Lying To Make Friends

Check out DL’s Jurisprudence blog post for this week, where she takes issue with all the nutty objections to trying KSM in New York. In sum:

It’s one part fear-mongering (“KSM will explode into a lethal ninja and kill people with his laser-eyes the very minute we bring him stateside!”), one part war-mongering (“We are still at war I tell you! War!”), and one part self-justification-mongering (“No, seriously—water-boarding is totally legal! But let’s not talk about it in court”). Of course, these aren’t so much legal arguments as political theater. And it’s hardly surprising that, after eight years of insisting that the law doesn’t apply to extremely bad people, opponents of Holder’s decision are now focusing their arguments on the bad people, not the law. Still, it’s awfully depressing to keep hearing that the only thing wrong with the criminal justice system is the criminals themselves.

The fear-mongering aspect of the insanity over bringing suspected terrorists to the United States for trial is what baffles me the most.  Or maybe amuses me the most.  It’s basically a not-in-my-backyard anxiety mixed with a healthy dose of sci-fi-induced paranoia.

I’m picturing that scene from X-Men (spoiler alert!) where Magneto is in a “state of the art” prison made entirely of plastic (as he can control metal), but he manages to get enough iron out of some guy’s blood to make an iron bullet and thereby escape.  Genius!  But despite what Linday Graham et al. will have you believe, KSM is a in fact a non-mutant human apparently lacking in magnetic or other mutant powers.

UPDATE: You know you’ve made it when Ezra Klein rips off your nerdy X-Men reference.

-AS