Jackson deserves his share of criticism for slavery, but gets a bum rap on Native Americans.

The Supreme Court situation is a good example. Briefly, there were missionary whites going into Native areas in Georgia to help organize them politically against removal. The state government ordered them out, ostensibly as part of a broader effort to keep whiskey traders and such away from the Indians. The real reason was to facilitate removals.

The Supreme Court ruled that the state government did not have authority to do such things, because Indian/government relations are federal in nature. It also ordered the release of missionaries arrested under the policy. Jackson mused aloud that the Court might have trouble enforcing the order, but the Court never ordered him to take any action (cf. school busing after 1954), and Georgia, taking heat for holding sympathetic white missionaries, quickly relented and let them go.

Furthermore, the whole removal policy was the culmination of forty years of federal efforts. It would have happened with or without Jackson. Land sales were a big part of the government's early funding, including it's delicate financing arrangements with Britain. It's way too cheap and easy to isolate Jackson and muse that we would have a different historical record re Indians without him.

As for Chalmette, what can you say? The British unit in question had just come off some terrible crimes including rape and murder during their tour fighting Napoleon in Spain, and threatened to do the same to New Orleans. Not unlike KSM. Jackson said no -- you can't even step foot here. We could use that kind of spirit again.

I concede that he is in custody, and thus we cannot live out the Jackson credo of denying him a bed and pillow on our soil.

We could have eliminated even the hypothetical, if our president made a different decision, but his break with historical precedent (e.g., Nuremberg) precludes an Old Hickory approach.

As for the Nazi analogies, let's not forget that propagandists like Julius Streicher went on trial at Nuremberg, and he never laid a hand on anyone, in war or domestic crimes. Many top generals also went on trial, some of whom semi-credibly disclaimed knowledge of the worst excesses -- they were kept more secret than most people realize.

Some of those Nuremberg defendants (and probably all of them who were spared the death penalty) were on a similar moral plane with KSM. I think killing 3,000 people and planning to kill many more is pretty uniquely bad. If you and others are honest with yourselves, I think you'll agree.

Let's keep this bastard somewhere else. In life and in death.

People must remember that the Nuremberg trials were highly political. Meaning, they were part of a U.S. effort to rebuild Germany and protect it from Stalin.

To that end, we wished to ensure the top leadership would be gone, and not come back. I often think the suicide of people like Himmler (pre-trial) and Goering (post-trial) was encouraged more than we let on.

We also wished to ensure that the very worst of the worst, in terms of perversion, were punished, which is why smaller, less publicized U.S. trials occurred in places like Buchenwald.

Beyond that, we wanted the Germans to turn the page and move on. We also wanted to afford some measure of true due process, which is why men like Albert Speer (whose worst offenses were substantiated only later) were spared the death sentence, and later returned to private life.

The problem with this KSM deal is that it shows none of the same strategic thinking. The fact that the White House counsel resigned in chaos in connection with the announcement is not a confidence builder.

If KSM ever steps foot on U.S. soil, and someone kills him, it would be no different than the brave people who stormed the cockpit in the flight over Pennsylvania and brought down that plane.

Those people didn't commit a crime against the hijackers, and it would be no crime to kill KSM. He is an active, avowed mastermind of an organization which is presently dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible, by any means possible.

Do you seriously disagree? If, hypothetically, the circumstances of life afforded you with a loaded gun and a clear shot, you would kill him, wouldn't you? I certainly would.

What kind of justice? How about Nuremberg justice?

This decision is so controversial because the president, breaking precedent with World War II (to say nothing of Old Hickory) is (a) bringing foreign fighters to U.S. soil, and a U.S. court, and (b) potentially making U.S. defenses, including the exclusionary rule for tainted evidence, available to the defense.

Actually, it's worse, because in Nuremberg, the Nazi government had collapsed and the top three people -- Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, were already dead. In this case, we're still fighting, and now want to put the operational mastermind of an organization at war with the United States at disposal of U.S. defenses, and perhaps even U.S. residency in the event of acquittal, to further pursue the war.

In sum, the president doesn't need to do this. Precedent does not require it. The courts do not require it. It's unclear what Mr. Obama's counsel thinks of it, because he just quit. He apparently came up with this all on his own.