The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.

Obama is no longer going to veto the inexplicably timed NDAA language that tries to eliminate law enforcement from anti-terrorism investigations but is now sufficiently loopholed, apparently.

Supporters seem to argue that the law doesn't actually do anything. But obviously it does something. Whether that something is actually useful is highly suspect.

I originally thought that this was a ploy to get the whole bill derailed. Another possibility is that its election year posturing. If they put in a radical detention provision and Obama vetoed, they could spend the whole year calling him soft on Terrorism. If he doesn't veto, he looks like a hypocrite and leaves his supporters questioning his principals. Obama can't win on Terrorism because the left has failed to develop a principled counterpoint to the conservative position and have instead focused on meaningless symbolism like closing gitmo.