Congress Tries to Return to Reality

In the light of yesterday's reflection about George Orwell, the Military Commissions Act might be taken as one of those desperate acts to avoid reality in support of the Administration's promotion of its "war on terror." Fortunately, in this case, as Jane Sutton of Reuters has reminded us, that necessary "dispassionate eye" for reality was provided by the judiciary, even if their objectivity hinged on a fine point of terminology:

The Military Commissions Act was criticized on Monday when judges in the Guantanamo tribunals dropped all war crimes charges against the only two prisoners facing trial.

The judges said they lacked jurisdiction because the defendants had been classified as "enemy combatants" rather than "unlawful enemy combatants," as required by the Military Commissions Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the move to restore habeas corpus a good first step and urged Congress to go further and scrap the military tribunals.

In an effort to recover at least some of its reputation damaged by the Iraq funding bill, Congress has now take its first step:

Guantanamo prisoners and other foreigners got a step closer to regaining the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts in a bill approved in a U.S. Senate committee on Thursday.

The Judiciary Committee voted 11-8 to send the proposal to the full Senate for debate, with Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania the lone Republican joining the Democratic majority.

Since the proposal includes the restoration of habeas corpus, the ACLU can tally up this day as a good one for civil liberties. Unfortunately, it would be premature to speculate on what will happen next. Given his proximity to Patrick Leahy when the Republicans were in control, Specter may not have the clout to summon many Republicans for the full Senate vote. On the other hand there seem to be fewer Republicans drinking the Kool-Aid with that flavor of a-vote-for-habeas-corpus-is-a-vote-against-terrorism. As Frank Kermode would have put it, now that the next Presidential election is at stake, more Republicans seem to be recovering those necessary dispassionate eyes. There may not yet be noticeable improvement; but at least things are not as bleak as they felt when the numbers came in from the Washington Post/ABC News poll.