Your Morning Thomson, Chicago Style

Whose fingerprints are all over the Gitmo look east to Chicago Thomson deal? Michael Sneed. (As Dennis Miller notes, the arrow to Mecca hits Chicago first)

And it is somehow not reassuring to read this morning in the Sun Times that the stepson of Emil Jones, Obama's kingmaker when he served in Springfield, is the recipient of a big Homeland Security grant. But there's more:

A consulting firm headed by former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr.’s stepson John Sterling has been paid more than $787,000 under a Cook County contract funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, despite failing to provide required weekly reports — for 21 months.

That’s the key finding of a Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 News investigation of the contract for the troubled Project Shield program, a $40 million federal initiative born of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Sterling’s company, Synch-Solutions, was hired by Cook County in March 2008 to maintain quality assurance for the program, which aims to place enough video cameras in police cars and at stationary locations throughout the county to be able to provide a web of live video to a central command in case of disaster, attack or other emergency.

I mean really, who needs this kind of thing? Homeland Security, such a snore.

You know, if we end up with a "man-caused disaster" in Crook County, it'll be worse than Katrina. At least they had the excuse of a hurricane--but then the levees failed--somehow the money to maintain them had disappeared into funding bike paths or something, maybe the odd SEIU unit. Oh yeah.

But I digress. More on Thomson. Sen. Dick Durbin once voted against moving detainees. Tribune:

The vote on July 19, 2007, was on a "sense of the Senate" resolution introduced by the Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. It said Guantanamo detainees, including senior members of al-Qaida, "should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods."

Durbin voted yes, as did 93 others -- including three who are now top Obama administration officials: Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Three senators voted no, and three, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, did not vote.

Our President Barack Obama didn't even vote present that time. Oh but that was then.

Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker said Wednesday that the senator has consistently favored closing of Guantanamo detention center. Shoemaker said the resolution was a "political trap," since virtually no one would support releasing al-Qaida members into U.S. society.

How reassuring. What do you think will be the eventual resolution of Thomson prisoners under a feckless Obama administration?

Steve Chapman thinks we are scaredy-cats. Rep. Don Manzullo who represents the district has concerns about Thomson becoming a terror magnet. Politico.

Andrew McCarthy, the prosecutor of the first WTC trial, blows apart the liberal bromides, in particular the smiley-faced idiocy of our Dem Sen. Dick Durbin: Gitmo Does Not Cause Terrorism. Doubt It? Ask the Blind Sheikh.

Have a nice day, Illinois.

P.S. Yes, this is the Obama administration's most brilliant jobs saved or created plan yet!!! So brilliant, maybe we should import terrorists...but since they refuse to say the number, maybe that's their eventual plan.

P.P.S. Gov. Quinn in the Tribune:

Illinois Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, contended that the president was using Illinois to resolve the Guantanamo issue and that Quinn had failed to be transparent in his quest to sell the prison.

But Quinn said there are a number of reasons to support the Thomson sale.

"I was in Iraq and I was in Afghanistan this summer," Quinn said. "So when the generals and the military people who know what they're talking about tell us, 'Close down the prison in Cuba called Guantanamo, it's endangering our men and women in Afghanistan,' I pay attention to them."

Hell, yeah, now even more incentive to attack Americans! At home. Welcome to Illinois. Land of Collateral Damage.

More. Byron York. Americans still hate Obama's plan to bring Gitmo prisoners to U.S.:

The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care. And that could be decisive. Gallup notes that Obama will need the approval of Congress to bring the Gitmo prisoners here. "Congressional lawmakers voting on the plan to bring terrorist suspects now housed at Guantanamo to the U.S. will generally be doing so in the context of significant opposition from their constituents," Gallup concludes, "thus potentially reducing the chances that the president will be able to get quick House and Senate approval for his proposal."