Gitmo

Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian national who was captured in Pakistan and turned over to the U.S. military after fleeing from Afghanistan, was ordered released from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay by a U.S. District Court judge yesterday, according to the human rights group CagePrisoners. Judge Gladys Kessler’s written opinion is still [...]

Jeffrey Kaye at Truthout has a good piece today on the suicide — or murder? — of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh al Hanashi in June. It’s a powerful reminder of why human rights advocates, as well as U.S. military leaders, think it’s important to close that prison soon.
I admit I overlooked [...]

Rand Paul, who has surprised a lot of people by becoming a real contender for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, bows to political reality — he’s blasting the Obama administration’s policy on terror trials and proposing to “try, convict, and lock up terrorists in Guantanamo.”
Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), is one of the [...]

“This is war,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “I think the decision you’ve made to try these cases in federal court represents a policy and political decision.”

The Washington Post reports that President Obama said yesterday that the U.S. detention facility will remain open past the January 2010 deadline for closure he set during his first days in office.

As long as I’m praising Marc “I Won The Morning” Ambinder, check out this rather significant data point he mines from a Washington Post story on the final dispensation of Guantanamo detainees:
Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military [...]

TWI legal reporter Daphne Eviatar appeared earlier today on MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting” alongside NBC terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann and former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) to discuss the proposal to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Thomson, Ill. Video after the jump.

As Josh Kraushaar points out, that domain name has been snapped up by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), the GOP’s likely 2010 U.S. Senate nominee, to politick against any transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Illinois prisons. Punch in the domain and it points to Kirk’s Website and a statement warning that “our state and the [...]

David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and former congressman/Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr are backing a proposal to send Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Illinois, as well as President Obama’s plan to try terrorism suspects in federal courts. The three conservatives have long been members [...]

The Associated Press reports that White House Counsel Greg Craig is stepping down:
The White House’s top lawyer is returning to private practice and being replaced by a longtime adviser to Barack Obama.
White House counsel Greg Craig, who’s leaving in early January, has been the subject of questions about his future since late summer. Those questions [...]