Yesterday I wrote about the Gitmo trials ban saying, "No president would willingly acquiesce to Congress micromanaging their prosecutorial decisions." But what if said president had made a promise to his own base that his administration no longer felt was politically possible to keep but that he couldn't simply reverse himself on publicly, such as, a civilian trial for the alleged 9/11 conspirators. What if keeping that promise became even harder to keep after a test run, like the one with former Gitmo detainee Ahmed Ghailani, which didn't go quite as planned?
What if the administration had dragged a final decision on for months, because it couldn't simply say that the trial was never going to happen. And what if, shortly before the opposition party was about to take over the House, the administration was able to wash their hands of the whole thing because Congress decided to pull the purse strings for any such trial shut.
Then acquiescing to that kind of micromanagement wouldn't be tying the president's hands would it? It would be setting him free.
