First Circuit Gives Senator Levin A Noogie

This development isn't fresh after forty-eight hours, but is still more than worthy of noting.

A federal appeals court put the Bush Administration's military commissions for terrorist suspects back on track Friday, saying a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison who once was Osama bin-Laden's driver can stand trial.

A three-judge panel ruled 3-0 against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose case was halted by a federal judge on grounds that commission procedures were unlawful.

"Congress authorized the military commission that will try Hamdan," said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The protections of the 1949 Geneva Convention do not apply to al-Qaida and its members, so Hamdan does not have a right to enforce its provisions in court, the appeals judges said.

In a word, "Whew!" Praise common sense and pass a second helping.

The Powerline legal eagles give this decision a professional going-over, and Blogs for Bush has a link roundup. Cap'n Ed synopsizes for us laypeople:

The earlier ruling would have taken jurisdiction for determining detainee status from the Defense Department to American civilian courts, creating a logistical and legal mess. Soldiers who captured these non-uniformed terrorists could have been forced to appear in court to testify to the circumstances of each capture. Every case would have involved lawyers, the media, and the laborious civil law process. Even with just 500 prisoners, determining whether the military could retain their jurisdiction could have taken years - while the intelligence that could save American lives got withheld behind a Miranda warning....

The lack of a uniform, the absence of al-Qaeda acceptance of the Convention, and the clear international character of the conflict all point to not only a lack of standing for POW status, but good reason to deny it. The entire point of these Geneva provisions is to protect civilian populations by giving a clear distinction between them and the combatants. Obviously, wearing a uniform puts combatants at higher risk, but nations agreed to do that in order to keep civilians from getting unnecessarily harmed. AQ intends on inflicting as much harm on civilians as possible while hiding among them for unfair advantage - which disqualifies them from the GC's protections. We must not allow them to acquire those protections if we want to discourage others from violating these tenets of conflict.

Not quite what Carl Levin and friends have in mind. Unfortunately for them and happily for the rest of us, not even their pet courts are with them on this one.