Julie Mason of the Washington Examiner picks up on this exchange with Robert Gibbs:

Q: Robert, do you know when we can expect a decision on the KSM trial?

Mr. Gibbs: I don’t expect a decision on that for several or many weeks.

Q: Will it be the president’s decision?

Mr. Gibbs: The president obviously has gotten involved because Congress has actively been involved in venue options for any trial involving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The president’s obviously strong equity in this is seeing that after many long years that justice is brought.

I don’t know what the faux legal-speak in the last sentence means (“strong equity”?) either. But the point here is that the administration is in stalling mode. The current approach, both as to the specific venue and a civilian trial more generally, has proved unworkable and grossly unpopular. Yet at the very time their Justice Department lawyers are under attack, in part for having come up with this screwy recommendation, the administration is loathe to retreat. Their base is semi-unhinged enough (you know, with the coming demise of health care and all), and this is no time to push the netroots over the edge.

Nevertheless, I think we’ll never see KSM in a civilian courtroom. No jurisdiction will want the headache, the public thinks the idea is dangerous, and the logistics (the cost, the potential for acquittal or any punishment less than the death penalty) — which the Justice Department brain trust failed to think through — are daunting. So the president stalls. Like so much else on the Left’s agenda (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, cap-and-trade), the president will get to it when he gets to it.