Military Commissions to Continue (in Some Form)

Oh, Daphne. How right you were. How wrong this post was. Julian Barnes at The Los Angeles Times reports:

The Obama administration will announce Friday that it will continue to use military commissions to prosecute some terrorism suspects, current and former officials said — reversing a campaign promise to abolish the controversial tribunals started under President George W. Bush.

Apparently the commissions will allow for more process, like “ban[ning] the use of any evidence obtained through coercion and restrict[ing] the use of hearsay evidence.” But why continue the commissions at all? Isn’t the point of the commissions to restrict process, and allow a lower evidentiary standard, in order to obtain a conviction that might be somewhat harder to obtain in a civilian court? And is it really the case that a federal judge would just let, say, Ramzi bin al-Shibh walk?