WSJ: Obama preparing to transfer Gitmo detainees to U.S. via executive order

It's impossible not to notice how brazenly President Executive Order is willing to blow off Congress and simply do whatever he wants, so you can't argue for a second with the view of WSJ editors that he's getting ready to do it again with regard to Guantanamo Bay. The gambit they envision is, having already vetoed the defense authorization bill precisely because it contained a ban on closing Gitmo and bringing the detainees to the U.S., Obama will now propose a new Gitmo closing bill so completely unworkable that it's guaranteed to fail on Capitol Hill. That's the idea Then he repeats his familiar refrain about how he tried to work with Congress but they just wouldn't reciprocate, so now he must act, blah blah blah, and that's how we'll end up with jihadis in our backyards when we could have kept them in Castro's backyard:

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White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeated the familiar drill Wednesday. They “work with Congress where we can,” Mr. Earnest said. “But if Congress continues to refuse, I wouldn’t rule out the President using every element of his authority to make progress.” Another day at the office for a progressive President intent on reducing the legislative branch to a nullity. For the record, the National Defense Authorization Act this year contains an explicit congressional ban on transferring detainees to the U.S. through 2016. The White House, meanwhile, says the only way Guantanamo can close is if its prisoners are transferred to facilities inside the U.S. The Pentagon, at White House direction, has explored placing Gitmo prisoners at the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in South Carolina; at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; and in the federal supermax prison in Colorado. Not surprisingly, Members of Congress from these states don’t want to do this. The political dance around Gitmo’s closure has come around every year in the Obama Presidency. Congress puts a ban on transferring detainees in the defense bill, and Mr. Obama threatens a veto. This year is the first he’s followed through.

Given how Obama's been all talk and no action on the Gitmo closing since the day he took office, it would be easy to write this off as another empty threat. But there's reason to think he might actually do it. Closing Gitmo has been one of the left's fondest wet dreams ever since the Bush Administration established the prison there, and Obama campaigned on it heavily. To leave office with it still open would be a pretty glaring blotch on his legacy in the eyes of his lefty base.

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And the Journal editors are right. Six times he threatened to veto the defense authorization bill over the ban on bringing Gitmo detainees into the U.S. This is the only time he's actually done it. That has to represent a shift in his plans of one kind or another, and the most obvious possibility is, yes, he's really going to come up with an executive-power justification for bringing our favorite orange-clad jihadis onto U.S. soil where they can get access to lawyers and make insane accusations against the U.S. military in civilian trials. For the record, the Bush crew's decision to put the prison at Gitmo in the first place was and remains brilliant. We had leased that naval base from Cuba since the start of the last century and we refused to give it up after the communist revolution there in 1957. Even though Castro refuses to cash the checks we keep sending him for our payments on the lease, we continued to operate the base - so it was the perfect place to put the prisoners. We didn't have to worry about upsetting an ally, and we didn't have to worry about having them on U.S. soil where they could a) threaten people; and b) get access to the protections of our legal system . . . yet we had complete control over the facility. It was about as perfect as a thing could be, which is exactly why the left hated it so much and still does. And if Obama closes it, that's what he'll be giving up in the name of pleasing his left-wing sycophants who hate U.S. global power the exercise thereof. Just like he does.

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