President Obama halts Guantanamo trials

In his inaugural speech yesterday, Barack Obama declared that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals"- a statement Riptide felt spoke directly to the future of Guantanamo Bay, a place where due process and human rights laws have been kicked aside in the name of extinguishing terrorism.

Today, one of Obama's first acts as president took effect. At his direction, a Guantanamo judge has suspended cases there for 120 days as a solution to dispersing the prison is worked out.

Of course, this move solves nothing. The same quandaries still remain, the most essential being What are we gonna do with these prisoners? Nonetheless, if you were suspecting that Obama's closing-Gitmo talk was just campaign promises, this is a pretty emphatic indication to the contrary.