Oh, So That’s What He’s Good At

7:37 pm, 11/19/09

One of the conventional cover stories for Barack Obama's broad inexperience is to assert that he's a Constitutional law scholar, so, you know, he's got that going for him.

Of course, that narrative doesn't really explain this tremendous blunder:

President Barack Obama appeared to be taking a page from Richard Nixon's playbook Wednesday when he seemed to declare the suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed guilty and deserving of the death penalty.

In Nixon's case, he pronounced cult leader Charles Manson guilty of several murders while Manson was being tried in a California state court for killing actress Sharon Tate and others.

Obama, in a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, said those offended by the legal rights accorded Mohammed by virtue of his facing a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

...which is funny, because I was given to understand that the whole point of giving this sleaze a civilian trial with a jury was so that the outcome wouldn't be prejudiced by political concerns, such as the kind that might come into play if the President of the United States declares that the defendant will be found guilty and executed.

Obama, who is a lawyer, quickly added that he did not mean to suggest he was prejudging the outcome of Mohammed's trial. "I'm not going to be in that courtroom," he said. "That's the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury."

Nixon quickly withdrew his remark as well, saying, "The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person, in any circumstances."

But Manson tried to use the comment to his advantage. He stood up in court the next day and showed jurors a newspaper with the headline, "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares."

The judge took the unusual step of asking jurors their reaction to the headline. "If the president did say that, it was pretty stupid of him," one juror, William T. McBride II, said.

As the Telegraph notes, all it takes is one closet Truther on the jury who decides that Obama's comments are proof of a conspiracy, or any other possible formulation of superstition and prejudice triggered by his carelessness, to wreck the trial. In all likelyhood, it will work out in the end, but it's still imbecilic.

Then, of course, there's today's revealing stammerfest from U.S. Attorney General Eric holder:

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, let me ask you this. Okay, let me ask you this. Let's say we capture him tomorrow. When does custodial interrogation begin in his case? If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we... We have captured thousands of people on the battlefield, only a few of which have actually been given their Miranda warnings. With regard to bin Laden and the desire or the need for statements from him, the case against him at this point is so overwhelming that we do not need to...

As much as Holder may have a point about nothing bin Laden says after his capture actually mattering, it seems to have never occurred to the man that we might need to interrogate people we capture on the battlefield prior to their civilian trials, so the nation's top lawyer had never really considered the problem before making this decision, or even the issue of how to try bin Laden should he ever be captured.

In fact, the entire exchange proceeds more or less in this fashion:

I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know...Well, I think...Well, that might be the case. I don't know. I'm not...I'd have to look at all of the evidence, all of the...It would depend on how -- a variety of factors....Again I'm not -- that all depends....It would not be something -- (inaudible)...

...but don't worry, Obama is a Constitutional law scholar.