Even though same-sex marriage is legal in seven jurisdictions in the United States, couples in which one partner is not a citizen do not have any right under current federal law.

The bill would make immigration laws equal for same-sex couples, including allowing same-sex partners of refugees and asylum seekers to immigrate to the United States. It also provides for the same penalties for same-sex couples who misrepresent their relationships for immigration purposes as current law does for married couples.

The bill makes provisions for same-sex couples to provide documentation of their partnership.

“A core tenet of our immigration policy is preserving family unity. Yet gay and lesbian Americans are still forced to choose between their country and being with those they love,” said Leahy in a statement. “I hear from Vermont couples who face this difficult decision every year. No American should face such a choice. I hope that my colleagues who supported this important civil rights reform will join me in calling for fairness and equality in our immigration laws.”

In addition to Franken and Leahy, the bill is sponsored by Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Robert Casey (D-Pa.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The Leahy plan sends a message not just to Mubarak but also to the Obama administration. Charged with managing the fraught relationship the U.S. has maintained for decades with the Middle Eastern public and with Middle Eastern dictators, Obama has tread softly as the streets of Egypt have turned into a battleground and as the Egyptian authorities have trained their high-grade American-made weapons on the protesters. The back-stage diplomacy and front-stage brutality have (some would say at last after decades) given rise to frustration, including on the part of the U.S. lawmakers pushing for an end, at least, to our financing the Mubarak regime.

Democrats spearheading the proposal to cut funding from Egypt– Leahy, as well as Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry and Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett– have asked Mubarak to leave office immediately. Leahy said Mubarak had “no credibility” even to oversee a transition.

News coming fast from the streets of Cairo, however, may overtake the Leahy proposal.

Speculation jamming the internet Friday as evening curfew arrived in Egypt was that weary Mubarak would announce any minute that he was in fact stepping aside, but that speculation and the energy it produced now is fading.

Meantime, images from the streets tell the story. Nevine Zaki posting photos at yFrog is pleading with al Jazeera journalists to use her photos in their stories.

This one captures Christian Egyptian protesters forming a human cordon around Muslim Egyptian protesters so they could take time to pray.

And more vivid images documenting the violence.

Zaki’s caption: “@ajelive please use this, the police IS using violence & are hitting people left & right ”

“These are not rubber bullets.”

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How often does document fraud actually happen? It’s tough to say — USCIS does not track incidents of fraud for immigration documents. Pro-enforcement groups such as Center for Immigration Studies claim document fraud is rampant and was partially to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when foreign nationals with driver’s licenses were able to board planes they later hijacked. (Of course, some states allow non-citizens to obtain driver’s licenses legally.)

The new documents would not prevent illegal immigrants from giving false Social Security numbers, but they would make it more difficult to fake naturalization documents. Some senators have argued Social Security cards also need a high-security overhaul to become more resistant to fraud. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have proposed biometric Social Security cards and criminal penalties for using fake Social Security numbers as part of their proposals for comprehensive immigration reform.

Although the bill may not go anywhere, it contains some measures that could be aimed at finding bipartisan support, including its first section on border enforcement. Republicans have made a call for border security a central part of their message on immigration reform. From the summary:

• Expands Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staffing, in line with this review.
• Improves training and accountability for DHS border and immigration officers.
• Enhances cooperation with Canada and Mexico, as well as local law enforcement agencies, to improve border security and coordinate crime fighting.

The bill specifically places immigration in the hands of federal authorities, clarifying the legality of state immigration enforcement efforts such as Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

The next section focuses on interior enforcement, attempting to make the system less exploitable and more humane toward legal and illegal immigrants:

• Requires DHS to track the departure of noncitizens to ensure that individuals do not overstay their visas.
• Denies “visa waiver” privileges to countries whose citizens attempt to overstay visas.
• Refines existing law on illegal entry, illegal reentry and voluntary departure of noncitizens to ensure enforcement of those provisions and heighten penalties for those who commit serious offenses. [...]
• Improves detention conditions to meet basic standards; expands secure alternatives to detention.
• Ends the waiting period for refugees and asylees to obtain green cards.

Third is a section on workplace enforcement. Like the blueprint created by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) this spring, the Menendez-Leahy bill calls for a fraud-resistant, tamper resistant Social Security card:

• Mandates the use of an employment verification system for all employers within five years. [...]
• Requires the Social Security Administration to create a reliable and secure way of verifying Social Security numbers and work authorization.
• Adds criminal penalties for fraud and misuse of Social Security numbers.

The remainder of the bill focuses on reforming the legal immigration system, which both sides agree is badly in need of improvement. The fourth section focuses on how visas will be determined and distributed, including the AgJOBS and Uniting American Families Act to improve the process for farm workers and foreign partners of gay and lesbian citizens:

• Creates a Standing Commission on Immigration, Labor Markets, and the National interest to evaluate labor market and economic conditions and recommend quotas for employment? based visa programs that Congress and the President would act on. [...]
• Creates the structure for a new nonimmigrant visa program (H?2C) to address gaps in existing worker programs that have lead to undocumented migration. [...]
• Significantly expands labor protections in current H?2A, H?2B, H?1B, and L?1 visa programs.
• Ensures that the number of family and employment green cards authorized by Congress do not expire because of processing delays; expands the share of visas that each country can access within existing quotas that limit overall immigration.
• Incorporates the AgJOBS bill, which provides a path to permanent residency for farm workers and revises agricultural employer sponsorship requirements.
• Incorporates the Uniting American Families Act, which allows permanent partners to access the family?based immigration system.

The next step is legalization for some of the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., which the Obama administration argues is necessary to maintain the economy, communities and families:

• Creates Lawful Prospective Immigrant (LPI) status for non?criminal undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. since 9/30/10. Requires applicants to submit biometric and biographical data, undergo security and law enforcement checks, and pay a $500 fine plus application fees. LPI status lasts four years and can be extended. It includes work authorization and permission to travel abroad; immediate family members are also eligible for status under the program. [...]
• Incorporates the DREAM Act, which creates a path to legal status for individuals who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, provided they meet age and other criteria and enroll in college or the U.S. military.

In its final section, the bill establishes several programs to better integrate immigrants into American society and provide humanitarian aid to those who cannot enter:

• Enhances programs and policies to help immigrants learn English and U.S. civics, such as: tax credits for teachers of English language learners and businesses who provide such training for their employees; a revamped DHS Office of Citizenship and New Americans to assist with immigrant integration; and grants for states who work to successfully integrate newcomers. [...]
• Evaluates the factors that drive undocumented migration from key sending countries and requires the State Department to develop a strategy to reduce migration pressures.

Although some proponents of reform argue it is an issue of equality, others — particularly in the evangelical community — say it would kill reform efforts altogether, The Washington Post reported today:

“It introduces a new controversial element to the issue which will divide the faith community and further jeopardize chances for a fair and bipartisan compromise,” said Kevin Appleby of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which last year said the inclusion of gay couples in a House bill aimed at reuniting families made it “impossible” for the group to support the measure. “Immigration is hard enough without adding same-sex marriage to the mix.” [...]

The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, a 16-million-strong group of evangelical Latinos that could play a key political role in an immigration overhaul, is similarly opposed to including provisions for gay and lesbian families. The president of the organization, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, said that including such a measure would prove to be the “death knell” for comprehensive change. [...]

Rodriguez rejected the argument that opposing gay marriage provisions in an immigration overhaul constituted homophobia. Rather, he said, the choice was between excluding gay and lesbian families from an overhaul of immigration laws – or losing out on an overhaul altogether.

Such a provision would make a big impact for some of the 24,000 gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. that include at least one foreign partner, the Post reported. They currently cannot petition for legal status for their partners — even if they are legally married in their state — because the federal government does not recognize gay marriage.

Still, some key figures support the inclusion of a provision for same sex couples. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill last year that would allow gays and lesbians to petition for legal status for foreign partners.

Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Mike Honda (D-Calif.) are pushing a similar bill in the House, which they hope will become part of larger overhaul of the immigration system. Politico reported in July that the representatives believe it could boost the odds for comprehensive immigration reform by looping in gay rights supporters — a somewhat confusing argument, given that many liberals already support reforming the immigration system.

Gutierrez is a vocal supporter of immigration reform, but so far seems unwilling to break it into smaller chunks, arguing provisions like the DREAM Act and same sex rights are a necessary part of the package.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Gutierrez told Politico of his support for a provision for gay rights in an immigration bill. “Families should be included, and as we move forward, that should be our guiding principle for comprehensive immigration reform. To use the old adage, the tent is big enough.”

A Somali refugee family resettles in Sioux Falls, S.D. (Flickr, UNHCR)

Stan Delp, a 67-year-old retired teacher living in Lansdale, Penn., was sitting in church in June, 2008, when he noticed four unfamiliar black-haired men by him. He found they were new to the United States, having spent 11 years in refugee camp in Thailand. Delp’s church is not big — about 200 people regularly attend — but nevertheless it has helped 47 such refugees assimilate to life in the United States over the past two years. When Delp met the men, he decided to do his part. He helped them buy clothes at Kohl’s and taught them how to use a refrigerator. He searched for jobs for them, and ended up waking at 5 a.m. to drive one man to work for several months, then allowed him to move into his home. Now that he lives in a retirement home, the refugees, now friends, visit a few nights a week.

“It’s like being a dad to them, really,” Delp says. “It takes 14 years to get assimilated into American culture. That’s a long time.”

[Immigration1] In the United States, the refugee resettlement system has always worked largely thanks to the generosity of people like Delp, as a public-private partnership with volunteer services and government backing. But the recession is threatening the stability of the program and the availability of resources to refugees. The government has stepped up its contributions to help new refugee migrants adjust to American life, but provides just eight months of resources. With jobs scarce, the churches and community centers that help after then are stretched to the point of breaking.

The government is aware of the problem, but thus far has taken only small steps to ameliorate it. The State Department doubled the amount of money it gives private resettlement agencies to help refugees when they first come to the United States, from $900 to $1,800. That amount helps the groups provide services for refugees and fund-raise for additional aid money for up to 90 days after the refugee enters the country. But the State Department knows $1,800 is not enough to support a refugee for three months, particularly with the difficulty of finding work, a State Department official told TWI.

“Part of the philosophy of our program is for people to reach self-reliance as quickly as possible,” says the official. “It used to be that very often refugees would have found work by the time our period of responsibility is up, and that’s much less true now.”

The Obama administration authorized in September 2009 the admission of up to 80,000 refugees in the 2010 fiscal year, up from 75,000 admitted in the 2009 fiscal year. In the authorization, the administration acknowledged that the “recent economic downturn has presented new challenges for this and other humanitarian programs.” To address these problems, the National Security Council was tasked with determining what needs to be done to improve refugee resettlement in the U.S.

“The basic set-up of the program hasn’t been altered in many years,” National Security Council spokesman Ben Chang told the Los Angeles Times in June. “It was time to take a fresh look.”

A few policy improvements have been recommended so far. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced legislation in March that would allow refugees to apply for green cards immediately upon entering the U.S. and adjust refugee resettlement grants annually based on inflation and the cost of living.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, commissioned a report on refugee resettlement and found the process often places an unfair burdens local communities. Called “Abandoned Upon Arrival,” Lugar argues in the opening of the July 21 report that the government should modify its funding and admittance numbers — either increasing funding of refugee resettlement programs or decreasing the number of refugees it admits — so high costs are not passed on to local communities.

“We must acknowledge the costs associated with this activity,” Lugar wrote in a July 20 letter formally requesting a Government Accountability Office investigation on the refugee resettlement process.

The idea of cutting down on refugee admissions is not appetizing, particularly at a time when the need is so high. Of 42 million people forced by conflict or persecution to move from their homes, 16 million need asylum or refugee status, according to a 2009 report from the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Forcing refugees to wait in camps, which often cannot provide the same health and education services they could find in the U.S., can have a detrimental affect on them, says Susan Krehbiel, a vice president at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

“It does become kind of a Catch-22,” Krehbiel says. “Some of the refugees have been in camps for 15 to 20 years. There are some human costs to delaying peoples’ resettlement.”

Still, Krehbiel says the current system struggles to serve the refugees it does admit, and relies too heavily on volunteer donations of time and money. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, established in 1980 as part of the Department of Health and Human Services, provides funding for up to eight months of cash and medical assistance, and refugee families may be eligible for additional money through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and Medicaid.

The government also provides up to five years of employment services, supplemented by private programs. But with the sluggish economy, employment programs through the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service have seem a marked difference in the speed of job searches among refugees, Krehbiel says. While in previous years 80 percent of refugees were employed within four months, the recession dropped that number to about 60 percent. It usually takes about a year to get 80 percent of refugees in the program hired, she says.

Janet Panning, a program director at two Pennsylvania Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service programs, says she has seen a significant decrease in employment opportunities for refugees. Recent anti-immigrant fervor hasn’t helped the situation, as some employers are hesitant to employ refugees because they think they could be illegal immigrants.

“People are very afraid of hiring people they think might be illegal or not have proper work documentation,” Panning says. “Sometimes employers that aren’t up on the law might be reluctant to hire a refugee because they might not have a green card.”

If they are not able to find employment, single people are in an especially bad situation after government cash assistance ends. Some refugees have struggled to support themselves and pay rent. Panning says she knows of several refugees who have become homeless over the years, but typically secondary issues beyond unemployment contribute to the problem.

Panning says she worked with one refugee who nearly became homeless after her family dispersed around the country. The woman had a war-related disability that was difficult to show to employers and kept her from working steadily, and eventually was placed in subsidized housing.

“She never went on the street, but it was through the blood, sweat and tears of volunteers that kept her in housing,” Panning says

The government has attempted to stave off homelessness among refugees. The State Department provided $5 million in emergency housing funding last year. For next year, the Department of Health and Human Services requested an additional $25 million from Congress for case management and emergency housing.

But local communities often take on that task as well. Delp charges a refugee $200 per month — “not even enough to cover utilities,” he laughs — to stay in his house while he stays in a local retirement home. He also helps a seven-person family pay the rent on a five-bedroom house nearby. (They were living in a two-bedroom apartment until he helped them move out a few weeks ago, Delp says.)

He says he and the other members of his church see helping the refugees as something they must do. “Those of us who have been given resources, it’s up to us to reach out to these people,” Delp says. “I can afford to reach out, so I want to help as much as I can.”

For the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled. (Flickr, Steve Rhodes)

In the first week of July, Andie Davis’ husband, who worked in manufacturing, lost his job, as hundreds of thousands of Michiganders have since the onset of the recession. Soon after, he started collecting unemployment insurance benefits that might last the family of four as long as 99 weeks. Davis hopes that the benefits will keep the family afloat — the mortgage paid, school lunches made, the electricity on — without forcing her to tap into the family’s savings.

[Economy1] But to keep the family financially stable while both she and her husband look for work, she has decided to forgo health insurance. The Davis family looked at how much COBRA would cost them, thinking the government would help pay for it. Had her husband lost his job just six weeks earlier, Washington would have footed about two-thirds of the premium bill. But since Davis’ husband lost his job after May 31, the young couple is on their own.

The change has gone little-noticed, both by the press and by the laid-off persons impacted by it. But a popular stimulus provision, the federal subsidy of COBRA benefits, expired for newly unemployed workers as of the first day of June. That means, for the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled.

COBRA — a provision created in the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 — gives workers the option of buying into their old health-care plan when they lose their job. Before the recession, COBRA let workers who lost their job through no fault of their own pay the entire health-care premium plus a two-percent administrative fee to keep coverage, about $8,800 per year for the average enrollee. (Generally, COBRA lasted 18 months.)  As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the 2009 stimulus, Congress subsidized this coverage, given the massive number and economic hardship of laid-off workers. The subsidy paid for 65 percent of health-care premiums for up to 15 months, meaning an average enrollee paid less than $3,000 a year.

For the Davises, under COBRA, coverage might have been a manageable $400 a month. When Davis looked into enrolling her husband and herself, she found it would cost more than $1,100 a month — leaving the family just a few hundred dollars for the mortgage, utilities, gas and food. She sought information on other private plans, but considered all of them too expensive. For now, the Davises are purchasing barebones coverage that will help pay hospital bills in case they are in an accident.

She rationalizes: “Me and the husband, we’re young enough that we can go without visits to the dentist and the [gynecologist] for a year,” and she argues, “I just do not see how it would be worth paying that much money for coverage, when we’re looking at a lot of other problems.” She argues that if the choice is between routine care and paying the electric bill, she will choose the latter. In the meantime, she is praying that her husband’s asthma does not flare up in the fall and hoping that they find jobs soon.

The Davises are one of hundreds of thousands of families doing the same. According to a study of 200 very large employers by Hewitt Associates, the COBRA provision doubled the proportion of laid-off workers enrolling in the program. In the fall of 2008, before the subsidy, about 19 percent of laid-off employees enrolled in COBRA. During the first six months of the subsidy, 38 percent of laid-off workers chose to. Now, with the subsidy’s end, enrollment rates are plummeting.

“Enrollment rates will likely decline over time as workers can’t, or aren’t willing to, afford the high premiums associated with COBRA coverage,” Hewitt’s Karen Frost said in a statement. “It’s possible these laid off workers are simply seeking coverage with a new employer or through their spouse’s employer. Unfortunately, it’s also likely that some are just foregoing health insurance altogether.” The National Employment Law Project estimates that 144,000 individuals and families per month have lost out on the subsidy.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but the extension of the COBRA subsidy became caught up in the tax extenders bill — also known as the jobs bill or H.R. 4213 — a large package of popular stimulus provisions that eventually died at the hands of a Republican filibuster. Senate Democrats managed to move unemployment insurance benefits, but few other portions of the popular bill made it through a Senate allergic to deficit spending.

The COBRA subsidy is highly popular: Hart Research found that 70 percent of Americans support extending it.  And many on the Hill fought to keep it in the tax extenders bill or to push it through other provisions. “Millions of Americans have been hard hit by the recession and lost their jobs through no fault of their own,” Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) argued. “If Congress turns its back on them, they will have an even more difficult time making ends meet. With no premium assistance, COBRA health care benefits would consume 75 percent of the monthly unemployment payment for a Pennsylvania family.”

He offered an amendment to keep the subsidy within the jobs packages, and along with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has offered it as a standalone bill. The Extend COBRA Premium Assistance Program Act of 2010 provides a six-month subsidy for workers laid off between May 31 and Nov. 30. The provision is entirely deficit-neutral, eliminating a tax break on annuity trusts as a pay-for. (The bill is one of many that would extend COBRA. On the House side, Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), for instance, introduced a bill doing so until relevant portions of Obama’s health care bill come into effect in 2014.)

Casey and Brown’s bill is popular — cosigned by Democratic Senators John Kerry (Mass.), Carl Levin (Mich.),  Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Christopher Dodd (Ct.), Al Franken (Minn.), Roland Burris (Il.) and Daniel Akaka (Hi.) and supported by a slew of others. But it is caught in committee, and its likelihood of passage any time soon is small.

That means that the popular provision is likely dead, and for families like the Davises, health care coverage will remain an unaffordable luxury.

Ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) had asked for the delay on behalf of committee Republicans, who claimed they needed the extra week to read through Kagan’s written responses to their questions. The move was widely expected, as the senators had only received Kagan’s responses on Friday. Sessions made a similar delay request for Cole.

Leahy said he would defend Sessions’ right to request the delays, but noted that he did not want Republicans to repeatedly stall Kagan’s confirmation vote.

“I suspect that every single member of this committee knows how he or she will vote,” he said. “I hope that we will not needless delay her as we did not needlessly delay either Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito.”

Sessions claimed Republicans were not trying to needlessly stall a vote on Kagan.

“I think we’re moving this nomination in a very expeditious manner,” he said. “I think we’re cooperating in a fair way to move this nomination forward.”

Updated at 12:01 p.m.

Retired Army Capt. Flagg Youngblood, military outreach director for Young America’s Foundation, testified that “‘separate but equal’ is, quite simply, not equal.” He compared Kagan’s restrictions to tactics used prior to the civil rights movement to segregate blacks in restaurants and other public facilities.

“Imagine Dean Kagan on a lunch counter,” Youngblood said. “What she said to the military was, in effect, ‘Sure, you’re welcome here but would you be so kind as to use the back door by the garbage? You don’t mind eating in the kitchen do you?’”

Youngblood has criticized Kagan before for her decision to deny military recruiters access to the school’s career services office, while allowing them access through other channels, as a way to protest the military’s implementation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He has knocked her over the issue for more than a year in pieces that have appeared in The Washington Times and other publications.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has also compared the recruitment restrictions to pre-civil rights era segregation over the course of the hearings, at one point referring to Kagan’s policy as “separate, but equal.”

Kagan said during her testimony Wednesday that the restriction was a compromise that allowed her to honor the school’s non-discrimination policy while also adhering to laws that require schools that receive federal funds to give access to military recruiters. She and supporters on the committee have noted that the military’s recruitment at Harvard Law School remained steady, and even increased for a period of time.

Army National Guard Capt. Pete Hegseth, speaking in his role as executive director of Vets for Freedom, said the increase might have been larger had Kagan not restricted access.

“Let’s be clear about that,” he said. “It increased in spite of Ms. Kagan, not because of her.”

Later in the session with Youngblood, Durbin turned the segregation comparison around by bringing up Rep. Charlie Rangel’s (D-N.Y.) service in the armed forces during the Korean War as a result of Harry Truman’s efforts to desegregate the military. He then told Youngblood he thought Kagan’s actions were an example of speaking out against discrimination.

Updated at 7:42 p.m.

“At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it’s done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules,” Holder said. “If we do that, I’m not sure the location or even the forum is as important as what the world sees in that proceeding.”

My emphasis. The issue is that President Obama needs to go to Congress to ask for the money for the trials. Despite the strong support for criminal trials yesterday from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairs of the intelligence and judiciary committees, Senate Republicans will doubtlessly try to block the funding and compel a change of venue for the military commissions. Holder, naturally, can’t let himself say that a military commission is an  inappropriate venue if ultimately the U.S. is going to have to move the trials there.

But he’s still going to have to make an argument for why it’s preferable for the trials to occur in civilian courts. Holder tells the Post, ”Trying the case in an article III [federal] court is best for the case and best for our overall fight against al-Qaeda.” But that’s got to be coupled with an argument, ultimately, for why the military commissions are worse for that fight. John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief, made part of that case earlier this week, when he observed, “There have been three convictions of terrorists in the military tribunal system since 9/11, and hundreds in the criminal justice system — including high-profile terrorists such as Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui.”

The trouble is that the administration has also embraced military commissions. So conservatives can just as easily say: Why should the most important al-Qaeda detainees get civilian trials but some kid who threw a grenade at a U.S. soldier at the Taliban’s behest get a military tribunal? And that’s not a question the administration wants to answer, given the emphasis it placed last year on revamping the commissions. If the administration replies, Well, it’s important to display the strength of American justice internationally, then it can’t very well continue to defend the military commissions. The easiest thing to do here, if the administration really believes in the commissions, is to give the GOP what it wants.

For civil libertarians, the coming fight might be an opportunity to weaken the Obama administration’s commitment to the process-challenged commissions, or at least test how strong that commitment really is in the face of both political pressure and the principled counterterrorism priority of convicting the terrorist conspirators.