Last Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 258-163 to refuse to allow detainees now held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to enter the United States. Even a supermax prison facility isn’t safe enough to contain them, they decided, in a nonbinding resolution.

But Peter Finn at the Washington Post noted on Sunday that conditions at the United States’ most secure federal prisons are actually far more draconian than they are at Guantanamo Bay.

“For up to four hours a day, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, can sit outside in the Caribbean sun and chat through a chain-link fence with the detainee in the neighboring exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” writes Finn. By contrast, terror suspects in U.S. prisons are usually kept in complete isolation, allowed only one hour a day outside, and never get to speak to anyone.

The federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado is home to such notorious convicted terrorists as 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef; Teodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; and Terry Nichols, convicted of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The conditions at Florence are supposedly so bad that terror suspects in Britain appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent their extradition to the United States, arguing that the prison conditions constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In fact, studies have found that such extreme isolation can cause or exacerbate mental illness.

At Gitmo, meanwhile, KSM gets to work out on the gym’s elliptical machines and stationery bikes, choose his own movies to watch in the media room, read newspapers and books, and play handheld electronic games, reports Finn.

The Obama administration hasn’t yet revealed how it intends to close the Guantanamo prison, and what it plans to do with the 220 or so detainees that remain there.

“The strategy as announced is encouraging,” said Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents Bagram detainees seeking habeas corpus relief in federal court, told me today. “Of course, we’ve seen from President Obama in the past that encouraging words and pronouncements don’t necessarily translate into actions consistent with those words.”

Foster was referring to the fact that President Obama, despite promising to close Guantanamo Bay and improve U.S. detention policies, has kept up the Bush administration’s argument that detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan have no habeas corpus rights — or any other constitutional rights, for that matter.

Bagram therefore has the potential to become, as I’ve written before, Obama’s Gitmo — and actually, far worse.  That’s because while there are about 240 detainees at Guantanamo, there are more than 600 at Bagram. And a surge of troops and a stepped-up U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, as President Obama is promising, will likely add many more prisoners to their ranks.

“I’m encouraged by the fact that the Afghan strategy recognizes the importance of the civilian population at the local level,” said Foster, who’s one of very few U.S.-based lawyers that have actually been to Afghanistan to try to see the prisoners and meet with their families. (The U.S. military does not allow its prisoners at Bagram to meet with lawyers, so she’s been able to see only those prisoners who have been released.)

“But he has to change the policy with respect to prisoners at Bagram, otherwise there will be no credibility for all of these new civilian and military forces being sent to partner with the local population in Afghanistan to build a new society,” said Foster. “If at the same  the U.S. is illegally detaining hundreds of Afghan civilians without legal basis, that has to change in order to have credibility.”

“There’s a large section of the Afghan population that would prefer to go back to the Taliban because since the U.S. invasion things have been so horrible and they’ve suffered so much,”  she added. “So you have to show some progress. Time is running out.”

The Obama administration’s commitment to working with the Afghan population to support their nation’s development ought to include extending to prisoners at Bagram the right to meaningfully challenge their detention — to make sure the U.S. military is at least holding the right people this time.

On Wednesday, at 1:35pm, DeLong noted the contrast between Sen. John McCain shrinking from mentioning Ayers in the debate — even as his campaign “spent several days making an issue of Obama’s ties to the former Weatherman.” So DeLong issued a basic challenge: “If McCain believes Ayers is a worthy campaign issue, he should probably be willing to raise it to Obama’s face.”

By Wednesday night, of course, Sen. Barack Obama shared the same thought. “We’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days,” Obama told ABC, stressing that during the debate, McCain “wasn’t willing to say it to my face.”

By Thursday afternoon, this face-off dare was the Obama campaign’s message priority.

“[McCain] could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” said Sen. Joe Biden. “In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him,” he added. Last night, an article about that attack topped all the political stories online, according to Memorandum.

This pushback is adept because it avoids any defensiveness. Instead, it is emphasizing that there is something wrong with McCain’s behavior. By leaning into the potential debate attack, the Obama camp is trying to steal any thunder from a last-ditch offensive. If McCain doesn’t raise it next week, Democrats can argue that he copped out — that even McCain doesn’t think Ayers is a big deal.

If McCain does play the Ayers card at the final debate, the Obama camp can argue that McCain only acted under pressure — erratically switching his strategy under pressure from Obama.

The Democratic nominee, in answering a question about civil liberties from a member of the audience at a school gym, proactively raised Gov. Sarah Palin’s controversial attack from the Republican National Convention — when she claimed Democrats cared more about reading terrorists’ their rights than national security.

“First of all,” Obama said in his biting rebuttal, “you don’t even get to read them their rights until you catch them. They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden; and we can worry about the next steps later!”

As the crowd applauded, Obama punctuated his point with almost mock exasperation. “Seriously! These folks,” he said, turning to his own commitment to killing terrorists:

My position has always been clear: If you got a terrorist, take ‘em out — take ‘em out. Anybody who is involved in 9/11 — take ‘em out!

Yet unlike his Republican rivals, Obama argued that national security can be entirely consistent with upholding the Constitution:

But what have I also said is this: When you suspend habeas corpus, which has been a principal dating before even our county –- it’s the foundation of Anglo-American law — which says, very simply, if the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, “Why was I grabbed” and say, “Maybe you got the wrong person.”

The reason you have that safeguard is because we don’t always have the right person. We may think this is Mohammed the terrorist, it might be Mohammed the cab driver.

Now I’ll shift from reporting to speculating, and note that in the moment Obama proffered the Mohammed example, he seemed to consider how the line might be misconstrued. Watching his voice rise in that packed Michigan gym, I think Obama knew he went farther than his typical line on racial profiling. (As you can see in the video below.)

To recalibrate, he gamely inserted himself into the habeas hypothetical. “You may think it’s Barack the bomb thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president.”

Then, Obama delivered a rousing close to his extemporaneous constitutional address:

So the reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It’s because that’s who we are – that’s what we’re protecting! (applause) Don’t mock the Constitution! (applause) Don’t make fun of it! Don’t suggest that it’s un-American to abide by what the founding fathers set up — it’s worked pretty well for over 200 years!

The crowd rose to its feet in loud applause. It was one of the most warmly received arguments of the day, a departure from the economic policies that anchor Obama’s current stump speech.

During the primaries, Obama’s habeas corpus line usually drew applause, and he has been advocating the issue in Congress.

Obama is one of the 13 senators to co-sponsor the Restoring the Constitution Act, a bill to restore the rule of law and roll back major parts of the Military Commissions Act, which the Supreme Court recently found unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision was praised by Obama, while Sen. John McCain derided it as one of the “worst” judgments in history.

Watching both parties’ conventions, you wouldn’t know the rule of law has been seriously undermined by the Bush administration, or that torture, rendition, domestic warrantless surveillance and other crimes have become common tools of U.S. policy under a corrupted Justice Dept.

It was heartening, if only for a few moments, to watch a citizen raise those issues, and for a presidential candidate to respond with principle and passion for restoring the constitutional order.