This just in! Fig leaf gets smaller!

The fig leaf that George Bush tossed to John McCain on the compromise over treatment of detainees just got even smaller according to the Washington Post today:

Republican lawmakers and the White House agreed over the weekend to alter new legislation on military commissions to allow the United States to detain and try a wider range of foreign nationals than an earlier version of the bill permitted, according to government sources.

Here’s a description of the new language:

[H]uman rights experts expressed concern yesterday that the language in the new provision would be a precedent-setting congressional endorsement for the indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, "has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or its military allies.

The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant. It is broader than that in last week's version of the bill, which resulted from lengthy, closed-door negotiations between senior administration officials and dissident Republican senators. That version incorporated a definition backed by the Senate dissidents: those "engaged in hostilities against the United States."

As Spot noted in Power Line’s descent into depravity yesterday, Paul – and a lot of other right wingers, too – say it is “fair to say that Senators McCain, Graham, and Warner comprise the terrorist rights wing of the Republican party.”

And in giving terrorists “rights,” Paul must mean that McCain, Warner, and Huckleberry should be detained indefinitely without charge or trial under this new language of the bill for “materially supporting hostilities against the United States.”

Well, maybe not them, but how about traitors like Juan Cole, Glenn Greenwald, Billmon, Digby, or Chris Floyd? Spot should probably be locked in a kennel for life, too!

“We lock up terrorists and throw away the key. They are terrorists because we have locked them up and thrown away the key.” The logic is unassailable.

It’s a brave new world, boys and girls!

Update: Da Wege certainly should be included on the traitors list. Spot apologizes for the oversight.