The Obama administration can always count on House Republicans to make something bad they’ve done look reasonable. In this case, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon has proposed stripping Attorney General Eric Holder of the authority to decide the venue in which terrorism cases are tried.

Section 4. Requirement for Military Custody: This section provides that individuals eligible for detention under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) must be held in military custody unless the Secretary of Defense certifies that a waiver is necessary in the interests of national security.

• Policy Rationale. This section is meant to ensure that terrorists are held by the military and exploited for intelligence purposes. It also gives the Secretary of Defense, instead of the Attorney General or other official, the ability to waive the requirement so that all possible disposition options are preservedwhile ensuring national security concerns are prioritized over law enforcement.

McKeon’s proposal also eliminates the only decent element in the administration’s indefinite detention proposal, which is that detainees could retain attorneys for their Periodic Review Boards.

There’s no basis for doing this, other than that Republicans really don’t like Eric Holder. What McKeon’s proposal also implies is that, under their reaffirmation of the authorization to use military force, that the category of people eligible for military detention would include anyone accused of terrorism, domestically or otherwise.

Between Iraq and Afghanistan, Republicans don’t think Robert Gates has enough on his plate that he also needs to rubberstamp domestic prosecutions of terror suspects? Try to imagine Republicans during the Bush administration fiercely advocating for John Ashcoft‘s authority to be transferred to Donald Rumsfeld. It wouldn’t have happened in a million years, and yet McKeon’s proposal essentially amounts to a right-ward assault on the Obama administration’s continued reliance on the Bush-era hybrid legal system for trying terrorists. The proposal also bans transfers to countries “with a confirmed case of recidivism” unless the SecDef issues a waiver.

This isn’t policy designed around America’s national security interests, it’s just designed around the narrow goal of keeping Gitmo open forever.