After visiting the military's detention center for some 660 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three senators, including the onetime prisoner of war John McCain, sent a pointed letter on Friday telling Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that it was time to release the detainees or bring them to trial.

[McCain] said in an interview that he believed the continued detention of the prisoners violated basic human rights precepts. "They may not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions as far as I'm concerned," said the senator, an Arizona Republican, "but they have rights under various human rights declarations. And one of them is the right not to be detained indefinitely."

Lindsay Graham and Maria Cantwell also signed that letter.

So what's got Graham so besides himself now and Obama and Emanuel running for cover? The ghost of Private Underpants.

Graham's bill to end funding for federal trials of detainees failed a few months ago. The only thing that's changed is Private Underpants, and the opportunity for Lindsay Graham and other Republicans to use him as a poster boy.

Graham is a phony. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was one kid, following his pied piper, who failed to blow up a plane. We're already spending millions in airline security to prevent it from getting that far again. That's enough.

But Graham is using him as a call to replace Obama's top counterterrorism adviser,, control the 9/11 prosecutions, force military tribunal trials and mandate indefinite detention.

This isn't about real terror threats. This is only about yet another Republican power grab. Too bad it looks like President Obama may fall for it.

Obama's bi-partisanship has won him no converts among Republicans. Not on health care, not on the econonmy, not on 9/11 trials. If he capitulates to the likes of Lindsay Graham, he'll also lose the left. Sounds like a fast-track to a one-term presidency.

Obama should insist on having the trials in federal court and veto any legislation banning funding for the trials(should it pass.) The 9/11 defendants will have been tried, convicted and sentenced by 2012. He can point out how right he was to insist on a federal criminal trial and preserve our constitution.

With the 9/11 defendants locked away for life or on death row, it won't be a campaign issue. If he capitulates, the Republicans will never let go of it as a campaign issue against him: "This is the President that was willing to sacrifice the well being of New Yorkers, and our nation's security by trying terror defendants in the U.S. But for Republicans forcing his hand and preventing it, we'd all be dead."

I doubt many progressives will to come to Obama's defense in 2012 if he capitulates. Who will be left to support Obama?

Sometimes, we expect our leaders to fight for what is right and what they told us they believe. When they don't, they don't deserve a second chance.

Lindsay Graham is a transparent blowhard, milking Private Underpants for more than he's worth so that he can help his party regain power. Obama can nip him and his hollow threat to ban funding in the bud, but only if he swiftly and forcefully announces his decision to try the 9/11 defendants in federal court as he planned. If he doesn't, it's clear who's running our Government, and it's not the Democrats.