Obama appeals to set rules for Guantanamo lawyers, page 1

The Obama Administration filed a series of appeals Friday night, seeking to overturn a federal judge's order that blocked the military from unilaterally establishing rules for lawyers who represent prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

What really surprises me is the timing.....or perhaps not. I guess Friday's are the favored bad news day. Why should this Friday be different?

In a blistering opinion, Lamberth noted that all the prisoners had a continuing right of access to the courts and he said the administration's move amounted to "an illegitimate exercise of Executive power." The indictment was a politically pointed one in light of the harsh criticism candidate Barack Obama leveled at President George W. Bush's administration over his assertion of unfettered executive power to prosecute the global war on terror.

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If we're going to play this all the way through for full blown trials and all the rights that can possibly be bestowed upon the few who haven't been released.........let's not do anything foolish like screwing with their right to counsel at this point. One final technicality that means little given everything else already going on could be enough to get their cases complicated yet further after they ought to be finished down the road.

Unlike Bush, Obama was a Constitutional Instructor as I recall reading about him. You'd think he'd be more familiar with such things as access to an attorney. At least Bush could claim ignorance and people actually believed him for that particular claim. Hard not to in his case.

This an earlier and longer story on this issue.

Four years after a Democratic convention replete with criticism of then-President George W. Bush for illegally exceeding his executive powers in places like Guantanamo, President Barack Obama finds his administration the target of a tongue-lashing from a federal judge over its handling of lawyers' access to those same war-on-terror prisoners.

On Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth handed a resounding victory to Guantanamo inmates and their attorneys, rejecting a bid by the Obama Administration to unilaterally set the rules under which those lawyers operate.

"The Court, whose duty it is to secure an individual's liberty for unauthorized illegal Executive confinement, cannot now tell a prisoner that he must beg leave of the Executive's grace before the Court will involve itself. This very notion offends the separation of powers principles and our constitutional scheme," added Lamberth, who is serving at the moment as the chief judge in the district court in Washington.

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This circus should be interesting if re-election to another term isn't even a concern anymore.....