A particularly effective analyst of the constitutionality of the military-tribunals edict has been The New York Times columnist William Safire, writing of "Bush's
cockamamy order to deny the rule of law and public trial to those accused of terrorism." Accurately self- described as "a libertarian conservative Republican contrarian iconoclast," Safire, with jeremiads from his pulpit at the Times -- along with caustic editorials in the Times, The Washington Post, and The Washington Times, among other papers -- alerted Defense Secretary Donald H.