Illinois to protect Americans by keeping detainees at Thomson Prison

This is great news.

Instead of keeping hundreds of prisoners on the tip of the Cuban island on a military base, the Obama Administration will move many of those detainees to an American prison on American soil where we will keep in custody many of the men who wish to do us harm.

And the State of Illinois will be able to sell a brand new prison to a willing buyer (the federal government), injecting hundreds of millions into the state budget when we are flat-out broke (due largely to our low flat-rate income tax, by the way, so the State doesn't share in the bounty when citizens have good financial years).

And the Quad Cities area will get hundreds of jobs to support hundreds of families in a matter of national security.

It's about time Illinois got some federal jobs! We're a donor state (meaning we send more to DC than we get back), and this will help Illinois (and Iowa) get a better return on our tax dollars.

Lots of Republicans (like Mark Kirk) have opposed this great move for our economy. That's too bad, because it assumes that Illinois workers are too incompetent to get the job done.

We are able to take on the toughest challenges and compete against anyone in the world. But that's not the message from Mark Kirk when it comes to protecting Americans from terrorist detainees -- instead, the message is, "we Illinoisians are just not up to the job so we should let the military do it in Cuba or maybe some other state can do it." It's ultimately a pathetic message to send and it's a little sad to hear so many Republicans say that Illinois can't measure up to the do the job because the risk is too great.

I'm glad that President Obama and Governor Pat Quinn -- and most of the Democrats, frankly, who support the move -- believe that Illinois can handle anything. Because they believe in Illinois.