Well, maybe not so fast. A Republican leadership aide explained that the administration can announce whatever it wants “but there’s no money to buy the prison or move people here for indefinite detention. They would need to come back to Congress to get some money for all this.” Right now the obvious vehicle for doing so is the only remaining appropriations bill which is for the Department of Defense. That, however, is nearly done and is supposed to go through the House this week. According to this aide, the bottom line is that “Congress would have to have a vote if they want to be able to expend any funds moving detainees to Illinois.”

So what say you, Congress? Lawmakers have a choice. They can support the administration’s ill-conceived notion that we should dump terrorists into our U.S. prison system or they can reject the notion that we should revert to a pre-9/11 mindset—a criminal justice model—in conducting the war on terror. There is no ducking this one. Are they for or against this? We’ll find out.