I suppose I should let the man who wrote the book on this write the post, but Peter Baker’s profile of Rahm Emanuel contains this judicious account of Emanuel’s views on foreign policy and national security: Massachusetts and health care have reinforced a broader liberal indictment of Emanuel. He has been leery of or has [...]

I have to highlight this Washington Independent post, because it provides the legislative language favored by the people Lindsey Graham is telling the White House he can bring along in a detentions deal: An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner [...]

This is the deal Lindsey Graham thinks he can use to get the White House to abandon a civilian trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: Republican support for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. According to the more sophisticated explanation/rationalization I’ve heard for accepting the deal, it’s not so much that Graham can really bring along Republicans [...]

I don’t want to step on the toes of a forthcoming piece, so I hope you’ll forgive me being a bit cryptic. But one of the basic principles animating the Obama administration, as I understand it, is a very civic-minded impulse to resolve the complex interplay of terrorism and justice. In other words, when he [...]

So here’s where Lindsey Graham shows Rahm Emanuel that he represents some value-added on detainee issues to the Obama administration. John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bill today — the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010 — that authorizes indefinite detention without charge for terrorism detainees. (Or, as McCain put it, [...]

Building off Marcy’s post on the Washington Post‘s veneration of Rahm Emanuel, it now appears that Eric Holder had David Axelrod as an ally for what the Post calls an argument “rooted in principle” for trying KSM in criminal court. Rahm Emanuel had… Lindsey Graham. Obama went with Holder, Axelrod and principle. For the moment. [...]