We can assume wingnut heads are exploding as you read this:

The Boston bombing suspect will be tried as a criminal and not an “enemy combatant,” Obama administration officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

Word from the White House came moments after CBS News learned that 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had officially been charged with helping execute the attack on the Boston Marathon that killed three and left over 180 injured.The first charge is conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, the AP noted, which carries a potential death sentence. He’s likely to also face multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, both of which carry potential life sentences.“Today’s charges bring a successful end to a tragic week for the city of Boston and for our country,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a prepared statement.

Prominent conservatives have in recent days advocated that Tsarnaey be subjected to all manner of treatment, from facing a military tribunal to even being tortured or lynched in public.

The announcement is sure to reinvigorate Washington’s conversation about the parallel justice system the Bush administration established to prosecute, or in some cases just indefinitely detain, individuals picked up overseas in the war on terror. The Obama administration has consistently sought to limit use of this system, especially for domestic threats, but prior efforts to try terrorism suspects in the U.S.proved too politically sensitive at the time.

However, the clearest sign of the administration’s intent to funnel terrorism suspects back into the U.S. justice system and away from the military’s courts came earlier this year, when they announced that al Qaeda spokesman and bin Laden son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith will face trial in New York City.

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Karl Rove went on Fox News twice yesterday -- first on Your World and later on Hannity, where he essentially repeated his earlier performance -- to accuse the Obama White House of being soft on terrorism because it did not declare Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber of that Northwest flight into Detroit, an enemy combatant:

Rove: This shows the big difference in this administration's approach to it. This guy was treated not as an enemy combatant, and turned over to the FBI and the CIA for interrogation, he was charged criminally, which means he immediately lawyered up and the amount of information we're going to get from him is going to be this much, compared to what we could get if he was just simply sweat by the FBI and the CIA -- not even using enhanced interrogation techniques, just using what police would be able to use if you weren't lawyered up. This is a very troubling way in which the administration has handled this.

On Hannity, he claimed that by filing criminal charges, "we treat him as a guy who tried to knock over a Seven-Eleven or got caught shoplifting."

Memo to Karl: Convenience-store robbers and shoplifters do not get charged with terrorism in federal court. Just sayin'.

Moreover, the problem with Rove's claim that "this shows the difference" between the Bush and Obama administrations is flatly false (aka a lie).

Faced with nearly identical circumstances with would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid -- who was attempting to use the exact same kind of explosive on an American flight -- the Bush administration in 2001 did exactly the same thing: it filed criminal charges and eventually tried Reid in federal court.

What's worth noting is that Reid, too, was potentially an intelligence bonanza, since he had numerous operational ties with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.

Then there was Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was eventually convicted of plotting with Al Qaeda to participate in the 9/11 attacks. He, too, was treated as a federal criminal by the Bush administration.

Finally, it should be noted that declaring suspects "enemy combatants" -- especially when they are captured away from the field of battle -- is actually a legal minefield fraught with far greater uncertainty than the use of federal criminal statutes. The classic example of this was the case of Jose Padilla, who was declared an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and whose case wound up taking years to be settled by the Supreme Court -- which eventually insisted that he be tried in federal court. Padilla's case was somewhat different, since he is a U.S. citizen, but one can rest assured that the issue of habeas corpus central to his case would be resurrected should Obama have followed Rove's advice.

But then, anyone who follows Karl Rove's advice deserves everything that inevitably will happen to them.

More on Ashcroft:

Antonin Scalia Is an Enemy of the State!

So says John Ashcroft. Jeffrey Dubner reports

GET YOUR ROBES OUT OF OUR PRISONS! I just watched John Ashcroft's address to the Federalist Society. It's a gripping speech, and quite frightening. He devotes the greatest portion of it to challenging the Supreme Court's decisions in Rasul v. Bush, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and the other "enemy combatant" cases. A taste:

...intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas of treaties can put at risk the very security of our nation at a time of war.

It's very much in the vein of "the ability to set aside the laws is inherent in the president." There's no transcript available just yet, and I expect there'll be analyses and critiques up by more qualified legal folks than I by the time we get back from the weekend. But I wonder how confined this constitutional theory is to Ashcroft, and whether it will in any way leave office with him. I highly doubt it.

UPDATE: Tonight's keynote speaker is, of course, Federalist Society member and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. He's as like as not to agree with Ashcroft on this, although it's hard to be sure.

I do think that this is, in part, fallout from Bush v. Gore. Everybody knows that Scalia and company don't believe the equal protection rationale they set forward for their decision. And if what the Supremes are doing is expressing their political preferences rather than setting forth judicial principles--well, why should their will get to override Bush's and Ashcroft's? Just because Scalia, Rehnquist, and company ruled in favor of Bush in 2000 doesn't mean that Bush and company respect them for it.

Talk Left: Senator Lindsay Graham is introducing an Amendment to the defense appropriations bill pending in the Senate (S. 1042) that would strip those designated by the Administration as enemy combatants of the ability to seek habeas review in federal courts....read on

Obsidian Wings: This is seriously bad news. As best I can tell, it strips the courts of all power to hear any habeas motion from a detainee, or any other challenge to a detainee's detention, and that this applies to any cases that have already been brought and are now pending...read on

Body and Soul: If you've been under the impression that Lindsey Graham is one of the rare Republicans good guys on the torture issue, be prepared to lose your innocence...read on