Government lawyers argued that the president had already used his authority to deem members of Al Qaeda unlawful combatants who would be deprived of P.O.W. status.

It’s lovely that our government is one in which if someone high enough vouches for something to be true then it is true. True enough to throw someone in prison,
true enough to sacrifice our soldiers, true enough to mortgage the future.

Prior to the election, quite a few progressives I had talked to were largely of the opinion “it has to get worse before it can get better.” Interestingly, those people were rather tight-lipped last week. Perhaps even here, in the bubble of Berkeley, the reality has hit them.

I for one, am more convinced now that it has to get worse before it can get better. Of course, I can say that in my comfortable over-educated academic engineer position.