Like A Masochist In Rockford, We're Illinois Bound

Illinois Dems want to move Gitmo detainees to the empty maximum security Thomson Correctional Facility in Thomson, Illinois. Via BooMan, we learn that Illinois Republicans however are too busy urinating themselves in fear to respond.

Top Illinois Democrats on Sunday wholeheartedly embraced the idea of sending terrorism suspects from Guantánamo Bay to a maximum-security prison about 150 miles west of Chicago, raising the possibility of a major breakthrough in the Obama administration’s efforts to close the military detention facility in Cuba.

But while Gov. Patrick J. Quinn and Senator Richard J. Durbin endorsed housing the detainees at the Thomson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in a rural area, other local leaders were drumming up opposition to the idea, which could still face considerable opposition in Congress.

(More after the jump...)

For the White House, which confirmed the administration’s interest, it could be the best chance so far to cut through the legal and political knots that have stopped it from closing down the prison camp in Cuba. For supporters in Illinois, it is an attractive economic opportunity. And just as opponents have done elsewhere, some in Illinois cast this plan as an unacceptable risk.

Mr. Quinn and Mr. Durbin, in news conferences to promote the plan, said that turning over the state prison, which is unoccupied, to the federal penal system, and using it for maximum-security inmates including as many as 100 captives from the campaign against terrorism, would create several thousand jobs.

But leading Republicans in the state — including Representatives Donald Manzullo, whose district includes Thomson, and Mark Steven Kirk, who is running for the United States Senate seat once held by Mr. Obama — signed a letter to the president on Sunday strongly opposing any such move.

“As home to America’s tallest building, we should not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its No. 1 target,” the letter said, referring to the Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly the Sears Tower. “The United States spent more than $50 million to build the Guantánamo Bay detention facility to keep terrorists away from U.S. soil. Al Qaeda terrorists should stay where they cannot endanger American citizens.”

The sharp local debate echoed vehement arguments heard all weekend, after the administration announced that it would try the man accused as the operational leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and several co-conspirators, in a federal court in New York, while putting others accused of terrorism before military commissions for an attack on the U.S.S. Cole. That, too, was presented as a step along the path to closing Guantánamo.

Boy it's a good thing we don't house any psychopathic killers on U.S. soil or anything, they might break out of those facilities...let's call them prisons...and kill Americans.

Republicans are apparently arguing that escaped terrorists can't cross water, like vampires or something.

Why are they taken seriously again?

[UPDATE 9:13 AM] And it's not just Republicans who are peeing on themselves at the thought of giving these guys trials, as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb so helpfully reminds us that there are plenty of Dems too scared to subject these men to criminal proceedings.