Well, the big story these days is the Bush Administration's run-in with Sen. McCain (or a fractured GOP as the media seems to be calling them) on setting up tribunals to try terrorists. Sen. McCain again establishes a baffling level of deference (giving them access to classified information, lowering the bar again on what constitutes torture) to their rights that would make interrogation, much less trials, nearly impossible. The main snag seems to be Sen. McCain and friends' objection to defining what Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions means.
If you'll remember, the Supreme Court stated in the Hamden Decision that the Geneva Convention applied to terrorists. It was such an extreme decision that before even the most leftist opponent would concede that it didn't apply to them. Now, we're stuck with it (despite Justice Kennedy expressing some qualms). When the decision came out Gov. Romney had a near instant reaction to the news:
The court declared 5-3 that the trials for 10 foreign terror suspects violate U.S. law and the Geneva conventions.
"To apply the Geneva accords is very strange in my view," Romney said during a question-and-answer session with about 150 people attending his speech sponsored by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation at The Commerce Club of Atlanta.
Romney said he hadn't seen the ruling and didn't want to be too specific, but he said he knew the votes broke down between liberal and conservative judges.
"It's hard to understand how a party who's not a nation comes under the Geneva convention," he said.
~~~Thomas