Why Terrorists Are Coming To Your Backyard

Conn Carroll / October 23, 2009

Nation Review‘s Andy McCarthy writes:

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder contend that America’s civilian federal prisons are secure. Our “supermaxes,” they insist, are up to the task of confining the most lethal terrorists. Even if that were true (and history shows it is not), the argument is the most hollow of strawmen. These terrorists are not going to escape — they are going to walk right out the prison gates. They are going to be freed by a perverse new legal system, an ad hoc creation of progressive federal judges, assisted mightily by an Obama Justice Department rife with lawyers whose former firms and institutions spent the last eight years representing America’s enemies.

It didn’t have to be this way. President Obama could have gone to Congress and won legislation creating a durable, long-term, and sustainable framework for legal detention. One not just for detainees currently at Guantanamo, but for future high-value captures outside of Afghanistan. But Obama chose a different path. Heritage fellow Cully Stimson explains why: (more…)