The Senate will begin consideration of the nomination of Regina McCarthy to be assistant administrator for the EPA. After completing work on the McCarthy nomination, the Senate will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 1256. The debate centers on granting the Food and Drug Administration new power to regulate tobacco products a proposal that has divided both the cigarette industry and infringement on individual choice.
Judge Sotomayor will be meeting with 10 senators today, including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican Whip Jon Kyl, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Judiciary Committee chair Pat Leahy, and Judiciary Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions.
GITMO: With a little over half a year until President Obama’s self-imposed deadline to close Guantanamo Bay, the administration has yet to provide a plan to do so, and polls continue to show that the public opposes closing the detention facility.
As USA Today reports, “Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to closing the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and moving some of the detainees to prisons on U.S. soil, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds. By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantanamo shouldn't be closed. By more than 3-1, they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states.”
In his speech on national security two weeks ago, President Obama said, “the record is clear: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.” However, he provided no evidence for this assertion, and Americans don’t seem convinced, according to the USA Today/Gallup Poll: “In the survey, Americans were inclined to accept the argument by [former vice president Dick] Cheney and former president George W. Bush that the detention center had made the United States safer. By 40%-18%, they said the prison had strengthened national security rather than weakened it.”
And at this supposedly reputation-blighting detention facility, Reuters reports that “[t]he U.S. military is rigging up satellite television service and distributing Sudoku puzzles in Guantanamo prison cells . . . . [p]risoners now have access to newspapers,” “[s]ome attend classes in Arabic, Pashto, English and art . . . and [a]ll get sketch pads, colored chalk and puzzle books.”
Yet, despite all these allowances, “for first time in 20 months, the camp recently went four whole days without any assaults on guards. But the respite was followed by four assaults in a single day involving urine-feces cocktails, the weapon of choice among Guantanamo's inmates.” Does the Obama administration really think it’s a good idea to bring these detainees to the United States?
Democrats in Congress are increasingly questioning the wisdom of that idea. Roll Call reported yesterday that the administration has yet to figure out how to get Democrats to agree to provide funding to close Guantanamo. A senior Democrat aide told Roll Call, “There’s a train leaving town, which is Defense appropriations, and if [Obama] wants the funding on that train, he needs to one, come up with a plan, and two, convince a majority of Congress to support that plan.” And Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) said on the floor recently, “It is up to the administration to fashion a plan, which can win the support of the American people and its Congressional representatives.”
Senate GOP Leader McConnell has said, “A big, flowering campaign speech is fine, but what the Congress voted for . . . is not for a speech, but for a plan.” Even with a plan, though, it looks like Americans are deeply skeptical of the idea of bringing the Guantanamo detainees to the United States. President Obama would be wise to reconsider.
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