I can say I saw this coming because, really, I did.
Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) now says he will block the confirmation of Eric Fanning as the next Secretary of the Army until President Obama leaves office.
“The hold will stay until we can get past this year,” the senator said. [...]
“I want to stress that it’s nothing personal,” Roberts said. “It’s just the way it is.”
Fanning is widely considered to be qualified to be the Army secretary. He has been deputy undersecretary of the Navy, undersecretary of the Air Force, acting secretary of the Air Force and chief of staff to Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
As we've been over several times before, Senator Roberts will not lift his hold on Fanning's confirmation unless the Obama administration pledges not to transfer any Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States.
More specifically, Roberts is concerned that transferring detainees to the Leavenworth maximum security in Kansas will make the state a target for a non-existent terrorist strike force that will somehow penetrate our borders in the stealth aircraft they do not possess and then covertly travel underwater and rescue detainees in a daring raid.
I wish that were an exaggeration, but it really isn't.
For Senator Roberts to say this is "just the way it is" is horsehit because the Secretary of the Army is not responsible for managing the naval base at Guantanamo Bay or the detainees held there. This is Senator Roberts holding Eric Fanning and the Obama administration responsible for the paranoid delusions in his own head.
Eric Fanning would have been the first openly-gay secretary of the Army if he was confirmed. Leavenworth has only seen two high-profile prisoner escapes in the last 100 years.