Manzullo is rightly upset that he wasn’t in the loop on this thing. He found out like everybody else - after the Thomson decision was leaked to the media. But considering his reaction, it’s no wonder nobody talked to him first.
* Congressman Mark Kirk has a new name for the Thomson prison: “Great Lakes Gitmo.”
Huh?
Kirk also claimed that the Obama administration had given $200 million to the island nation of Palau to accept “six terrorists.” Those “terrorists” have actually been deemed no threat by the military. And, as I told subscribers yesterday, that $200 million was really a $50 million increase in Palau’s 15-year $150 million aid package. That’s still a nice little bump. Illinois should be getting more money for this. Period. Watch Kirk…
It’s not like Kirk and the other opponents lack for material here. I mean, the opposition speeches practically write themselves. But why do they feel the need to make stuff up, create silly nicknames and slur entire religions?
“I understand I’m on different pages of music with others in my party. First of all this should not be a partisan issue in anyway. If President Obama brings the detainees on U.S. soil and we sit here with a brand new state-of-the-art, max security prison, sitting vacant for the last eight years, and pass on an opportunity to sell it to the federal government, which we would fill it with 1,500 regular prisoners and 800 detainees, what is the problem? The building was designed to do that.
“The only reason we have rhetoric now is because of the closing of Gitmo,” Sacia concluded. “It makes no sense at all. This is a tremendous opportunity and we would be idiots to waste it.” […]
“I saw Mark Kirk making some comment about potentially a terrorist attacking Chicago,” [Rep. Sacia] said. “For Christ sakes. Chicago is 150 miles from Thomson… I’m very upset about [his rhetoric]. I understand people wanting to take a stand. But before you take a stand get the facts. I didn’t make a comment on this until I sat through a three hour briefing yesterday.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be my position if I were running for [the Senate],” Sacia added.
Sacia is a former FBI agent, by the way.
But the Illinois GOP is not letting up. From a press release…
In a crushing blow to Governor Pat Quinn and Senator Dick Durbin’s plan to move Gitmo to Illinois, Democratic Illinois Congresswoman Melissa Bean today announced she opposed any transfer of terrorists to the United States – including Illinois.
The Lake County News Sun today quotes Congresswoman Bean as saying: “I remain opposed to transferring Guantanamo detainees to Illinois, or anywhere in the United States, without substantial assurances regarding potential security threats.”
Bean’s statement comes on the heels of new survey results showing that only 32% of Illinois voters support the Quinn/Durbin plan while 57% oppose.
“We hope other Democrats like Bill Foster and Debbie Halvorson will have the courage to stand up to Governor Quinn and Senator Durbin and do what’s right for the people of Illinois,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady said.
Clever politics, for sure.
* You really gotta wonder just how much thought Pat Quinn put into this idea. Did he even have a clue about the sort of political bomb he was detonating? The last line in this Bob Schillerstrom press release pretty much sums it up…
“I understand and appreciate the deep concerns of families presented with the idea of bringing Gitmo detainees to Illinois. We should all agree that the safety of our communities must be the first consideration of government and not compromised, regardless of perceived economic benefit.
“It is stunning to see some sidestep public safety and address this as a question of job creation. And it is also surprising to see others dismiss those jobs without discussion of the merits of the proposal. More information would assist all parties in separating fact from fiction. That is why I urge the Governor’s Office and White House to detail security safeguards planned for the Thomson Correctional Center and its surrounding communities – as they should have in the first place.
“Without more information, we should expect nothing more than the backlash that has occurred in recent days.”
* The Illinois GOP just sent out a news release about poll results that I shared with subscribers today. Illinoisans oppose bringing those Gitmo prisoners to Thomson, according to the poll. From the release…
Survey Shows Only 32% of Illinois Voters Support Quinn/Durbin Plan to Move Gitmo to Illinois, 57% Oppose
60% of women, 58% of independents and plurality of Democrats call plan a “bad idea”
The automated polling firm We Ask America surveyed 1,791 likely Illinois voters yesterday. The poll had a margin of error of ± 2.32 percent. Here’s the actual question…
“It has been reported that a prison in northwestern Illinois is being considered to house individuals that have been incarcerated at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay. The individuals in question are being held due to suspicion that they have connections to terrorist activities. Do you think that housing these prisoners in an Illinois prison is a good idea or a bad idea?”
This isn’t much of a surprise. National polling by Gallup back in June had this result…
By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantanamo shouldn’t be closed. By more than 3-1, they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states.
Whatever you think about this particular issue, it’s pretty clear that moving those prisoners to Thomson is a net political negative for Quinn and for those who support the plan.
* Meanwhile, Democratic US Senate candidate David Hoffman’s most recent polling memo is getting some play today. “Hoffman poll suggests hits on Giannoulias are potent,” reports The Hill. “Hoffman camp: Giannoulias nearly unelectable,” says Politico.
At the beginning of the survey, Mark Kirk leads both Alexi Giannoulias and David Hoffman, with Kirk getting an identical 40% of the statewide vote in pairings against each of the Democrats. Given the fact that Giannoulias is substantially better known at this stage than Hoffman (51% name ID for Giannoulias vs. 26% for Hoffman), it is not surprising that Giannoulias begins with a larger share of the vote in his trial heat against Kirk than Hoffman does (37% for Giannoulias vs. 30% for Hoffman).
So, Kirk leads 40-37 over Giannoulias and 40-30 over Hoffman.
Hoffman’s pollster contends that an informed electorate will reject Giannoulias…
Alexi Giannoulias’s own vulnerabilities are so significant, and far more damning than Kirk’s among the electorate, that Giannoulias is deeply flawed as a general election candidate for the Democratic Party. His nomination would put Barack Obama’s former Senate seat in extreme jeopardy for the Democrats. […]
Indeed, after voters hear positives and negatives for Hoffman, Giannoulias, and Kirk, Hoffman has the advantage over Kirk by 42% to 36%, while Giannoulias trails Kirk by a wide margin of 47% to 30%.
The attacks that the Republicans are likely to make against Giannoulias, and in fact already are making1, are powerful in raising deep concerns about him among voters. For example, three-quarters of all voters say they have very (62%) or fairly (13%) serious concerns about Giannoulias when they hear the following:
Alexi Giannoulias’s family bank had close financial ties with Tony Rezko, one of Rod Blagojevich’s top funders who is now in jail, and Alexi Giannoulias met personally with Rezko. Not only did the bank give $11 million in loans to Rezko and his businesses, but the bank also gave Rezko preferential treatment by allowing him to bounce nine checks worth more than $500,000 without closing his account or reporting his actions to the authorities.
Also, according to the memo, just 18 percent agree with the view that “it is unfair to criticize Alexi Giannoulias for problems at the Broadway Bank, including its involvement with Tony Rezko, because Alexi Giannoulias has not been involved with the bank for four years, and many other banks also made loans to Rezko before he was exposed as a criminal.”
The Hill has the Giannouolias campaign’s response…
“Every public poll shows Alexi Giannoulias leading or neck and neck with Mark Kirk, while David Hoffman is trailing badly,” Bowen said. “He is behind, desperate, and now he is running a negative and dishonest campaign, preferring to attack fellow Democrats instead of telling us what he would do in the Senate. Just last week, the Chicago Tribune caught him falsely attacking Alexi Giannoulias and he was forced to apologize.”
* Other campaign stories…
* Cook board votes to cut half of Stroger sales-tax hike: The board voted 12-5 to cut the year-old increase in half. Mr. Stroger earlier had vetoed similar moves, but a new state law cuts the number of votes needed on the board to override the president to 11 from 14… “We had 12. We need 11. It’s always nice to have a little insurance,” she said.
* Zorn: Petition challenge hearings begin: The ‘gotcha’ game is afoot:
“Apparently, for whatever reason, her voter registration didn’t get transferred when she moved” recently, says Deb Mell’s attorney, Michael J. Kasper. “We disagree with the claim that this invalidates her petitions.” I’m no election lawyer, but my reading of an 86-page summary of prior rulings (.pdf) published this month by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners is that Kasper’s right.* As hypertechnical as some of the disqualifications may seem — tossing a candidate for using a professional title on his petitions, failing to number or properly bind petition sheets and so on — there’s a considerable amount of common sense evident in the rulings.
* Kirk Foe Heads To DC: Wealthy atty Patrick Hughes (R) will be the latest to try and capitalize on conservative anger with perceived centrist candidates when he heads to DC this week for meetings with right-leaning organizations.
* Matt Murphy picks up endorsements: The endorsements came from state senators John Millner of Carol Stream, Brad Burzynski of Rochelle and Pam Althoff of McHenry along with state representatives Suzie Bassi of Palatine, Franco Coladipietro of Bloomingdale, Michael Connelly of Lisle, Sid Mathias of Buffalo Grove, Dennis Reboletti of Elmhurst, Randy Ramey of Carol Stream, Sandra Pihos of Glen Ellyn and Ed Sullivan, Jr. of Mundelein.
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* The Illinois Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday over whether former Gov. George Ryan should be able to keep part of his pension benefits. An appellate court has already ruled in Ryan’s favor…
Earlier this year, an appeals court ruled that Ryan could keep part of his state pension, as much as $65,000 a year, even though he was convicted of federal corruption charges from his time holding state office. […]
Ryan’s attorneys argued that Ryan shouldn’t have to give up his pension earned while working as lieutenant governor, a state lawmaker and a Kankakee County official.
The court agreed, saying Ryan only had to give up pension benefits he accrued while secretary of state and governor because those were the offices he held while committing the acts he’d later be convicted of.
* The Question: Should Ryan be allowed to keep the part of his pension from his non secretary of state or gubernatorial service? Explain.
* As I told you a while ago, one of Congressman Mark Kirk’s most important bases of support has been the Chicago-area media, which practically cooed over his reputation as a liberal, independent Republican. But just about every passing week has seen a dramatic erosion in that base. The Sun-Times endorsed Kirk last year, but is growing more and more concerned about his campaign positions. Kirk’s fear-mongering on moving Gitmo prisoners to Thomson prison stirred this angry response in today’s CS-T…
Kirk’s scare talk might do him wonders with the GOP base, but it won’t convince a single terrorist that this nation has a backbone.
Ouch. And, I gotta say, they’re probably right on both points.
* The Tribune editorial board members’ anti-union and anti-everything Springfield positions led them to call today for the sale of Thomson prison to the feds. In the process, they took a big whack at Kirk and other Republicans…
Yet when Republicans heard that the Obama administration is looking at buying the largely vacant Thomson Correctional Facility to house some detainees now held at Guantanamo (as well as ordinary maximum security prisoners), they reacted as though Osama bin Laden had been given the keys to a missile silo.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna howled that Gov. Pat Quinn, who endorsed the move, was scheming to “put terrorists in our neighborhoods.” Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, who is running for the Senate, insisted that “our state and the Chicago metropolitan area will become ground zero for jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization.”
Give us a break. A super-maximum security prison, such as Thomson would become, is not what most of us associate with the word “neighborhood.” The critics seem to forget that no one has ever escaped from a supermax. If having a terrorist imprisoned on our soil were an invitation for his confederates to slaughter innocent Chicagoans, it would surely have happened already.
They’re exactly right on that point. The hyper-reaction from the GOP is embarrassing, and in many ways factually incorrect…
Kirk contended visitation rules at a federal penitentiary in Thomson would mean more than 2,000 al-Qaida “followers and family members” would regularly travel to the state-—many through O’Hare International Airport.
“As you raise the profile of your community in the jihadi world, the benefit that they see in attacking your city increases,” said Kirk, who repeatedly referred to his experience as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer.
But Kirk’s assertions over visitation rules were attacked as “totally false” by Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. Obama administration officials said the Thomson prison would be run by the Department of Defense, which prohibits detainees from receiving visits from anyone other than legal counsel, rather than by the federal Bureau of Prisons, whose visitation rules were cited by Kirk.
So, Congressman National Security doesn’t even have his basic facts straight before he tries to strike fear into the populace? Completely irresponsible.
Fear of international terrorists takes “not in my backyard” to a whole new level.
We presume that’s why Rep. Don Manzullo, normally a rational, deliberative lawmaker, went ballistic over news the Obama administration wants to put terrorism suspects at a nearly vacant prison at Thomson when the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is closed. […]
Despite Rep. Manzullo’s doomsday scenario — that terrorism suspects might “one day be released into our communities” — the Obama official said the United States would never approve the release of Guantanamo detainees into the general population.
So, more factual inaccuracies in an attempt to strike fear in the hearts of the populace. Par for the course.
This isn’t about bringing “terrorists to Illinois” or moving “Gitmo detainees to our neighborhoods” — as it was characterized by Andy McKenna, a Republican candidate for governor, and others who have made similar comments.
It’s about following through on a plan to close the Guantanamo facility.
McKenna’s statement in opposition to the Thomson plan said, “This shows how out of touch Governor (Pat) Quinn really is.”
However, if McKenna doesn’t recognize this economic opportunity for Illinois, he’s the one who is out of touch.
Maybe. But I still think we ought to get a whole lot more for that prison than the governor is asking. We’re in a good bargaining position here and we should take advantage of it. Somebody sent me a text message this morning claiming that accepting this prison was our “duty.” It’s not our “duty.” It’s our option.
Another possibility, although it seems far-fetched outside of the cinema, is a terrorist attack on a federal prison to “free” the inmates. If you consider it for a minute, there are literally thousands of potential terrorist targets in the United States.
While we need to be aware and wise about prevention, retreating into a frightened shell is not the answer.
Exactly. Some people have simply seen too many Hollywood action movies.
Brady is a member of the General Assembly’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, which is charged with holding hearings when governors want to close any state facility employing more than 25 workers.
The minimum-security wing of Thomson — the only part that is operating — has about 80 employees. […]
Dan Long, executive director of the commission, said it’s not yet clear how the process for Thomson will unfold.
“It depends on what they plan to do with it,” Long said Monday. “I think we’re in limbo.”
“I haven’t talked to one person who wants to see us house terrorists,” Brady said.
I don’t want to “house” terrorists here, either. I do want to seem them imprisoned, however. Sheesh.
Brady’s letter to AG Madigan is here. He also asks whether the Thomson prison is surplus property that must be first offered to other units of government in Illinois.
An attorney for Blagojevich’s brother, Robert, said Monday that he would seek a separate trial, citing the prejudice his client could face by sitting next to such a controversial figure. […]
“It was basically his decision, not mine,” attorney Michael Ettinger, who represents Robert Blagojevich, said after court of his client’s desire to be tried separately from his brother.
According to a source familiar with the situation, Blagojevich’s brother may have decided to seek a separate trial after the former governor’s lawyers moved to delay the trial, now scheduled to begin June 3.
Rod and Rob weren’t close as adults until the guv asked the brother to come up and run his campaign fundraising operation. Perhaps the brother is now finding out how weird and off-the-wall (and headed for prison) the former governor really is.
Lawyers for Blagojevich wanted the delay to see how the Supreme Court would rule on three other cases they said will be a key part of their defense against the charges. The judge denied the request and said the trial will begin in June as scheduled.
Judge James Zagel said he may postpone the start of the trial, but not until September.
“Should there be a Supreme Court decision which affects some of the legal theories of this case it certainly would be foolish to begin something and then have to stop it,” said Sheldon Sorosky, Blagojevich’s attorney.
* Prosecutors joined the defense in a motion to sever Bill Cellini from Rod Blagojevich’s trial and the judge granted it yesterday…
Cellini’s attorney, Dan K. Webb, issued a statement saying the decision to severe his client and possibly try him separately “demonstrates what we have said all along — that there was never any justification for including Bill Cellini in any indictment with former Gov. Blagojevich.”
Webb said Cellini doesn’t know Blagojevich, has never spoken on the phone with the former governor and was unaware of the alleged fundraising scheme.
Cellini was charged in three counts along with former Blagojevich chief fundraiser Christopher G. Kelly, was found dead in what police say was a suicide, just days before he was to start serving eight years in prison.
Prosecutors urged Zagel to drop Cellini from the trial, saying that Kelly had been the key figure who linked him to Blagojevich. They said Kelly’s death had erased much of the “overlap” in evidence between Blagojevich and Cellini.
* County Board set to try again today to lower sales tax rate
After months of watching the volley between a majority bloc of county commissioners trying to roll back the tax and Board President Todd Stroger opposed to the giveback, the game may end today.
Commissioners supporting the rollback have called an emergency meeting this morning for the sole purpose, they hope, of slashing the sales tax a half-penny on the dollar.
Revenue collected for parking ticket fines was off on average nearly $1 million a month between May and August 2009, compared with the same time in 2008. This comes as the city is trying to fill a $520 million budget hole.
Earl Dunlap, the head of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, is expected to go to federal court on Tuesday to seek approval to dismiss 230 workers at the chronically troubled facility.
All of the workers will be eligible to re-apply for their jobs. The best will be rehired. Those who have a college degree and get rehired will get a bump in pay.
* Judge orders Chicago Public Schools to discuss transfers with Fenger students
