Hoekstra: Obama Must Get Tough with North Korea, Iran

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says the United States needs to treat North Korea like the “rogue nation that it is” or risk a nuclear arms race in the region. He also tells Newsmax.TV “it’s crazy” not to profile airline passengers — and vows that Congress will thwart President Barack Obama’s “ill-guided mission” to try terrorist suspects in civilian courts. Read more at NEWSMAX... Read More......

FOX: Civilian Jury Clears Former Gitmo Detainee of All But One Charge

The first Guantanamo Bay detainee to face a civilian trial is convicted in New York City of only a lesser consipiracy charge in the deadly 1998 plot to bomb two U.S. embassies in Africa. Read more at Fox News... Read More......

Justice Delayed

NATIONAL REVIEW, 11/17/2009 by Andrew C. McCarthy - Holder’s friends in the al-Qaeda bar caused the trial delays he now criticizes. ∴ Of all the infuriating aspects of the decision to transfer five 9/11 war criminals to civilian federal court, the one that grates most is the contention that the Obama administration is finally moving forward after “eight years of delay” — as Attorney General Eric Holder put it at his Friday press conference — during which the Bush administration managed to complete only three military-commission trials.

This is chutzpah writ large. The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts. Many of those lawyers are now working for the Obama Justice Department. That includes Holder, whose firm, Covington & Burling, volunteered its services to at least 18 of America’s enemies in lawsuits they brought against the American people. (During 2007 alone, Covington contributed more than 3,000 hours of free, top-flight legal assistance to our enemy detainees.) Read more at National Review...

—National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

Related: Law.com - Some Justice Department Lawyers Have Gitmo Conflicts Read More......

Five Sept. 11 Suspects to Face Trial in New York

FOXNews.com, 11/13/2009 - WASHINGTON: Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday. ∴ New York case may force the court system to confront difficult legal issues surrounding counterterrorism programs begun after the 2001 attacks, including the harsh interrogation techniques once used on some of the suspects while in CIA custody. Read more at Fox... Read More......