President Barack Obama's allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison next January, a top Democratic official said Tuesday.

With debate looming on Obama's spending request to cover military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official says Democrats will deny the Pentagon and Justice Department $80 million to relocate Guantanamo's 240 detainees.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposed changes to the bill were to be unveiled later.

The administration has yet to develop a plan for what to do with the detainees, and Obama's promise to close the facility is facing strong GOP opposition.

Everyday this prison stays open it is a black stain on our national ideals that grows larger.  Gitmo is where US personnel committed torture/war crimes.  Period.  It is a place that symbolizes all of the secrecy, the crimes and the ill will towards Americans that took place under the Bush administration.  It must be closed.

Hermann Goering, the top surviving nazi captured by the allies, was given a fair trial with due process.  At this trial he freely admitted organizing the concentration camps immediately after the nazis took over in 1933.  We gave a monster like Goering a fair trial.  If we could gather evidence, without torture, and give Goering all of the rights a defendant should receive what is the justification for not doing so for the detainees in Gitmo.  Instead we tortured and locked them away, never charged with any crime. 

Gitmo symbolizes all of the failings our country endured under Bush.  Why the Democrats are waffling on this issue is beyond me.  My only guess is they are perpetually stuck in the mind frame that it is 2002 and anyone speaking ill of the conservative's warp view of the world will be branded a traitor.  So much has obviously changed since then, put they refuse to behave any different.  They completely fail to grasp that every day Gitmo is open our freedom is cheapened.