Today In History: White House Ditches 'Combatant' Label; Centennial President Dies Of Pneumonia

March 13, 2017, is the 71st day of the year, with 293 days remaining. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase, with illumination at 99 percent.

Obama Administration Abandons “Enemy Combatant” Label

The Obama administration made a Friday announcement that it would do away with the term “enemy combatant,” originally coined by the Bush administration. This decision was coupled with the administration’s court argument for continued detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — especially to those who provided “substantial” assistance to al-Qaeda and its associates around the world — in what was believed to have been a move to distance the new administration from Bush detention policies.

The event supervened orders by federal judges who sought clarity on the government’s legal justification for holding close to 241 detainees at the military prison.

Justice Department attorneys stated that “the particular facts and circumstances justifying detention [would] vary from case to case.”

Then-Attorney General Eric Holder declared it “essential that [government] operate in a manner that strengthens our national security, is consistent with our values and is governed by law.”

Holder went on to assert that these changes would make for a stronger nation, with legal scholars opining that, while dropping the “enemy combatant” term was, indeed, important, the Obama administration’s other legal arguments might not change much about the country’s detention policy.

Centennial President Dies of Pneumonia

The 23rd president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, was elected to office after conducting one of the first “front porch” campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegates that visited him in Indianapolis. Inaugurated 100 years after George Washington, the Ohio-born Republican served from 1889 to 1893.

Harrison’s accomplishments included signing the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 into law, which set a framework for checking corporations that subsequent presidents could exploit. He also introduced silver coinage and a higher tariff and later supported bills that promoted voting rights of black Americans in the south. He also appointed Frederick Douglass as ambassador to Haiti.

He established Samoa as an American protectorate and negotiated with Britain and Canada to regulate seal hunting in the Bering Sea.

The president’s death in 1901 was thought to have been due to influenza, referred to as “grippe” at the time, and he ultimately passed away from pneumonia at his home at the age of 67. His remains are interred at Indianapolis’s Crown Hill Cemetery.

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Photo credit: The Official White House Photostream via Flickr