And That Case Of Depends

Looks like Obama is folding on trying KSM in Lower Manhattan, as NYC Mayor Bloomberg says "You know, we're going to need a lot of money and a lot of massive security for this, and we expect you to pay for it."  The plan:  find somewhere else.

A decision to move the Sept. 11 trial from Manhattan would be a retreat by the administration from its calculated choice in November to bring the defendants to a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

The dispute over a trial location, touched off when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York complained of costs and disruption, threatened to reopen the divisive question of how those accused of plotting the murder of more than 3,000 Americans should be brought to justice.

Republicans in the Senate and House said they would try to block financing for civilian criminal trials for the alleged terrorists, seeking to force the administration to place them on trial before a military commission in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or on a military base elsewhere.

Opponents of civilian trials said they hoped new doubts about a New York trial and increased fears of terrorism since the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas Day would win more Democratic support for such measures.

The apparent collapse of what had seemed since November to be a settled decision to hold the trial in Lower Manhattan was clear when New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, said on Thursday that he was encouraging the Obama administration “to find suitable alternatives.”

The political and economic reality is that idiotic Republican posturing aside,  Obama has significantly less political capital now than he did back in November or even October.  He's saving his fight for health care, not trying KSM in NYC.

At least...that's what the White House is saying.  Whether or not that's what the White House is doing is another thing.  But the real problem is that this was a settled decision, and it's Chuck Schumer throwing Obama under the bus on this one.  Perhaps this is Schumer's price to get him to go along on sidecar reconciliation.  With this administration and this Congress, who knows.

[UPDATE 9:17 AM] Double G wisely tweets that the location of the trial doesn't really matter, as long as it's a real trial and not a military tribunal.