INSIDE THE CAMPAIGN

Michael J. Mishak

Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

Michael J. Mishak

Jill Derby and Dean Heller both talk tough on national issues.

That's why, at least on the face of it, voters have had to sift through the clever rhetoric of the two candidates vying for U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons' seat in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District.

This week, the two made it a little easier. Splitting along party lines on the controversial detainee treatment bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, the candidates offer voters a clear choice.

Heller, a Republican, supports the legislation, which gives the president new power to identify enemies, imprison them indefinitely and interrogate them beyond the reach of court reviews traditionally afforded criminal defendants and ordinary prisoners.

"I want that authority for our interrogators," Heller said. "It will protect our soldiers and save American lives."

Derby, a Democrat, opposes the bill. She said the legislation opens the door to torture and puts American troops at greater risk. She points to a provision in the law that not only allows the president to determine the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions but strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to his interpretation.

"I'm appalled that we're involved in a debate over how to torture people," Derby said in an interview with the Sun editorial board last week. "We've gone from being the champion of human rights in the world to how we can be the exception."

In a week that saw President Bush raise $325,000 for Heller at a Reno fundraiser, Derby said Heller's support for the detainee bill was just another example of the Republican lining up with Bush administration policies. Heller supports Bush's policy on the war in Iraq and elements of his plan to privatize Social Security. "What does Dean Heller owe the president now?" Derby said of the fundraiser.

Heller, who has portrayed himself as a party maverick throughout the campaign, said he favors giving the president - and by extension, the military - more latitude because the war on terrorism is a distinctly different endeavor. "We're not dealing with governments," he said. "This is a religious war ... Our enemies are people who cut off heads and believe they go to heaven when they kill innocent people."

Heller, in a phone interview with the Sun on Thursday, tempered remarks he made last week to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in which he criticized Arizona Sen. John McCain, Virginia Sen. John Warner and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham for their initial opposition to the White House plan. "I think they're far more concerned with protecting terrorists," he told the Review-Journal.

On Thursday, Heller said: "I don't condone torture. I don't think the president does, and I don't think he was asking for torture ... (But) more latitude to interrogate prisoners is critical." He noted that the three senators - members of the Armed Services Committee - eventually voted for the compromise bill.