We live in an in-your-face, chest-thumping, high-fiving world. No one's immune, certainly not our politicians. Maybe that explains Senator Patrick Leahy's enthusiasm for the media and political circus that will surround the upcoming Manhattan trial of one of the 9/11 masterminds. You see, as William Kristol reports, Leahy wants to "show something to the world." He wants to show how much we trust our judicial system. Now, if the terrorist-- who has already confessed-- finds a good defense lawyer, what Leahy may end up showing the world is how in America, it's a lot easier for a terrorist to get away with murder in a criminal court than in a military one.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is willing to. He’s quoted by AP as saying that "by trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system—a system respected around the world.” Do non-Vermont and non-left-wing Democrats really think we need what is likely to be a disgusting and dangerous spectacle in order to demonstrate something “to the world?”
I suspect some Democrats might find more to agree with in the comments of President Bush's last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former New York federal judge who presided over the blind Sheikh case. Mukasey objects that federal courts are not well suited to this task, and that trial in open court "creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried.”
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