NATIONAL SECURITY
Guantanamo Still Needs To Be Closed

Two days after entering office, President Obama issued an executive order announcing his intention to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within one year. Obama's order called for a cabinet-level panel to grapple with issues including what locations inside the United States prisoners might be moved to and which courts they could be tried in. But Obama's efforts hit a roadblock yesterday when the Senate voted 90 to 6 to approve an amendment barring the use of funds to transfer detainees to the U.S. Though Democrats in Congress are supportive of closing Guantanamo, they said that they planned to "withhold the money until the White House settles on a comprehensive plan for dealing with detainees." "The feeling was at this point we were defending the unknown," said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL). "We were asked to defend the plan that hasn't been announced," he said. Ken Gude, the the Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress, explained to TalkingPointsMemo yesterday that "Congress, on the legislative calendar, got ahead of Obama on this." "It's the kind of problem you have when you have two different tracks moving, but not at the same rate," Gude said. Though Republicans have responded to the move with glee, Obama is not backing down from his pledge to close the prison. In a speech at the National Archives today, the president answered "critics of his dismantling of Bush-era policies on detention and interrogation" and urged "Congress to be patient while the administration explores options for relocating Guantanamo detainees."

CONSERVATIVES WANT TO KEEP GITMO OPEN: Immediately after Obama finished speaking today, former Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to "answer" Obama with a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. Appearing on CBS's Face The Nation recently, Cheney argued that keeping Guantanamo open was "important" because if captured detainees were brought to the United States, they would "acquire all kinds of legal rights." Cheney is not the only voice calling for Guantanamo to be kept open indefinitely. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been attacking Obama for weeks over the closure of Guantanamo. According to Politico, McConnell "has needled the president about the issue in 16 floor speeches, a Washington Post op-ed, several Sunday shows, weekly stakeouts, and a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 27 that kicked off the effort." In his Washington Post op-ed, McConnell claimed that "there are no good alternatives to Guantanamo." After the Senate vote yesterday, McConnell crowed about the new "bipartisan agreement on Guantanamo." But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who sponsored the amendment to block the funds, emphasized yesterday that the measure was not a rebuke of Obama's intention to close the prison, telling the Washington Post that it was "not a referendum on closing Guantanamo."

FEARMONGERING ABOUT TERRORISTS IN THE U.S.: One of the main arguments put forward by Obama's critics is that the U.S. prison system can't handle terrorist detainees. On CNN yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he didn't think that U.S. prison facilities "could keep some of these detainees secure, at the same time, protecting the surrounding communities." When CNN's Kiran Chetry noted that "a number of people who have been convicted on terrorism-related charges in U.S. courts" have "been held in our U.S. prisons," Inhofe argued that "those individuals who are actually criminals, they actually committed crimes and were not involved in the type of -- in the type of terrorist activity as we've been experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan." Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) argued on Monday night that if detainees were transferred to U.S. prisons, American prison guards would "have no idea what they're getting into." Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) responded on the Senate floor yesterday, saying that Bennett "ought to have a little more respect for the men and women who are corrections officers." "The reality is that we're holding some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world right now in our federal prisons," Durbin said.

U.S. PRISONS CAN HANDLE TERRORISTS: As Durbin pointed out, the U.S. prison system is currently holding hundreds of convicted terrorists "including the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the shoe bomber, the Unibomber, and many others." Indeed, terrorists such as the Blind Sheikh and Zacarias Moussaoui were convicted and sentenced to life in prison at the Colorado Supermax. Additionally, the high-security wing of the naval brig in Charleston, SC, confined Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri for more than five years. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has noted that, "[u]nlike the staff at Abu Ghraib, the brig staff had been trained for the job. Their mission, as they saw it, was to run a safe, professional, and humane prison, regardless of who was held there." Despite the conventional wisdom that "no member" of Congress has stepped forward to say that their states could take Guantanamo detainees, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said on the Senate floor yesterday that California's prisons were "eminently capable" of housing detainees. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) also suggested yesterday that his state could hold detainees in a maximum security prison. "If the governor and the local officials are open to it, that's something that should be considered," said Levin. Read the Center for American Progress' plan for effectively closing Guantanamo Bay here.

Under the Radar

CLIMATE -- REP. SCALISE LINKS BUILDING EFFICIENCY STANDARDS TO 'SETTING UP A GLOBAL WARMING GESTAPO': Yesterday during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) attacked a provision in the bill that would create federal energy efficiency standards for buildings, calling it "ludicrous." "We're actually creating a global warming police," Scalise complained, adding, "We're setting up a global warming Gestapo that can literally come in and now this new term, 'unlawful occupancy.' Now, living in your home is considered unlawful under this bill." Of course Scalise's rhetoric is hyperbole. The measure would actually save working families and businesses millions of dollars, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs, and tackle the nation's biggest sources of global warming pollution. Moreover, Scalise is confusing energy efficiency codes with safety codes. The bill actually preserves local safety codes and provides federal support for states to implement the new standards. Federal enforcement would only take place if the states fail to act.

Think Fast

The Obama administration has decided to put a "high value" Guantanamo Bay detainee on trial in New York City. Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that Ahmed Ghailani will be sent there for trial, "which would make him the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court."

Though a Pentagon report that said 74 released Guantanamo detainees returned to terrorism quickly made headlines, the "Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating" the 45 recidivists it leaves unnamed, while "only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists."

Obama "has interviewed Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago" as a possible nominee to the Supreme Court. Wood was in town for a legal conference earlier this week but also met with Obama. The two first met when they taught at the University of Chicago Law School.

The Senate confirmed David Hayes as Deputy Interior Secretary last night, after Sens. Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) had blocked Hayes's nomination because Secretary Ken Salazar "had canceled oil and gas leases." 

Congress sent a credit card reform bill to President Obama's desk yesterday, "completing a trio of consumer-related measures that Democrats had raced to get signed into law by Memorial Day." However, the bill also includes a provision allowing national parks visitors to carry loaded and concealed firearms. Obama is expected to sign the measure. More 

Army vice chief of staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli has warned that "Army commanders are failing to punish or seek treatment for a growing number of soldiers who test positive for substance abuse, possibly because they don't want to lose any more combat troops." Chiarelli said hundreds of soldiers who tested positive for drug use were not processed for possible discharge or referred to the Army's substance abuse program.

In Baghdad yesterday, "[t]hree American soldiers were killed and nine others wounded" after a bomb exploded as the soldiers "patrolled near a popular outdoor market."

In a 186-188 vote yesterday, the New Hampshire state House rejected the changes Gov. John Lynch (D) proposed to a marriage equality bill. However, the chamber then voted to "ask the Senate to work out their differences in a committee of conference and vote again later this session." Lynch had insisted on including "protections for religious institutions" that oppose same-sex marriage.

"President Barack Obama is likely to get a sweeping bipartisan endorsement when the Senate votes on his request for continuing military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan," although the $80 million he was seeking to close Guantanamo was dropped Wednesday. The measure "would boost total approved spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars above $900 billion."

And finally: House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans opposed to the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation have threatened to "force the reading of the entire 946-page bill" in order to hold up the process. However, Democrats on the committee "have taken a novel step to head off Republican effort": Hire a speed reader. "Judging by the size of the amendments, I can read a page about every 34 seconds," said the newly-hired, speed-reading "staff assistant." The Wall Street Journal estimates that at this pace, it would take about nine hours to read the entire bill.

Blog Watch

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Big Pharma's campaign to save you from the facts.

Daily Grill

"I consider myself a middle-class guy."
-- Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, 5/19/09

VERSUS

"Bill O'Reilly has re-upped with Fox News Channel in a multiyear deal that pays him about $10 million a year to host his top-rated news program, 'The O'Reilly Factor.'"
-- Reuters, 10/23/08