guantanamo bay

Rand Paul, who has surprised a lot of people by becoming a real contender for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, bows to political reality — he’s blasting the Obama administration’s policy on terror trials and proposing to “try, convict, and lock up terrorists in Guantanamo.”
Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), is one of the [...]

“This is war,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “I think the decision you’ve made to try these cases in federal court represents a policy and political decision.”

The Washington Post reports that President Obama said yesterday that the U.S. detention facility will remain open past the January 2010 deadline for closure he set during his first days in office.

As long as I’m praising Marc “I Won The Morning” Ambinder, check out this rather significant data point he mines from a Washington Post story on the final dispensation of Guantanamo detainees:
Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military [...]

The Senate this afternoon defeated an amendment to an appropriations bill proposed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would have prevented the Pentagon from using funds to adapt or build any new facilities in the United States to house Guantanamo detainees. That would have included anyone charged, tried or convicted in a U.S. federal court. [...]

Adam Doster of ProgressIllinois reports that Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) is reacting in a revealing manner to the prospect of the Obama administration moving Guantanamo detainees to a prison his district. Manzullo told a local TV station that the detainees are “driven by some savage religion.”
That would be the same religion that members of the [...]

TWI legal reporter Daphne Eviatar appeared earlier today on MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting” alongside NBC terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann and former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) to discuss the proposal to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Thomson, Ill. Video after the jump.

This comes from September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a survivors’ group that has urged the Obama administration to shut down Guantanamo Bay:
We, the members of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, support the Attorney General’s decision to bring the trials of the five individuals currently accused of plotting the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 [...]

As Josh Kraushaar points out, that domain name has been snapped up by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), the GOP’s likely 2010 U.S. Senate nominee, to politick against any transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Illinois prisons. Punch in the domain and it points to Kirk’s Website and a statement warning that “our state and the [...]

David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and former congressman/Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr are backing a proposal to send Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Illinois, as well as President Obama’s plan to try terrorism suspects in federal courts. The three conservatives have long been members [...]