JamieWeinstein.com

For the answer, check out my latest column in The Washington Examiner.

Here's a hint: The opposite of yes.

This week, the Obama Administration announced plans to move roughly 100 terrorists currently held at the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo) to a prison in Thomson, Illinois, just a couple hours drive outside of Chicago.

I know what you are thinking: “Finally! The Obama Administration is moving to shut down the moral cancer that is Gitmo.”

It was just this last February, after all, that Barack Obama’s Defense Department published a review of Gitmo. Gitmo has long been a target of the Left for the alleged horrors that occur there. And the D.O.D. report did not whitewash any of the terrible terrors that routinely continue to take place.

Get ready to be morally sickened by what our government is doing to terrorist detainees at Gitmo in our name. The report indicated that during more than one inspection—brace yourself—“a small number of meals delivered to detainees in Camps 5 and Echo . . . were approximately five degrees under the optimal standard.”

What hell hath we wrought? Could Amnesty International have been right? Is Gitmo really the “gulag of our time,” after all?

I know what you just read may lead you to conclude so, but I ask you to reconsider. While I readily concede that the aforementioned culinary catastrophe unquestionably merits the loss of at least one of Gitmo’s three Michelin Stars, I am not sure it exactly necessitates shutting the place down.

Gitmo, of course, is nothing like what is imagined in the deep, dark fantasies of those on the Left. Indeed, as Barack Obama’s Defense Department noted last February, “the chain of command responsible for the detention mission at Guantanamo consistently seeks to go beyond a minimalist approach to compliance with Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Convention], and endeavors to enhance conditions in a manner as humane as possible consistent with security concerns.”

Prisoners are given three hot halal meals a day and can choose from as many as six menu options (regular, high fiber, vegetarian, vegetarian with fish, bland, and soft food). Their religious observance is respected and they are provided with a Koran in the language of their choice. Prisoners who didn’t like the pillow provided at Gitmo were provided another type more to their liking. Some detainees were even given money to buy snacks at a canteen. It goes on and on.

In many ways, Gitmo detainees live better than many in neighboring Cuba. It certainly sounds like they eat much better. Which again, begs the question, why is this place being shut down? Why are we going through the expense of moving?

If there is a silver lining in this nonsensical policy, let us hope that this insane pandering to the Left helps propel Republican Mark Kirk into the United States Senate. Fittingly, he would take the seat Barack Obama so recently (and for so short a duration) held.

[This post was adapted from my North Star column Gitmo… Why are we shutting this place down?]

Sen. Joe Lieberman has been under fire from the Left for his opposition to the Senate healthcare bill, at least so long as it contained a public option or a Medicare buy-in. Not content with taking Joe at his word that he has honest ideological differences with the bill, the Left has been accusing him of some pretty nasty things.

Check out my defense of the Connecticut Senator in an MSNBC debate

Also, you can read my column defending Joe at North Star: Liberal Attacks on Joe Lieberman get personal

Check out my article in The Weekly Standard on Lt. Col. (retired) Allen West's run for Congress in Florida's 22nd District.

The Second Battle of Boca Raton

Thank God Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I know what you are thinking. “What are you talking about, Jamie? Didn’t you say that it was absurd for Obama to receive it? Didn’t you call it the ‘I Hate George W. Bush’ award?”

You betcha.

But, still, thank God Obama won it. No one else could have given the speech that the America president gave in Oslo. It was a speech that needed to be given. And it is a speech that now belongs to history.

As was necessary, Obama’s acceptance speech began with the recognition that he has yet to accomplish what many of the recipients of the award had accomplished when they received the prize. Moreover, Obama recognized, he also has not suffered for freedom and peace like some of the other recipients.

He also addressed the elephant in the room by noting that he accepts the peace prize at a time he is a commander in chief at war, “responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.”

He noted “evil does exist in the world” and that “a non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies” nor can “negotiations” today “convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.”

Unlike previous Obama speeches on the world stage, there weren’t any apologies in this speech. This was not a post-American speech as some commentators have said of previous Obama orations. To the contrary, this speech was a firm defense of America on the world stage.

Littered throughout Obama’s speech were truths that many lefties, like those who awarded Obama the prize, probably didn’t like to hear.

The speech should also be a reminder to conservatives that the president needs to be evaluated more seriously than he has been to date by some. A Maoist could not have made this speech, Glenn Beck. An acolyte of Bill Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright could not have made this speech, fellow conservatives.

Let us hope that the president’s words are matched with action, like they already have been in Afghanistan.

But what we heard today deserves praise. Few could have delivered such an important speech—and certainly no one with as much authority as the American President. It was a speech befitting the leader of the free world.

[This post was adapted from my North Star column What a Speech! Obama finally speaks the truth]