Obama Admin plans Gitmo Showdown with Congress

[RamboLiberal]

Update (4:25 p.m.): This story has been updated to reflect our latest reporting with the addition of a third sentence in the second paragraph.

Obama administration officials say they plan to reject Congressional efforts to limit the president's options on Guantanamo, setting the stage for a confrontation between the president and the new Congress on an issue that has been politically divisive since Inauguration Day.

The Guantanamo provisions, which include limits on where and how prisoners can be tried, were attached to a spending bill for military pay and benefits approved by Congress late last year. Some Administration officials are recommending that President Obama sign the spending bill and then issue a "signing statement" challenging at least some of the Guantanamo provisions as intrusions on his constitutional authority. Others have recommended that he express opposition to the Guantanamo sections without addressing their constitutionality.

The statement, officials said, would likely be released along with a new executive order that outlined review procedures for some -- but not all -- of the 174 Guantanamo prisoners still held without charge or trial.

Obama has used signing statements in the past, but this one would carry political significance as the first test of his relationship with a Congress in which the House is firmly in Republican control.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/obama-administration-guantanamo-congress_n_803752.html

[ClassWarrior]

1. Cool.

NGU.

[bluestateguy]

2. Thank you George W. Bush!

Not for Guantanamo, but for setting the precedent that signing statements can be used to render congressional laws meaningless.

Now the shoe is on the other foot.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. But I thought Obama had caved/folded over Gitmo?

:wtf: :shrug:

[tekisui]

4. He has dragged his foot for far too long, now he has no good options.

(snip)

A small number would be confined indefinitely without charge or trial, but the great majority would have their status resolved by civilian or military trials or outright release. Two years later, there is no clarity on any of those tracks. No formal charges have been brought against the three dozen men designated for eventual trial. Others long cleared to return home languish in custody in part because of the administration's self-imposed moratorium on transfers to Yemen.

In effect, detainees face indefinite prosecution, and indefinite release -- concepts unknown before Obama's presidency. In the interim, the number of Guantanamo inmates designated for open-ended detention has grown while the number who await trial has declined.

An executive order would deal in part with some of those cases. Currently, the draft order would provide a full review process for the 48 detainees in the indefinite detention category -- suspects the administration will not charge nor free. Those detainees would have access to lawyers and could challenge their detention and some of the evidence against them. The order also envisions a review of potential prosecution cases to determine which are still viable and in what setting. But the detainees in that category and those in all other categories have no way to challenge those determinations.

"If the executive order only applies to the 48 detainees that the administration says they are detaining indefinitely, then that is a failure to acknowledge reality," said Laura Pitter, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch. "There are 174 detainees still at Guantanamo and whether the administration says they will be tried, detained or released, they are in fact indefinitely detained and have been for a long time." Human Rights Watch, along with other civil rights groups, opposes indefinite detention. "The administration needs to either prosecute them or release them," Pitter said.

The bill makes both of those options more difficult and complicates the aims of the executive order.

(snip)

The American Bar Association issued a report in 2006 that called signing statements "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." The report was signed by a number of legal scholars including Harold Koh, who was then dean at Yale Law School and is today the top lawyer at the State Department and one of several advisers involved in the administration's Guantanamo policy.

Further, I was never convinced signing statements were constitutional under bush (and previous presidents), and am not sure they are under Obama.