How About Prison?

Matt Stoller does the key media criticism pushback on Jonathan Weisman's article about how politically risky it is for Democrats to challenge Bush's unpopular indefinite detention policies (my quick hint to congressional reporters would be that if you can't even get Steny Hoyer to fret in public that liberals are going too far, you need to come up with a new story). It's worth reading down to the end so you see how lame some of the GOP talking points are.

"The idea that we would import dangerous terrorists, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, into American communities is dangerous," says Duncan Hunter, who's apparently unfamiliar with our nation's fine federal prison system which includes several facilities designed specifically for the purpose of detaining dangerous individuals and separating them from the larger community. This is not the stuff of which good scare stories are made.

Comments

Plus, ever since McVeigh was executed, the SuperMax prison has lost a lot of its star power. KSM would do much to bring it back to the A-list.

Posted by right | April 2, 2007 12:13 PM

Haven't you seen Silence of the Lambs, Matt? Any run-of-the-mill super-genius mega-criminal can bust out of one of those joints. And KSM is waaaay eviler than Hannibal Lechter.

Posted by dj moonbat | April 2, 2007 12:21 PM

Tell me more about these "prisons" of which you speak.

Posted by jhupp | April 2, 2007 12:22 PM

Youre assuming that as yet unveiled democratic alternatives will call for the imprisonment of terrorists. It's just as likely they call for them to attend 6 six week cultural sensitivity workshops.

Posted by the invisible pimp hand | April 2, 2007 12:26 PM

Plus, ever since McVeigh was executed, the SuperMax prison has lost a lot of its star power. KSM would do much to bring it back to the A-list.

Awesome. Although I'd worry about Reds attacking this as simply a SuperMax self-esteem program.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | April 2, 2007 12:30 PM

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/08/america/NA-GEN-US-Mosque-Raid.php

It's worth pointing out that the federal system already handles "War on Terror" terrorist cases.

Beyond that, almost every lawyer I've heard from who has worked with Guantanamo detainees (including Katyal, counsel for Hamdan, and Lex Lasry who has been following the David Hicks trial) believes that the court martial system is more than adequate to try these cases.

The new and improved military commissions are nothing but circus trials where you can be convicted on evidence obtained through coercion or witnesses who are not present and cannot be cross-examined. They are a branch of the executive designed to fulfill executive political purposes -- they are not independent tribunals. There's nothing politically risky about pointing this out. This is as straightforwardly un-American as it gets.

Posted by StJoe | April 2, 2007 12:35 PM

My memory is hazy, but Chris Cooper is in the Supermax now, is he not?

Posted by JP | April 2, 2007 2:31 PM

So how do we bring this issue to the forefront? To me, the dismantling of our democracy is the biggest issue of this administration, even more than lying us into Iraq, but the Dems are afraid to stand up on this. Many of them went along with the pro-torture legislation so they could have co-ownership of dictatorship. Splendid. Maybe I should bring this up at mydd, since that's more a strategy blog, but I do think there's a sort of cultural problem too. Liberals tend to oppose "paranoia", especially paranoia about government, and this makes it harder to scream "the government can lock you up any time it wants without trial! They're coming to get you anytime they feel like it! Yes, "they"!", which is perfectly justified rhetoric at this point. What has come to pass is, after all, much of what the militia movement was theoretically "paranoid" about, though the fact that we have heard not a peep from them shows that their "paranoia" was actually insincere, or had an object other than that stated.

Posted by Martin Bento | April 2, 2007 2:40 PM

as a poster on myDD points out, Weisman and lots of others in the MSM are the personification of concern trolls. this article exemplifies that.

Posted by looj | April 2, 2007 4:28 PM