Here's a unique, almost shocking, story coming out of a small farm town in Illinois:
News that the federal government seems interested in transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Thomson Correctional Center was greeted warmly in this small, rural farm town along the Iowa border. PHOTOS
After holding out hope that the sprawling $145 million prison might improve the economic conditions in this remote area of the state, residents say any prisoners would be a welcomed sight.
"It would help the businesses here, and God knows we could use that," said Kay Lawton, 59, a Thomson resident. "It doesn't matter to me who they bring here."
It's difficult to fathom how, in a time where conservatives wet their pants at the very thought of bringing terrorists onto American soil for their trial, in an age of "Not In My Backyard" mentality, these people are willing not only to see terrorists get their day in court in New York, but after their convicted, allow them to be imprisoned in their humble town. It's really a testament to their bravery and their faith in our justice system that they would even consider allowing this to happen.
Although, if you read a little further into the story, you begin to understand why they feel they way they do:
Lawton was sitting down to breakfast with her husband Dave this morning at the Sunrise Restaurant, which adjoins a motel only a few hundred yards from the prison's exterior wall. The Sunrise Restaurant, which opened this year, is like a lot of businesses that have opened in Thomson in recent years in preparation for the prison's opening, residents said. Even though the prison has been ready to house inmates since 2001, it has sat largely vacant and many of the corresponding businesses built around it have closed.
"People have come here, they've bought homes, and when the prison never opened they simply had to leave," said Rosie Rojas, a waitress at the Sunrise and a resident of nearby Fulton.
"Everybody is fighting for jobs, and it seems like that prison has the potential to bring a lot of them," Rojas said. "Of course, we've been saying that for a long time."
Ironic, isn't it? Conservatives spent eight years doing mainly two things: (1) teaching Americans to live in fear, and (2) sapping them dry of real jobs and personal wealth. And now the economy is in such a shambles that they are willing to abandon the fear they've been programmed to have just to get a decent job and put food on the table.
Yes, it takes courage to go against the grain and recognize what's important and what isn't. And I'll be damned if these people don't have more courage in their pinkies than John Boehner has in his whole body.
This is really a great story - one that makes you applaud these ordinary heroes and laugh at what an Epic Fail the Republican grand strategy has turned out to be.