Mistrial!

It now appears that everyone is coming to their senses over the nutty idea to try the notorious KSM in a civilian trial just up the road from Ground Zero. It's a wonder that it took as long as it did for our local elected to get cured of the case of lockjaw that were obviously suffering from. And it's a shame that it appears that, at least as far as the mayor is concerned, the new found reluctance is strictly about the cash nexus.

That anyone thought that the mastermind of 9/11 deserved the rights that all American citizens enjoy, is a real mystery to us-but not to many deep political thinkers down at city all it appears who can only prattle about cost and convenience. As the NY Daily News reports: "The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan. The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would "prefer that they did it elsewhere" and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder. "It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that's too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood," Bloomberg told reporters."

And kudos the folks down in Chinatown who mobilized-with the help of Steve Barrison and the Small Business Congress-to finally convince the mayor to take the right stand on this issue, whatever his underlying motivations might have been: "Julie Menin, the chairwoman of Community Board 1 who helped rally opposition to the plan, called the shift "a step in the right direction.""I'm thrilled the White House is reconsidering," Menin said. "The trial has to be moved out of New York City."

But any change of venue doesn't mean a change of heart at the Justice Department or over at the WH-where the concept of giving the miscreant KSM a civilian trial is apparently a matter of high principle: "The order to consider new venues does not change the White House's position that Mohammed should be tried in civilian court. "President Obama is still committed to trying Mohammed and four other terrorist detainees in federal court," spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday. "He agrees with the attorney general's opinion that . . . he and others can be litigated successfully and securely in the United States of America, just like others have," Burton said."

Someone's not getting the Massachusetts message. As Charles Krauthammer, commenting on both the undie bomber and the KSM trial, writes this morning: "Of course, this case is just a reflection of a larger problem: an administration that insists on treating Islamist terrorism as a law-enforcement issue. Which is why the Justice Department's other egregious terror decision, granting Khalid Shaik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York, is now the subject of a letter from six senators - three Republicans, two Democrats and Joe Lieberman - asking Attorney General Eric Holder to reverse the decision."

In our view, it does little for our supposed standing in the world community to treat an enemy combatant that has decided to wage war on the United States as if he/she was a citizen with all of our constitutional protections. And the current trial of jihadi scientist Aafia Siddiqui is a case in point. Accorded all of our due process protections, this noxious nut job-whose defense is being paid from Paskistani sources-is making a mockery of the civilian trial concept.

And, on top of all of this, she is being treated in Pakistan as if she were some kind of martyr. Michele Malkin captures the insanity: "Imagine this nightmare courtroom scenario: Un hinged Jew-bashing, open mockery of American soldiers, juror intimidation and coldly calculated exploitation of US constitutional protections by a suspected al Qaeda defendant.
Well, there's no need to wait for the Gitmo terror trial circuses. New York City is already getting a glimpse of the future."

Imagine what the KSM crowd will generate if Lady Qaeda is a harbinger: "Siddiqui was taken into custody in Ghazni in July 2008 after attempting to shoot US military interrogators and FBI agents. Now, the savvy "terror mom" of three is pulling out all the stops to win a mistrial. Among her Cirque du Jihad antics:

* Demanding that jurors be genetically tested for a "Zionist or Israeli background" to ensure a fair and impartial jury of her Jew-hating peers.

* Ranting about 9/11 Israel conspiracies during voir dire.

* Screaming out loud during the testimony of US Army Capt. Robert Snyder, who was in the room in Ghazni when Siddiqui allegedly grabbed an M-4 rifle and proclaimed, "I hate Americans! Death to America!"

So, it's not that we're incapable of holding these kinds of trials and convicting these scum-but why would we? There's certainly nothing in the Geneva Convention that requires this kind of legal deference to enemy combatants who-out of uniform-attack this country. But the clueless left clings to this concept as some kind of righteous shawl. We'll give Professor Turley the last word so that you can see clearly how this mindset operates: "Attorney General Eric Holder suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when the White House ordered the Justice Department to find another location for the trial of the 9/11 suspects. If true, this would be a troubling intervention of the White House into a pending criminal case and seems to follow political pressure on the venue for the trial."

Only thing criminal here is Turley's dangerous world view (okay, so we took the last word, it is our blog after all).