Matt Davies for February 25, 2016

the President has submitted a plan to Congress to close Guantanamo Bay military prison. There are 91 prisoners there, 35 of whom have been cleared for release. The Republicans in Congress have repeatedly obstructed his attempts to close the prison. Obama wants the detainees transferred to their home countries or U.S. military or civilian prisons. It is clear the detention facility does not advance our national security, it undermines it. it is counterproductive to our fight against terrorists because they use it as propaganda in their efforts to recruit.Fears of the public have been fanned by misinformation, there is a fair amount of opposition to closing Guantanamo. There is bipartisan support for closing it. Rubio wants it to stay open – and to catch terrorists and put them there. He wants to get back to the torture and filling up Guantanamo. Trump wants to load it up. The likelihood of any of the detainees coming to the US is extremely low. The president has laid out a good plan for closing Gitmo – using more of the process of trying to find other countries to take some of these detainees. Resettlement or third country prosecutions as well as looking at the detainees captured in connection with the Afghan War. There is a second-class system of justice that has largely been created in a preordained way to secure convictions. They are unjust and unworkable because they’re made up as they go along. This is not a valid system of justice. There has been no trial in 15 years – and the courts are starting to review these non-international law changes that Gitmo has been trying to bring.

I wonder if that’s not actually the point here: why are we not discussing closing Rikers Island, as well?

“Three strikes”, “mandatory minimums”, and ignoring the Constitution as well as Geneva Conventions, indicate the United States has been working for some time now to lock up the values the nation was supposedly founded on, and throw away the key. “Crime and Punishment” isn’t a story of injustice in Russia anymore, it’s right here, and we need to change that. It’s called “civilization”.

Yes, yes, close both of them please sir…..

I suppose we could terrorize the people in Gitmo by threatening to send them to Rikers.

In Truth, the Reason the Robes of the American Legal System Judges are Black; So the Stains Don’t Show!