Lewis Carroll would understand such logic; the rest of us might have more difficulty substituting phraseology for reality.
Alice Hoagland isn't the only one heartsick over this latest instance of justice delayed and therefore denied. The whole nation was attacked that terrible day, justice seems no nearer, and this latest complication might only put it off yet again.
To what end? So the president and his attorney general can prove an ideological point -- that the criminal code is superior to military justice in these high-profile cases?
When this administration disparages or even tries to delegitimize military courts, it overlooks the fact that military commissions antedate federal courts in our history. Among the first such commissions was one appointed by a general of the Continental Army named George Washington.
Few things so reveal the ahistorical approach of this born-yesterday administration than its bypassing military law -- except, of course, when military commissions suit its purposes. In this case, Messrs. Obama and Holder, Esqs., have chosen to gamble on the federal courts despite all the clear and increasingly present dangers such a decision will raise.
What, Barack Obama worry? All such concerns about Khalid Sheik Mohammed's being tried in a civilian courtroom will disappear, says the president, "when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."
Not that he's prejudging the case, our lawyer-president was quick to add, having just prejudged the case.
If this trial were being conducted where it should be -- in a secure military courtroom at Guantanamo -- such statements from the commander-in-chief would be clear evidence of what in military law is called command influence. And be grounds for a mistrial.
That's another way in which military justice is superior to the civilian kind being arranged for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and company. Military law contains safeguards against undue influence.
Yet the president insists on a civilian trial in order to demonstrate the fairness and superiority of civilian courts in such cases -- even as he proclaims the trial's outcome.
First it was Obamacare. Now the country is about to get Obamalaw, which promises to be a treasure trove of such ironies.