Gitmo Stays Open For Another Year

As Congress balks at funding Gitmo North, this political soap opera continues:

Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.

As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.

While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.

But in interviews this week, officials estimated that it could take 8 to 10 months to install new fencing, towers, cameras and other security upgrades before any transfers take place. Such construction cannot begin until the federal government buys the prison from the State of Illinois.

The federal Bureau of Prisons does not have enough money to pay Illinois for the center, which would cost about $150 million. Several weeks ago, the White House approached the House Appropriations Committee and floated the idea of adding about $200 million for the project to the military spending bill for the 2010 fiscal year, according to administration and Congressional officials.

But Democratic leaders refused to include the politically charged measure in the legislation. When lawmakers approved the bill on Dec. 19, it contained no financing for Thomson.

Separately, former terrorism prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in NationalReviewOnline that the Obama Justice Department just released 12 Gitmo detainees and sent them to al Qaeda hotbed Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somaliland. McCarthy also explains that "DOJ is rife with attorneys who represented and advocated for the detainees, and, in particular, Attorney General Holder's firm [Covington & Burling], represented numerous Yemeni enemy combatants."

Because of his past associations, shouldn't have Holder recused himself from all decisions pertaining to detainees? Isn't that Legal Ethics 101?

Secretary of State Project Gears Up for 2010-2012

The American Spectator warns that the so-called Secretary of State Project, the George Soros-sponsored vote fraud initiative from the 2008 elections, is reloading for the next election cycle:

A group backed by [George] Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field.

ACORN Under Federal Scrutiny

This inquiry is long overdue and let's hope it is a real investigation rather than just a whitewash, but the congressman is correct that given the magnitude of the corruption, the FBI should also come into the case:

The Government Accountability Office has opened an investigation into ACORN’s use of taxpayer dollars, two House Republicans said Thursday.

Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) made the announcement in the course of demanding a separate FBI investigation into the group.

“Only an independent criminal investigation conducted by the FBI can get to the bottom of the nationwide allegations against ACORN,” Smith said in a news release.

The GAO investigation will be completed jointly with the executive branch’s inspector general.

FBI-DHS Spar Over Intelligence Access

Apparently a disconnect exists between the FBI and Homeland Security over information sharing:

The White House has taken the unusual step of wading into a dispute between the nation's top law enforcement agencies over how much terrorist-threat information should be shared with state and local law enforcement, according to officials.

The White House involvement reflects the unusual nature of recent high-profile terrorism cases, including that of alleged bomb-maker Najibullah Zazi, which along with some undisclosed terrorist "activities" have raised tensions between the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, officials said.

Those tensions were aired during a weekend meeting at the White House with President Obama's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and others, according to officials.

DHS officials say information about on-going investigations should be shared broadly so local authorities can identify threats in their communities, but FBI officials say some of that information could compromise their investigations and ultimately sabotage anti-terrorism efforts.

On Tuesday, Napolitano and Holder announced "major steps" to improve the sharing of threat information, but such new efforts may be undermined by the recent tensions, one U.S. official said.

Didn't inter-agency rivalries and turf protection put the U.S. at risk prior to 9/11?

Supremes Reject Gitmo Prisoners' Appeal

The detainee lobby loses one at the high court:

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it rejected an appeal by four former Guantanamo Bay prisoners arguing that they should be able to proceed with their lawsuit against top Pentagon officials for torture and religious abuse.

The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit by the four British citizens over their treatment at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on the grounds the officials enjoyed immunity.

...The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal. It said the appeals court's decision was correct and that further review of the case was unwarranted.

Narco-Terrorist Stimulus Program

Drug traffickers apparent have their own bank bailout plan:

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

Also from the British media, Costa earlier this month warned about drug trafficking in certain areas in Africa:

The head of the UN drugs agency (UNODC) has warned that widespread drug trafficking is transforming Africa into a major crime hub.

Antonio Maria Costa said huge amounts of heroin and cocaine were being traded by "terrorists and anti-government forces" to fund their operations.

He called for a trans-Saharan network to be set up to tackle criminal groups.

The BBC report adds that "drug traffickers have saturated Russia, much of Western Europe, and they are now spreading into Africa."

Related story from the New York Post:

Three accused terrorists arrested in Africa arrived in Manhattan [on December 18] to face charges that they plotted to fund al-Qaeda by smuggling thousands of pounds of cocaine into Europe. Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abelrahman were captured in Ghana on Wednesday and arrived in the city early this morning. They are expected to appear before a federal judge this afternoon. It's the first time suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been charged in a drug-trafficking plot, prosecutors said.

And now it appears that drug cartels are diversifying into the oil business:

Drug traffickers employing high-tech drills, miles of rubber hose, and a fleet of stolen tanker trucks have siphoned more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico’s pipelines over the past two years, in a vast and audacious conspiracy that is bleeding the national treasury, according to US and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.

Using sophisticated smuggling networks, the traffickers have transported a portion of the pilfered petroleum across the border to sell to US companies, some of which knew that it was stolen, according to court documents and interviews with American officials involved in an expanding investigation of oil services firms in Texas.

The widespread theft of Mexico’s most vital national resource by criminal organizations represents a costly new front in President Felipe Calderon’s war against the drug cartels, and it shows how the traffickers are rapidly evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling.

Reagan: Free Enterprise Must Prevail Over Socialism

Whether you agree with his policies or not, one of the many admirable things about Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, was his unique and colorful career in the private sector before he sought public office. This background is in stark contrast to the career politicians, i.e., those who never held a real job, currently running the federal government. With great hubris, these politicians want to invade "the precincts of private citizens" as Reagan says in this amazingly prophetic and eloquent 1961 audio commentary about socialized medicine.

If we recall correctly, one of Peggy Noonan's books used the metaphor of Ronald Reagan, the high school lifeguard, as guiding America safely back to shore after the failed Carter presidency.