Warner Is Uncertain on Legislation for Tribunals

A leading Senate Republican said Friday that he was not sure that Congress should pass legislation to create new military tribunals for terror suspects, a stance that raised doubts about prospects for a White House plan to establish an alternative to the commissions struck down this week by the Supreme Court.

The senator, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had not yet decided what course Congress should take. But Mr. Warner, who will preside over hearings on the issue in July, said he was concerned that new tribunals, even if authorized by Congress, might not withstand judicial scrutiny.

"We're going to do this extremely carefully and accurately, or we're going to end up with a solution that once again ends up being the subject of litigation, and possibly being overturned," Mr. Warner said in an interview in his office.

The scope of the court's decision stunned the White House and Congress, forcing the House and Senate to rearrange their limited summer legislative calendar to address the issue. Lawmakers from both parties said Friday that they hoped to reach agreement by the end of summer on a new plan to bring terror suspects to trial.

But the caution voiced by Mr. Warner suggested signs of division, even among Republicans, about how to balance concerns about the threat posed by terrorism with the court's requirements that detainees must be granted some basic rights.

President Bush has said only that he intends to work with Congress, but he and his allies appear to be pressing for a law that would give the president the authority to set up something similar to the tribunals the court ruled he could not set up on his own.

What's the matter with these people?

Simply that they're liberals, and liberals think that nothing matters except PR. Making this ruling guaranteed the liberals good ink in The New York Times, and that was the beginning and the end of their deliberations.

If we leave it to them, we'll have to fight all future wars in the court system, while the enemy hacks, burns and bombs their way to victory. Maybe we should start suiting up all the ambulance chasers and let them view battlefield conditions first-hand--maybe then they'd have a different opinion of what we're up against, and why we need a different justice system for terrorists.

That wouldn't change the fact that attacking GWB - attacking the middle class and its representative, the Republican Party - wins you good ink. The only thing that matters - in liberal "thought," all that should by right matter - is PR.
And, so long as people react only to the PR, that is pretty much the case. If PR says that since the president is a Republican, the Supreme Court and not the President is the ultimate authority - and if the president does not contradict that theory by action - then that is the end of the matter. If OTOH the president takes his office seriously, he would have Congress pass the same law that SCOTUS recently disrespected - changing something cosmetically but doing just the same thing - and act on that law.
When the defendant appeals that to the courts, the president would have to take a stand and announce that the law meant what it said, and that he would accord any assertion to the contrary all the defference he would accord to a Daily Kos posting. The courts and SCOTUS would then face the prospect that if they ruled against the president their ruling would be flouted by the president.
A president does such a thing would be reviled in the press. But a president who cannot do that is a president who does not have the authority that the text of the Constitution suggests.

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