In Other News: Britney Flashes Hoo-Ha, Federal Courts Can Dispense Justice: Film at 11

Would you believe that it took two former U.S. Attorneys and a "terrific team" at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP that consists of at least twenty-one people to determine that federal courts can, in fact, dispense justice in terrorism prosecutions?

The new report from Human Rights First (available here) (oh yeah, it took seven Human Rights First staffers to produce this report) discusses in voluminous detail the implications of using the federal courts, as opposed to any sort of special military tribunals, to try terrorist suspects. I haven't read the full report, but the executive summary basically says:

1) Prosecutors don't need special statutes to nail terrorists.

2) Courts can still exercise jurisdiction even if the defendant was "tortured."

3) Courts have sufficient power to detain suspected terrorists.

4) Existing mechanisms are sufficient to protect national security interests in hearing and protecting evidence that may be classified.

So, in other words, everything that you've ever been told by the Bush administration about its need for "new powers" to fight terrorism is, in fact, a lie.

I don't want to minimize the effort and energy put out by the authors of the study - they've done yeoman's work in assembling the materials and sifting through them to create this magnum opus. But I'm left to wonder, really? Is this newsworthy?

Are we as a people so collectively stupid that we can't even see when we're being lied to? I get that the courts aren't simple and easy to understand, but how hard is it to grasp the concept that "criminal" means "criminal?" The authors of the study reject the idea that the criminal justice system is "the answer to the problem of international terrorism." Setting aside the question of whether that's correct (it's not), I don't get why, if the government DECIDES to prosecute someone criminally, the ordinary criminal processes are insufficient. And (with rather more evidence than their tummy rumblings), neither do Zabel and Benjamin, the authors of the report.

Once again, the real world contradicts the fantasy constructed by this administration (which, if you believe Scott McClellan, turns out to be even wider than we imagined). I sorta feel bad for people like them, who "create their own reality," they're being bitten in the ass by, you know, real reality.