Debra Pickett

The President is supposed to announce his plans for dealing with these prisoners today. (Bloomberg wire story is here; slightly more comprehensive AP story is here.)

This is one of those stories that always makes me feel like I am completely out of touch with mainstream America. Because, honestly, I just don't get how there isn't more outrage about this. We're America . . . . we're supposed to have higher standards than this. Our own Supreme Court -- not exactly a bunch of flaming liberals -- ruled that the original "plan" for dealing with the detainees failed "to provide for minimum legal protections under international law." Minimum legal protections. Or, as the Associated Press story put it:

"The president wanted to prosecute them using a type of military trial that was used in the aftermath of World War II. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-3 ruling, said it violated U.S. military law and the Geneva conventions, which set international standards for dealing with people captured in armed conflicts, including rights that suspects would have in legal proceedings.

The high court's ruling focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a one-time driver for Osama bin Laden who has spent four years in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hamdan, from Yemen, faces a single count of conspiring to commit terrorism.

The court's majority found that Congress had not given Bush the authority to create the special type of military trial he sought, and that Bush did not provide a valid reason for the new system. The justices also said the proposed trials did not provide for minimum legal protections under international law."

I could get incredibly worked up about this -- again -- but it gets exhausting.

And, even more so, the intense reaction to any question or criticism about the "war on terror" -- that don't-you-know-there's-a-war-on-young-lady? tone that some of my e-mails tend to take -- which, I hate to admit, does tend to frustrate me to the point that I sometimes keep my mouth shut.

There was a perfect example of this over the weekend, when incumbent PA Senator Rick Santorum debated his opponent, conservative Democrat Bob Casey, on Meet the Press. Casey, like a lot of very mainstream folks, has said he has "questions" about the President's warrantless wiretapping program that a judge found to be unconstitutional. In this exchange, Santorum basically called Casey on the carpet for daring even to question the program.

SEN. SANTORUM: Do you, do you support, do you support more intelligence gathering because your party has been out there .... trying to, trying to undermine our surveillance programs. You’re the one who’s gone out and said that you have serious questions about our intelligence surveillance programs. What do you think has kept our people safe? What do you think stopped the British, the British attack? You folks have been the party, as you have been the party, of making sure that we don’t have the intelligence gathering capabilities that we need, and, and, and have, have joined in making sure .... And I—and I’ve looked at your comments saying that you have serious concerns about our, our, our surveillance programs. I don’t.

It's those last two words that are the scariest: "I don't." He doesn't have questions. He doesn't have concerns. And, he implies, anyone who does is putting the country at risk.

Maybe I'm just sleep-deprived and cranky today, but, seriously, isn't there something deeply Orwellian about his tone?

And isn't it weird that there is a serious lack of moral outrage about it?