President Obama has long advocated closing the U.S. terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He likely would have done it long ago, had Congress not stopped him.
Now, however, Obama is not in the mood to abide by anything Congress says. And he is again talking about closing Guantanamo.
The result could be an ugly and protracted fight between the president and lawmakers of both parties. But it's also possible Obama will avoid a conflict and simply use his executive authority to release a prisoner here, a prisoner there, until Guantanamo is very nearly empty.
Meanwhile, as he has done with immigration, the environment and Cuba, Obama will essentially dare Congress to do anything about it. It's all part of the new executive-action presidency.
Back in 2010, when the House and Senate were still controlled by Democrats, huge bipartisan majorities opposed Obama's plan to close Guantanamo and transfer its inmates to the United States. A defense spending bill passed unanimously by the Senate in December 2010 barred the president from spending any funds to transfer inmates to the United States or to close the prison.
But Congress has not barred Obama from transferring Guantanamo inmates to other parts of the world. So far, Obama has released 96 prisoners and is preparing to free more of the remaining 132 detainees.
Of the 132 remaining inmates, there is a hard core of perhaps 40 or 50 who, because of the nature of their terrorist activity and their detentions, the United States will never charge with crimes, will never put on trial and will never release.
In a May 21, 2009, speech at the National Archives outlining detainee policy, Obama admitted that those inmates present "the toughest single issue that we will face" in trying to close Guantanamo. "These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States," the president said.
Granted, it is not a good thing there are prisoners whom the United States must keep behind bars for life without ever charging or trying them. But that is just one of the baleful effects of the war on terror. The question is, where should those prisoners be held?
Obama, the constitutional law professor, appears to believe there is some magic way to bring them into the United States, put them in the civilian justice system, and never grant them the basic constitutional rights of charge and trial. Who would be comfortable with that?
That's what bipartisan majorities of Congress have said over and over again. Nevertheless, Obama wants to act on his own. "I'm going to be doing everything I can to close (Guantanamo)," the president told CNN recently. "It is contrary to our values and it is wildly expensive."
Obama conceded "there's going to be a certain irreducible number that are going to be really hard cases, because, you know, we know they've done something wrong and they are still dangerous, but it's difficult to mount the evidence in a traditional Article Three court. You know, so we're going to have to wrestle with that."
Whatever the president does, he can't change the fact that Guantanamo is the best answer to a very difficult problem.
Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.