I'm not going to do research when I know perfectly well...

Of course not. Why start now? Why bother doing "research"? Why waste valuable time consulting "resources", searching for "facts" to support your arguments, that could instead be used sitting around, sulking and fulminating, hardening those self-righteous, indignant, untainted-by-research views of yours?

Now I feel like a total chump for spending and half hour during my lunch break Wednesday mucking around in the DOJ on-line guidebook consulting use of immunity in federal criminal prosecutions before posting here about Thomas Tamm. Why didn't I just consult my inner bile and spout a whole bunch of uninformed righteous indignation? That way I might of had time left over to hit the gym or something.

And that sysprog guy? With all those "links" and "articles"? What a schmuck.

Show us the way, shoots!

What is it about the discussion of Israel that makes people completely unable to be rational?

I can think of about six million reasons.

I do, though, find absolutely hilarious the idea that...all (members of Congress) happened with virtual unanimity to end up on Israel's side, even as virtually the rest of the world reaches a different conclusion. And best of all...is that he cites Occam's Razor to explain that oh-so-probable scenario.

How, then, do YOU explain that scenario? I know it calls for speculation. But why?

Thank you for the substantive response.

Sorry if it's been "cited earlier" - hard to leaf through 55 pages.

There's absolutely no good reason for Obama not to close Guantanamo immediately and simply try the detainees in our already-extant courts of law.

What if the sole evidence against some of the worst detainees - 9/11 masterminds and such - are admissions coerced by torture, and therefore to try them in a regular US court, where that evidence would be inadmissible, would virtually guarantee an acquittal and their release. You don't think Obama doesn't have a "good reason" to not want to be known as that "liberal president who freed the 9/11 masterminds over a legal technicality"? Because you know that's how it will be portrayed.

The only reason not to do so is a desire to disregard -- violate -- these long-standing American principles and instead create a new process that allows torture-obtained evidence to be used.

I disagree. I don't think Obama is solely motivated by a desire to violate the law. I think he has been put in a genuinely untenable position by the Bush admin's decision to torture. Observe the rule of law, or release people who may very well fly more planes into our buildings?

This is exactly what I was afraid of when it first came to light that we were torturing terrorism suspects. I was saying "Jesus...apart from the fact that torture is morally repugnant and against US law - how the hell are we going to try these guys now?"

Neither you or I know for a fact that the prosecutions (should they be in regular US courts) of some of the worst suspects haven't been seriously or even fatally compromised by Bush admin tactics. In fact, that seems to be exactly what Obama is saying in the quote you posted.

The idea that we just have to use torture-obtained evidence or else big bad scary Terrorists will be on the loose sounds exactly like the same kind of fear-mongering, sky-is-falling hysteria that has justified everything that was done in the last 8 years.

The law in this country is that both the prosecution (representing the People) and the defendant are entitled to a fair trial. The public has an interest in seeing the truly guilty violators convicted. That interest has now been seriously jeopardized by those morons in the Bush admin who thought torture was a good idea. That's my concern, and it seems to be Obama's as well, and I don't think that concern is rooted in fearful, "sky-is-falling hysteria."

I don't think you are fairly appreciating the very legitimate political and justice concerns that Obama is confronted with.

Look, I think Glenn, ondelette, lastname, et al are all making excellent points. All I'm really saying (and thank you Mona and Arne for weighing in) is that it is also a miscarriage of justice if the prosecution in these cases has been put at a disadvantage by the incompetence of the Bush officials, that which wouldn't have happened if the investigations had been done right in the first place.