It's the inheritance, stupid

Now in his second year as president of the United States, Mr Obama is facing a bunch of problems, and guess what? They're all Dubya's fault. 'For a president who campaigned on a promise to close Guantánamo, and who just missed a self-imposed one-year deadline to get the job done, the meltdown of a potential Manhattan 9/11 trial is the latest measure of the stubborn complexity of his national security inheritance,' gravely explains the New York Times today. One would think, rather, that they were the latest measure of his national security policies. Mr Bush, after all, did not force Mr Obama to close the Caribbean prison, nor to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to trial in downtown Manhattan.

Federal law requires that a criminal trial take place where the crime was committed. (I didn't know that!) If Ground Zero has been ruled out, rural Pennsylvania would seem to be a prime candidate. But the Justice Department is also looking at Newark and Boston, from whose airports the fatal jetliners took off. That will thrill the folks who just sent Scott Brown to Congress. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford