It turns out that Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) is not the only bedwetter in the Republican Party. House Minority Leader John Boehner has sent out a mass email announcing the introduction of the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act of 2009. Echoing the bedwetting of Sen. Johanns, who declared Nebraskans as a group to be cowards, Boehner suggests that Americans as a group are too afraid to house terror suspects in supermax security prisons anywhere in the United States.
Let’s consider this for a moment. One of the most likely locations in the United States for housing Gitmo detainees is the ADX Florence prison in Colorado.
About 22% of inmates have killed fellow prisoners in other correctional facilities; 35% have attempted to attack other prisoners or officers. As a result, most individuals are kept for at least 23 hours each day in solitary confinement. They are housed in a 7 ft (2.1 m) by 12 ft (3.7 m) room, built behind a steel door and grate. Their free hour is spent exercising alone in a separate concrete chamber. Prisoners seldom see one another, and the inmates’ only direct human interaction is with correctional officers or other prison staff.
Let’s consider some of the notable inmates currently serving at ADX Florence. We have Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber. We have Terry Nichols of Oklahoma City bombing fame. We have Eric Robert Rudolph, who bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, among other locations. Those are white domestic terrorists. We also have some rather infamous foreign Muslim terrorists housed there. Including:
Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Blind Shiekh)- involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Ramzi Yousef- carried out the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.
Mahmud Abouhalima- carried out the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.
Wadih el-Hage- involved in the 1998 African Embassy bombings.
Zacarias Moussaoui- trained for 9/11-style hijackings at American flight schools. Sometimes erroneously referred to as the 20th Hijacker.
Richard Colvin Reid- the Shoe Bomber.
Obviously, most of these inmates have been living in Colorado for more than a decade.
ADX Florence opened in November 1994. The residents in Florence’s surrounding area, Fremont County, welcomed the prison as a source of employment in a time of economic hardship. At the time, the county was already home to nine existing prisons. However, the lure of between 750 to 900 permanent jobs, in addition to another 1,000 temporary jobs during the prison’s construction, led residents in the area to raise $160,000 to purchase 600 acres (2.4 km2) for the new prison. Hundreds of people attended the groundbreaking construction of ADX Florence, which cost over $60 million.
Yet, Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska says that he will not allow like-minded prisoners to be housed within 400 miles of his state, lest the citizens there be “endangered by the proximity of unrepentant al-Qaeda terrorists.”
And now the whole Republican Caucus is joining Johanns in a coordinated extravaganza of synchronized bedwetting. Watch!
I thought Republicans were supposed to be the Daddy Party. I thought they were supposed to be tough and martial and the protectors of society. I thought the GOP was the Colonel Jessup Party:
“You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”
You know, the brave souls that dare to torture for our blanket of freedom. But, it turns out, the Republicans are just a party of losers that are so afraid of bogeymen terrorists that they can’t allow a few dozen of them to be housed anywhere in the United States. They aren’t just yellow-bellied, though. They’re stupid. All these nights they’ve foolishly gone to sleep without maintaining their vigilance against the born killers that are already housed (sometimes within 400 miles of their bedrooms) within the United States. Never mind that they are in 23-hour lockdown and 24-hour isolation. Never mind that no one has ever escaped from ADX Florence.
This is what the Republicans have become. And they have the balls to question our intestinal fortitude. Bedwetters.
