Starving for Justice

Dear Mr. President,
How is it that last October you bypassed Congress and ordered the Justice Department to cut a $165 million check to the State of Illinois to buy their unused Thomson Correctional Facility but you can’t bypass Congress to close Guantanamo and either try those prisoners in a legitimate court, release them or transfer them to Thomson? Illinois spent $140 million to build this 1,600 cell Supermax prison with a 15-foot high, 7,000 volt electric fence surrounded by an additional 12-foot high exterior fence topped with razor wire but never used it. Republicans blocked your initial proposal to purchase it to prevent you from transferring the Guantanamo prisoners there but you bought it anyway. Just before the election. A nice $25 million profit for cash-strapped Illinois, a few more votes for Obama. And there it sits, still empty. Then there’s the prison in Yemen ready for the return of 56 Yemenis cleared for release from Guantanamo. That prison too, I read, sits empty. I couldn’t find how much that one cost but I did read that you gave $70 million to Yemen last year for “counterterrorism” so it was probably included in that. We’re spending an awful lot to keep people indefinitely detained who may or may not be actual terrorists. The Pentagon wants $200 million to refurbish Guantanamo. That’s $1.2 million per prisoner! Meanwhile, we’re cutting $2.4 billion from child health programs, cutting the school lunch program, cutting Food Stamps, cutting education, cutting our own throats. This is insanity, Mr. President. We’re seriously off track here, investing in the wrong things, doing the wrong things, and you’re going along with the program. Not just going along, but promoting it. $1 billion for that new NSA data center in Utah scheduled to open soon so the snoops can surveille all our telecommunications, credit card transactions, phone calls, bank records, etc. without a warrant—say goodbye to the 4^th amendment. And that act you put on over the latest unwarranted snooping of the AP phone logs—calling on Shumer to pass new shield laws to protect the press. What a joke. What you didn’t mention is that you want to keep the National Security exemption in any new law, the same loophole the administration used to snoop on the AP. National Security is the excuse for every abuse of government power. National Security is your own private Shield Law to allow your totalitarian rule of terror. Meanwhile, those prisoners in Guantanamo are starving for justice.