I’m having a hard time seeing how both of these statements from Serwer can be true at the same time:

FTA:

So it’s simply not true, as the Guardian wrote yesterday, that the the bill “allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantnamo Bay.” When the New York Times editorial page writes that the bill would “strip the F.B.I., federal prosecutors and federal courts of all or most of their power to arrest and prosecute terrorists and hand it off to the military,” or that the “legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial,” they’re simply wrong.

From one of his supporting links re: the compromise:
motherjones.com

The bill also authorizes the indefinite military detention of American citizens and permanent residents if they are suspected of links to Al Qaeda, something so controversial that even the Bush administration balked at it, slipping Jose Padilla back into the criminal justice system after years of military detention in order to avoid a confrontation with the Supreme Court. Congress is preparing to overturn a precedent that was followed almost without exception by the Bush administration: Domestic terrorism arrests are the province of law enforcement, not the military. The provision passed out of the Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee with only a single dissenting vote, from Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.).

Am I missing something? The whole piece seems like he’s having a semantic argument with himself. The bill doesn’t make it mandatory that the president turn over American citizens to the military but it does authorize him to do so if he wants. I don’t think the fact that it isn’t mandatory (thanks to loopholes) is going to calm the nerves of groups like the ACLU.