Once again, Obama expressed his misgivings in a signing statement, but stressed that "the need to renew critical defense authorities and funding was too great" to reject the bill, which approved a $633 billion armed forces budget for the 2013 fiscal year. Also approved in the NDAA are controversial provisions that will likely make closing Guantánamo Bay detention center impossible in Obama's presidency, and provisions elsewhere in the act that allow for the indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens.

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Adnan Latif, who was found unconscious in his cell in a disciplinary wing of the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba, took an overdose of psychiatric medication, according to a senior Defense Department official.

The official said it had not yet been determined how Latif, who was from Yemen and had a history of mental illness and clashes with guards, managed to collect enough medication to kill himself. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the autopsy results have not yet been released and the case remains the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The U.S. military does not intend to disclose the results of the autopsy or discuss the case in further detail until after Latif's remains are returned to his country, said Army Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Miami-based Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over Guantanamo. The remains are at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

His death was the seventh suicide at the prison, where the U.S. now holds 166 men. The deaths of two other prisoners were determined to be from natural causes.

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So convinced was Isaac that a President Obama would restore habeas for detainees that in February 2008 he published a blog called Habeas Lawyers for Obama, composed of one impassioned post, signed by 132 habeas lawyers, and posted just before Super Tuesday in the Democratic primaries. It concluded:

The writ of habeas corpus dates to the Magna Carta, and was enshrined by the Founders in our Constitution. The Administration's attack on habeas corpus rights is dangerous and wrong. America needs a President who will not triangulate this issue. We need a President who will restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community. Based on our work with him, we are convinced that Senator Obama can do this because he truly feels these issues "in his bones."

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As Reuters reported, during a pretrial hearing focused on security classification rules for evidence that will be used in his trial, the terror suspect used his address to lambast the United States:

"When the government feels sad for the death or the killing of 3,000 people who were killed on September 11, we also should feel sorry that the American government that was represented by (the chief prosecutor) and others have killed thousands of people, millions... Many can kill people under the name of national security, and to torture people under the name of national security, and to detain children under the name of national security, underage children," said Mohammed in Arabic through an English interpreter. "Your blood is not made out of gold and ours is made out of water. We are all human beings," he said.

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Power was not always Obama’s strong suit. When he ran for president in 2008, he appeared to friend and foe alike as Mr. Softy. He wanted out of the war in Iraq. He was no fan of nuclear weapons. He favored carrots over sticks when approaching America’s adversaries.

His opponent in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton, tried to turn this hesitation to use hard power into a sign of a man too inexperienced to be entrusted with the presidency. In 2007, when Obama offered to meet without preconditions with the leaders of Cuba, North Korea, and Iran, Clinton fired back that such a policy was “irresponsible and frankly naïve.” In February 2008, she went further with a TV ad that asked voters who should answer the White House phone at 3 a.m. Obama, she implied, lacked the requisite body parts -- muscle, backbone, cojones-- to make the hard presidential decisions in a crisis.

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Can the government automatically classify anything a Guantánamo detainee does or says?

That’s the question posed by two challenges to a government order declaring “any and all statements” by the five detainees allegedly behind the 9/11 attacks “presumptively classified.” That includes their own accounts of their treatment, and even torture, at the hands of the U.S. government.

The government made that argument this spring at the start of the military commission trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others. The government says the defendants’ accounts, if made public without review by a government authority, could reveal details of the CIA’s detention and interrogation efforts.

Of course, much information about the programs — including the torture of detainees — has long been public. The CIA’s so-called black-site prisons were acknowledged nearly six years ago by then-President Bush. More details about the program were released by President Obama in 2009.

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It's no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we'll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we'll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

After 9/11, our government turned to torture, seeking information about the terrorists who committed the atrocity and others who might follow after them. Senior officials ordered the torture of men at military bases and detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, in secret CIA prisons set up across the globe, and in other countries – including Libya and Egypt -- where abusive regimes were asked to do Washington’s dirty work.

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Apologists for the tarnished military commissions, like Attorney General Eric Holder and the sixth and current chief prosecutor Brigadier General Mark Martins, acknowledge that our regular federal courts are best suited for terrorism trials. Holder told an audience at Northwestern University in March:

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The euphemism tradition remains alive and well in the Obama administration.  The slogan “fairness, transparency, justice” is featured prominently throughout the military commissions’ new half-million-dollar website.  The slogan even shows up when case document links lead to a notice saying the “document you are trying to access is currently undergoing a security review” and might be posted later if the government decides it is “publicly releasable.”

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Yet this week, behind thick bulletproof glass in a secure hangar-like courtroom at Guantanamo, I saw vast differences between the two systems. One notices first the physical – the few observers permitted to visit the isolated island base reach the courthouse through a maze of walkways secured by high dark-mesh fences, guards and double barbed wire on both sides. Instead of sitting in the courtroom, observers sit in an adjoining room, behind glass, and hear voices on 40-second delay to allow court security officers to cut off the audio should any classified information be uttered. In the dock this week was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent accused of planning and participating in the bombing of the destroyer, the USS Cole, on October 12, 2000. The attack killed 17 US servicemen and injured many more. With US service members killed a federal court clearly would have jurisdiction over the case, so the government must have some other reason for choosing a military commission.

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The Obama administration has suggested that it's open to a veto of the bill -- a move that would appear consistent with his opposition to indefinite detentions when he was running for president. The only problem -- as Jon Stewart pointed out on "The Daily Show" last night -- is that the President Obama would veto the bill not because it runs counter our conception of liberty ... but because it doesn't go far enough.

Part 1

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The Bush system of indefinite detention established at Guantanamo and elsewhere attempted to stand outside and circumvent the rule of law. This system has failed to prosecute more than a handful of terrorist suspects, while wrongfully detaining hundreds more. Yet Congress is now poised to make this system a permanent feature of U.S. law.

The National Defense Authorization Act, scheduled to be voted on by the Senate this week, contains several provisions that, if passed, would have the military police the streets, expand Guantanamo and indefinite detention elsewhere, and force certain terrorism suspects into military custody instead of charging them with crimes in civilian courts.

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The records from this lawsuit between two sub-contractors involved in the renditions will eventually be taught in an undergrad history course titled "America: Where It All Went Wrong." Detainees were transported by the same companies that fly billionaires on private jets to their resort vacations. (The CIA doesn't have an air force, so they relied on massive government contractor DynCorp, which... just rented some private planes.)

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"These are not American citizens. We just found with the Caylee Anthony case how difficult it is to get a conviction in a U.S. court," McConnell told "Fox News Sunday." "I don't think a foreigner is entitled to all the protection in the Bill of Rights. They should not be in U.S. courts and before military commissions."

Thanks to the minority leader for demonstrating exactly why so many people couldn't figure out that my jokes about Republicans responding to the Casey Anthony verdict were meant to be... jokes. I should know by now that there is no joking when it comes to the shamelessness and venality of these guys.

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Yet you wouldn't know it in Washington where, if anything, the Obama administration and Congress have interpreted the killing of al-Qaida's leader as a virtual license to double down on every "front" in the war on terror. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was no less blunt than Bergen, but with quite a different endpoint in mind. "Even as we mark this milestone," she said on the day Bergen's comments were published, "we should not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of bin Laden. Indeed, we must take this opportunity to renew our resolve and redouble our efforts."

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Morrell, Pentagon press secretary since 2007, seems very disgruntled indeed about having to do his job in light of some truly disturbing findings in the leaked military dossiers:

“Thx to Wikileaks we spent Easter weekend dealing w/NYT & other news orgs publishing leaked classified GTMO docs http://1.usa.gov/fWbGED,” Morrell tweeted Monday, linking to a news release from the Department of Defense condemning the release of classified documents.

When will the insensitive media stop thinking about oppressive detention systems and start worrying about federal employees’ precious holiday weekends?

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