“And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this,” President Obama said last night in his State of the Union Address, “if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.”

But as Politico’s Josh Gerstein points out, that means Obama is elevating the problem of small pieces of pork over the frustration of a policy–closing Guantanamo–that his administration has repeatedly termed a “national security imperative.” The President, after all, recently signed a bill with a provision designed to prevent that.

Continue reading Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare

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