JOIN THE REVOLT! – AT 7:50 A.M. ET:  It often takes a bit of time for the forces of good, decency and the American way to organize, but they eventually get it together.  The revulsion over the lax treatment of the Christmas day bomber is growing, and US senators are pressing for change we can believe in.  Byron York, in the Washington Examiner, chronicles the movement:

A bipartisan revolt is brewing in the Senate over the Obama administration's handling of accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. A small but growing number of lawmakers is asking the president to undo what many regard as the disastrously wrong-headed decision to grant Abdulmutallab full American constitutional rights. Once he was told he had the right to remain silent, the accused terrorist stopped talking to U.S. investigators, possibly denying them valuable intelligence about the threat from al Qaeda.

And...

The anger on Capitol Hill grew over the weekend, when the Associated Press reported that local FBI agents in Detroit were allowed to question Abdulmutallab for just 50 minutes before he went into surgery for several hours. During that time, Justice Department lawyers in Washington intervened and Abdulmutallab was later read his Miranda rights.

That was bad enough, but what really made lawmakers angry was when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, appearing on "Fox News Sunday," insisted the 50-minute interrogation had been entirely sufficient for investigators to learn everything they needed to know about the al Qaeda plot to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

That is complete madness.  Perpetrators are often interrogated for hours on end, and for a number of days running.  A real intelligence-oriented interrogation would have made use of the vast amount of information we collect from intercepts and other sources every day.  "Do you know this person?  Do you know this other person?  Describe your training?  What other targets were discussed?  Did you see photographs of these targets?"

Leading the revolt are Senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine:

On Monday, Lieberman and Collins wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as top White House terrorism official John Brennan, saying the decision to give Abdulmutallab full American constitutional rights had been a serious mistake, but that "the administration can reverse this error, at least to some degree, by immediately transferring Abdulmuttalab to the Department of Defense ... [which has] the authority and capability to hold and interrogate Abdulmuttalab and try him before a military commission."

Lawyers debate whether it would be possible to transfer the accused to military jurisdiction once the civilian system has asserted control.  There apparently is no definitive answer, and a court would probably have to decide.

Would President Obama go along with the demand for the transfer?

You might think the president would agree. After all, he has said specifically that the United States is "at war against al Qaeda." But changing Abdulmutallab's status would be an admission that his administration got it wrong when confronted by an al Qaeda terrorist determined to kill Americans. And it's not at all clear that that is something the president is prepared to do.

COMMENT:  I think it goes well beyond that.  The president is a leftist lawyer, and leftist lawyers believe that terrorism is, at worst, a law-enforcement problem.  He also is saddled with a number of Justice Department senior officials who come from the very law firms that defended, pro bono, Gitmo detainees.  And when you realize that the profoundly left-leaning former deans of both the Harvard and Yale law schools are high officeholders in his administration, one gets a depressing picture.

January 26,  2010