1. He cares about the rule of law. On May 21, standing in front of the Constitution, he said so. He’s a constitutional lawyer and he ought to understand what that means..

2. The law is entirely – 100% – a matter of punishing people who have committed crimes in the past. The only direction the law ever looks is back into the past. It never looks ahead to punish you for what you may do in the future. To take up the rule of law is precisely to turn your face to the past. This is plain fact, beyond dispute or debate.

3. But this man would like to look forward into the future, not back into the past. Instead of punishing Bushies for crimes they commited in the past, he wants to punish other people for crimes they may commit in the future. He’ll need to punish them without a trial, since a court of law knows nothing about trying people for what they may do in the future.

You can either abide by the rule of law or evade both law and Constitution and look to the future. You can buy either 1 or 3. But in the light of 2, you can’t buy them both. If you care about the rule of law, you need to give up 3. If you want to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, that’s your only option.

When he stood before the Constitution that day he acknowledged his oath of office. And then he told us, “my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe.” More important, it increasingly appears, than preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution.

The man needs our help, even more than he did during the election.

Obama has hoped to get Congress to work with him on some changes in the tribunals and/or the means to detain some of these guys on US soil so as to close Gitmo by January. However, Congress seems unified across party lines that the latter ain’t gonna happen with members voting to enable it.

Thus, Obama “is drafting” an exec order to “reassert Presidential authority” to do it anyway. The White House objection to the original WaPo story was more in the way of an adjustment to avoid annoying Congress too much. The story plainly was a manufactured leak from either the WH or DOJ.

Justin: Be clear, Obama may yet close Gitmo on schedule but neither he nor any other President is going to release dangerous al Qaeda guys on his own. Not now, not later, not ever. Of course, if courts order him to release one or another detainee, he probably will (after exhausting every judicial remedy, just like Bush). And he’d prefer that Congress make it easier for him to hold and try them. Still, no President is going to release those of these guys who he knows to be truly dangerous.