The Military Commissions Act does, though. That law may very well itself be unconstitutional--provisions of it have been shot down by the Court as laid out above. There's nothing preventing Congress from passing and the President from signing laws that are blatantly unconstitutional. It's the job of the judiciary to elevate cases that test those laws to the SCOTUS for review.

this is an all too common fallacy that needs to be put to bed once and for all. The constitution does not grant rights. It protects the rights of individuals by placing limitations and restrictions on the powers of the government. That means that even non-americans have rights in this country.

I haven't watched the news today....what has been the GOP response to Obama's detainee plan? I'd think they'd be conflicted between supporting him (because they agree with the plan) and blasting him for flip-flopping on a campaign promise...

I'm not sure I'd agree with that as a general statement, but it's certainly true as regards habeas corpus.

To be more specific in this case... USC Section 9 Clause 2 reads: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." That's the only place habeas corpus is mentioned in the Constitution.

Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. It was also suspended very specifically for Americans of Japanese descent during World War II (and only restored in the early '90s, adding long-standing insult to injury).

The implication (and certainly the interpretation that the Court has held) is that habeas corpus is a privilege given all people subject to US law, whether or not they're citizens.

FOR THE RECORD: It's dangerous to wander into an area where I've done my research! :thumbsup:

specifically, what don't you agree with?

which means that only congress has any power to suspend it, however, in the case of the gitmo detainees, or any detainee, they didn't invade or rebel, hence, habeus corpus should not even come in to play.

and after Lincoln suspended it, the supreme court ruled against him, however, congress capitulated later and authorized him to suspend it. semantics, but technically correct.

It could only be implied that way if one is to assume that the only rights a person has are ones directly written about in the constitution. This is not so and all of the documents relating to the ratification of the constitution bear this out.

and so it is with me

A conservative radio host gets waterboarded and says it's without a doubt torture. What's going on in this video is nothing compared to what goes on in gitmo type places I'm willing to bet. I still find it hard to believe many refer to this as 'enhanced interrogations'.

:shakehead:

It's okay--he's the Messiah, and therefore can do no wrong.


It isn't. We could win in Iraq. We can't in Afghanistan, but Obama is too stupid to know that.


Yes, the differences are stunning. "Prolonged detention" is what the left has been claiming about GITMO all along. That laughter is sounding just a wee bit shrill these days.



Want a link?


You mean BILL Gates? Apparently, Bush's military background prevented him from mistaking his SECDEF for the head of Microsoft.

Wait, the liberals have finally discovered that, after holding their hands over their ears for almost 8 years?



So waterboarding THREE people (and preventing another WTC in Los Angeles by doing so) is horrible, but locking up people indefinitely on the basis of what they MIGHT do is perfectly acceptable? You DO know that every US Navy SEAL has been waterboarded, right? I'm not sure, but it might be required of every US Navy pilot, too. Are you also aware that Obama left himself a loophole to do it as well?

:shakehead: indeed.

Seriously, no one says this. Shut up already. The joke was old in November

This is not a good thing.

It must be interesting inside your head, Marv, inventing all these windmills to tilt against... Nobody can even agree with you without getting an argument from you!

Really? Why should I for any reason believe that waterboarding prevented a los angeles WTC? The lies and misinformation from the past administration are endless.

Also, I don't care if Obama thinks left a loophole or not I still think it's wrong and we shouldn't be doing it. Don't you understand false confessions? Waterboarding is a way for the 'war on terror' to chalk a point up for the good guys. How many dozens or hundreds of times being waterboarded while being in prison for years would it take for you to admit to just about anything?

Waterboarding is just a method to pull false information out of people to make it look like the war on terror is justifiable.

Don't you get it yet?

let's say that the chomsky piece i posted yesterday (which may end up being too long to generate a discussion, but we'll see) is accurate. the united states is a kind of empire, but one that runs via direct economic domination and consistent physical coercion (though not constant, one would assume) all in a context built around superficial freedom--so countries are formally independent even as their economies remain organized on either old-school colonial grounds, or on the new-and-improved neo-colonial model we quaintly refer to as "globalization."

patterns of systemic violence extend back to the earliest phases of the history of the united states---the treatments meted out to native americans & the slave trade are examples of explicit violence; routinized violence operates through the class order; the various mythologies of the united states (city on a hill, an Exception blah blah blah) take shape at roughly the same time and are instituted as aspects of the post-revolutionary war origin mythology which sets up a sense of autonomous nation-ness.

the imperial dimension is usually extended back to the spanish-american war, and the development of american empire extends across the twentieth century, but takes explicit institutional shape after world war 2. the accompanying nationalist hallucination fares variously well in the post-war period; close to being dismantled by the vietnam period; triaged by the reaction against that period spearheaded by the reagan period.

across all of this, the american empire has been held together by registers of violence; internally this violence is dissipated into the collective stupor of nationalism, which folk protect with varying degrees of energy, which enables an avoidance of the not just the characteristics of the underlying socio-economic configuration but of that configuration itself. so it follows that people still imagine nation-states to be operative centers of meaningful power in areas that are not about coercion. it's quaint.

what the bush people's astonishing incompetence managed was to exposure aspects of the way in which this system was operated since world war 2, in part because the logic that shaped it was coming unravelled and the neo-con gambit was to attempt a new triage by imposing the united states as global military hegemon and so to shape what they called the post cold-war world around political continuity (nation-states uber alles) and systemic continuities (the role of the military hegemon would be to enforce it's vision of the world by force and/or by threat of force)---of course they fucked everything up (of course not because it was inevitable, but of course because, well, they did)...witness iraq, the Great Gambit itself.

in the process of fucking up, the bush people managed to expose elements of the normal operating procedures of the american imperial system itself--and to create the illusion (the traction of which i cannot figure out--i mean it's not like the history of the american system is secret--maybe folk really do know so little about it that they're willing to believe most anyting that explains what becomes visible in factoid form of the characteristics of the system they prefer to pretend doesn't exist) that the bush people invented this stuff. so the practices AND the bush people's framing of them were collapsed into each other--and in the last campaign, obama was able to run against both as if they were the same--and it worked.

because of the relative publicness of the bush people's fuck ups, obama was able to frame himself as moving against the bush people AND the practices that they extended/distorted/continued. now all we're seeing is a series of indications of the boundaries that in fact obtain between the bush people's distortions and the continuities of imperial practice that preceded them.

what's good about the obama administration's encounter with these boundaries is that it's public--people can see it.

what's not so good is that there's no coherent acknowledgement of what is in fact the case--so the process is getting misframed--this thread reflects nothing beyond the right's perverse attempt to seek vindication of the bush administration and by extension of it's own ideological framework by misrepresenting EVERYTHING about what's happening. it's a scary world so violence is necessary so we can continue buying shit and living our oblivious lives blah blah blah.

this seems to me yet another consequence of the simple fact that the obama administration is ideologically quite moderate and of its correlate which is that moderate politics provides and can provide almost nothing in the way of system-level critique simply because apology for the system itself is central to their ideology. another way: the obama administration's central committment is the maintenance of the existing situation---that maintaining it requires changing it in significant ways follows from te conjuncture it finds itself in historically--but the logic of the administration is primarily maintenance. it remains to be seen how far they can go with this before maintenance itself becomes dysfunctional and its modalities force upon the administration something more radical.

but we aren't there yet. we're nowhere near it.

i think everything about the way this process is understood in the popular ideological machinery is fundamentally wrong. this is mostly about preserving the prerogative to not see reality by substituting for it pseudo-realities that can generate pseudo-debates which provide the illusion of motion but which in fact accomplish nothing, get nowhere. treading water while jockeying for tactical advantage in a strategic context shaped by the erasure of the actually existing world.

this is how empires collapse.
enjoy the ride.

Rachel Maddow sure seems confused. If she really believes what she says, shouldn't she call for Mr. Obama's impeachment? Can such lawlessness in the White House be tolerated while the Republic stands?

You may not remember, but liberals gave Bush a chance to change his mind. Impeachment calls really didn't start until 2003. That's a whole year of "letting it slide".

I would be VERY interested to know what Bill Gates III knows about international cyber-warfare...

May 24, 2009
U.S. Relies More on Aid of Allies in Terror Cases
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.

The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.
--------
The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under Mr. Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons.

Human rights advocates say that relying on foreign governments to hold and question terrorist suspects could carry significant risks. It could increase the potential for abuse at the hands of foreign interrogators and could also yield bad intelligence, they say.

..........................................................................................................

This is a very complicated matter that I've probably misunderstood. Should I hold my breath and wait for the movie? Michael Moore as writer and director, with Jamie Foxx as the power-mad (but articulate) U.S. President who tramples the Constitution in pursuit of mythical enemies and personal power. Should production begin today, the opening could coincidentally be just in time for the 2010 elections.

once again, the conservative world-inversion assumes that its audience knows almost nothing about history and is therefore willing to buy into whatever self-serving line of shit they're fed.

this is damage control. the bush administration did not invent the use of proxies to "gather intelligence" using "aggressive techniques" that are entirely illegal---this has been happening for at least 60 years: it was a mainstay of the cold war period. it is part of how the american empire has operated.

ignorance--you just can't teach it. you either have it or you don't. it's an inner virtue.

Exactly. And I predicted it! I knew I had it all wrong. That is why it is best that I wait for the movie.

..

Question to Conservatives: If Obama appears to be doing what you've wanted done, why all the sour grapes? Seems to me you should be supporting him. If not, why not?

Charlatan, this is a fair question. The topic is "Bush got a third term." I am not being critical of President Obama in these matters. I am only pointing to the Bush policies that the current president has embraced.

I support President Obama's wise decision to adopt the "fascist" policies of the Bush Administration. These policies will not result in me calling President Obama a "war criminal." I will not call for him to be disemboweled or even "impeached." President Obama's brilliance is actually underlined by his decision to continue many security policies developed by President Bush.

how quaint---so you not only claim vindication from obama's continuation of some bush policies, but also try for some imaginary moral superiority because you imagine yourself to make these claims with a greater degree of decorum than your imaginary political adversaries.

to fill you in on a couple things: typically, i was pretty careful about the way in which i used the term fascism---more often fascism-lite---with relation to the bush administration. to have understood the points of contact you'd have to know something about how fascism worked ideologically (the unified nation fulfilling its world-historical destiny--which is a militarized destiny---through War with an Enemy that is everywhere and nowhere blah blah blah) and legally (the legal arguments that the bush people were so fond of repeated the fascist critique of democracy in the name of dictatorship---the Leader was a Decider; a state of emergency required Decisions; democracy is too slow, too abstract; so states of emergency (national security) can become the Justification for an evacuation of democratic process--this *was* the bush administration's legal philosophy in a nutshell. it's the case whether you like it or not).

now obama may be continuing some of the "national security" theater put into place by the bush people but it's also the case that the ideological frame within which we are operating in no way resembles that of the bush period, and the legal philosophy being advanced by the obama administration bears no resemblance to that of the bush period---so if there's no linking of obama to a fascism-lite, it's not because conservatives have some Higher Decorum---it's because the empirical co-ordinates aren't present.

what the right is also trying to do here is empty meanings from the associations of fascism-lite and the bush administration.

i think paul krugman is right in his editorial this morning about the cali-crisis: the limbaugh republicans have gone insane from lack of power, from the situation they created for themselves...they've alienated moderates, lost them in great number and have scuttled to the extreme right. from there, unable to separate accelerating the sinking of their ship from stabilizing it, they dream the world is other than it is.

Yikes! President Obama sells ambassadorships, like other presidents, or Another example of Hopeandchange:

Obama Offers Prime Posts to Top Campaign Contributors (Update1)

By Jonathan D. Salant and Julianna Goldman

May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Louis Susman has one thing in common with many of his predecessors nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom: money.

Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup Inc. senior investment banker, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and another $300,000 for his inauguration. On Wednesday, Obama nominated Susman to the post formally known as the Court of St. James.

Like Andrew Mellon, Joseph Kennedy and Walter Annenberg before him, Susman’s credentials stem more from involvement in financing party politics than foreign policy experience.

Even with his pledges to change government, Obama is following the tradition of his predecessors by offering some ambassadorships to top campaign backers, including four of the 12 nominations this week. The president acknowledged in a news conference in January that donors might get plum postings.

“The practice of rewarding donors is a remnant of the spoils system that we abolished in the civil service,” said career diplomat Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former ambassador to Afghanistan. “It is a dismal testimony to the importance of money in our electoral system.”

“That said, the republic will survive the president selling a few embassies.”

Reagan Appointment

Susman is a former vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup. He was finance chairman for John Kerry’s 2004 Democratic presidential campaign and raised money for the presidential runs of Senators Edward Kennedy and Bill Bradley.

Besides Susman, those nominated on May 27 include:

-- John Roos, chief executive officer of the Palo Alto, California-based law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, to Japan. He raised more than $500,000 for Obama.

-- Charles Rivkin, chief executive officer of Wildbrain Inc., to France. Rivkin collected more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and $300,000 for his inauguration.

-- Laurie Fulton, a partner with Williams & Connolly LLP, to Denmark. Fulton, 59, raised $100,000 to $200,000.

Susman said he was “excited by the opportunity to serve our country.” A call to Fulton was referred to the White House. Roos, 54, and Rivkin, 47, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Rewarding Rooney

Two other nominees -- Vilma Martinez, 65, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in California, to Argentina, and Miguel Diaz, 46, a theology professor at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, to the Vatican -- gave to Obama.

Diaz, who earned his doctorate in theology from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, contributed $1,000 to Obama’s campaign last year. Fluent in Spanish and Italian, he was also a member of the Obama campaign’s Catholic advisory board.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Obama named Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, as ambassador to Ireland. Rooney, 76, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year.

“The system, despite any desires, is not basically going to change in this administration or any other,” said former ambassador Mort Abramowitz, who spent more than 30 years in the State Department.

On Jan. 9, when Obama conceded he wouldn’t abandon the practice, he said, “It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some excellent public servants but who haven’t come through the ranks of the civil service.”

‘Committed Individuals’

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, called the nominees “a group of committed individuals and proven professionals that are eager to serve their country.”

Since John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, about one- third of ambassadorships have gone to campaign donors or other politically connected individuals, according to the American Academy of Diplomacy.

“It’s very prestigious being the ambassador and living in a large residence,” said John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association.

Wealthy ambassadors have paid to help refurbish their residences abroad or to throw parties. Annenberg, U.S. ambassador under President Richard Nixon, spent almost $1 million renovating his quarters, according to the New York Times.

Between January 2001 and January 2007, President George W. Bush named 124 people to foreign posts. Fifty-three had raised at least $100,000 for his presidential campaigns, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Ameriquest

One was Roland Arnall, the founder of Ameriquest Mortgage Co., a subprime lender, who served as ambassador to the Netherlands. Ameriquest and its subsidiaries gave $1 million to Bush’s 2005 inaugural committee.

Former President Bill Clinton named M. Larry Lawrence, owner of the landmark Hotel del Coronado near San Diego and a campaign donor, as ambassador to Switzerland. Lawrence’s body was later exhumed from Arlington National Cemetery amid allegations that his claims of Merchant Marine service were fraudulent.

Some career diplomats are trying to change the practice. Neumann and Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador, wrote letters to both major presidential nominees last year asking them to limit political appointees to 10 percent of ambassadorships.

“Too often ambassadorships have served as political rewards for unqualified candidates,” they wrote.

Some Obama appointments have drawn praise. Abramowitz cited former U.S. Representative Tim Roemer of Indiana as ambassador to India and Jon Huntsman, the Republican governor of Utah, as ambassador to China. “It’s largely better than previous administrations,” he said.

Abramowitz said there will always be appointments that are naturally suited toward non-career officials.

“People aren’t going to worry about who goes to Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.

No sour grapes, I just call them like I see them. Obama has no conviction. I think that is the worst possible trait one can have has a leader. I disagree with Hilery Clinton on most major issues, but I respect her for saying what she believes and being consistent with that. And as I have stated previously I would have voter for her before voting for McCain, because I see McCain as a person who lacks conviction as well.


Ever notice when Obama speaks he alsway takes both sides of an issue and that he creates straw man arguments that he easily defeats. For example - he is for holding teachers accountable and against doing anything to make teachers accountable, and he is against the false argument that you can improve the schools by firing good teachers.

I often get a headache trying to figure out his actual position on important issues. For example what is his position on gays in the military? Do you know? Can you explain it?

i thought that maybe the conservatives whose restatements of the self-evident come packaged with images of various modes of Flaying the Strawman might enjoy reading the same kind of arguments from the opposite political position:

Z Magazine - Obama's Violin

the difference of course is that the conservative arguments really have no point to them, beyond being something to put into the Flaying the Strawman packaging.

enjoy.

Ah! Conviction! The sort that W displayed, I guess?

One man's conviction is another man's near-religious blindness to alternatives, others' opinions, and those con-sarned facts. Conviction is what leads to waterboarding people in a quest to fabricate evidence tying Iraq to Al Qaida. I could do with a LOT less of that sort of "conviction".

Also: really? Gays in the military? I'd honestly be surprised if Obama had said anything about the "issue" at all. It's not 1992 anymore, chief. Obama's opinion on the proper springiness of buggy whips might be hard to track down too.

One difference is when I, a conservative but not representative of all conservatives, makes a pointless argument, I will admit it. When I am playing political games, I will admit it. When I make a straw man argument to try to make the opposition look silly, I will acknowledge it if called on it. Obama and his kind do not. Obama and his kind are against "the blame game politics of the past" but he clearly lets us know that he inherited the worst economy in the history of man kind, two wars, potential extinction of polar bears due to global warming, the US not respected by any country in the known universe, and a Republican Party that is simply saying no everytime he wants to spend a trillion or so out of the petty cash fund. Oh, and they said some not so nice things about his SCOTUS nominee.


P.S. - the thing about polar bears, I just made that on up. I have not heard Obama say polar bears are going extinct as an inherited problem

you might read the article, ace, rather than simply bite what's around it. you might even find it interesting.

there are reasons beyond brand triage to be critical of aspects of what obama's been doing.

if you want to look at other things, necessary and potentially good ones, you might consider the indications that the bush non-policy toward israel is out the window.

I loved his clarity.

I still find it laughable that liberals did not know Bush was going to invade Iraq when he said he wanted the authority to do so and said Saddam was a threat. And then when he ran on "stay the course" they were surprised that he stayed the course. Or, when he said he would do "everything" in his power to prevent another attack on our shores - but the liberals, especially those in Congress with the responsibility to keep the executive branch in check, were suprised by wire taps, interrogations, Gitmo, etc.

Don't you think he should? Wasn't that an important issue regarding our ability to retain some highly qualified people in the military while Bush was in office. Wasn't military preparedness, our military being over extended, recruitment a major issue during the campaign, and you say Obama has not said anything on the subject. Great leadership, right?

---------- Post added at 09:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 PM ----------

Here is a quote from the article you cited:

The suggestion that some on the left actual get the fact that Obama is political is fair, but some were saying that from the time he ran for the Senate in Illinois. I guess I am not impressed by old news.

Also, the above is a sad commentary on those who believe that comment above. I do not. I think one should be true to their convictions, which has been my point about the problem I have with Obama since I have been commenting on him.

Any speech in which President Obama announces a change in policy follows the same basic format of denouncing Bush’s policy, taking long thoughtful pauses, then adopting Bush’s policy.

Well known conservative Rachel Maddow said Mr. Obama claimed even more dictatorial power for himself than did President Bush, or any president in history for that matter.

Meanwhile, Published today, elsewhere:

For the last eight years, a sort of parlor game has been played listing the various ways the Bush anti-terror policies supposedly destroyed the Constitution. Liberal opponents — prominent among them Sen. Barack Obama — railed against elements of the Patriot Act, military tribunals, rendition, wiretaps, email intercepts, and Predator drone attacks. These supposedly unnecessary measures, plus Bush’s policies in postwar Iraq, were said to be proof, on Bush’s part, of either paranoia or blatantly partisan efforts to scare us into supporting his unconstitutional agenda.

Now, thanks to President Obama, the verdict is in: All of the Bush protocols turned out to reflect a bipartisan national consensus that has kept us safe from another 9/11-style attack.
How do we know that? Because President Obama — despite earlier opposition and current name changes and nuancing — has kept intact the entire Bush anti-terrorism program.

Barack Obama has decided to fight the release of the 17 Chinese Uighers at Guantanamo Bay into the US, Jake Tapper reports — and he’s choosing an interesting argument to use. While Obama has wasted no opportunity to paint Gitmo as a stain on the nation’s reputation and all but the gulag Dick Durbin called it a few years ago, the administration paints quite a different picture of it in court:

The Obama administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to reject a request for a hearing from 17 Chinese Muslims currently being held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, arguing they have no right to come to America despite a district judge’s orders last Fall that they immediately be brought to the U.S. and released.

“Petitioners are free to return to their home country, but they understandably do not wish to do so, because they fear inhumane treatment there,” reads the filing, signed by US Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, and other Justice Department officials. “Petitioners are also free to go to any other country that is willing to accept them.”

Many European countries are waiting for the US to accept the Uighurs before they agree to accept any more detainees from Guantanamo, but there is strong resistance from Congress, which recently voted to keep any detainees out of the US — even out of US prisons.

But not to worry — the Obama administration says the Uighurs’ detention isn’t so bad, considering.

“In contrast to individuals currently detained as enemies under the laws of war, petitioners are being housed under relatively unrestrictive conditions, given the status of Guantanamo Bay as a United States military base,” Kagan writes, saying they are “in special communal housing with access to all areas of their camp, including an outdoor recreation space and picnic area.” They “sleep in an air-conditioned bunk house and have the use of an activity room equipped with various recreational items, including a television with VCR and DVD players, a stereo system, and sports equipment.”

In fact, the conditions at the rest of the facility also are pretty decent, compared to conditions in max-security prisons elsewhere in the US. The military runs a tight ship at Gitmo, but the prisoners have a standard of living that — apart from their detention — exceeds anything available to them in their home countries, free or not. They certainly don’t want to be there any more than the Uighers, but as the administration admits in this filing, they’re being detained under the “laws of war.”

Presumably, they would have to be detained under the “laws of war” regardless of where we house them. So why close Gitmo at all?

Also, Obama’s new friends in Europe have to be a little nonplussed at this filing. He just got done twisting arms on his first trip to the EU to get our allies to take some of the Gitmo detainees. Supposedly, the Uighers are the best of the lot, with no particular animus towards anyone but China, at least according to the administration. If so, why did Obama go to court to block them from entering the US? Europeans may not have been so charmed by Obama as to miss that glaring hypocrisy.

It seems that the more Obama looks at Gitmo and the military tribunal system, the better he likes both. Maybe by this summer, Obama will finally admit out loud that George W. Bush had it right all along.

Obama still fighting release of classified surveillance document:
 

The Obama administration continues to defy the judge in the lawsuit over warrantless electronic surveillance in the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation case, refusing this weekend to release a top-secret document and continuing a Bush administration claim of “state secrets” in the case. The judge has ordered the lawyers to court to explain why he shouldn’t just issue a summary judgment on behalf of the plaintiffs, which the Department of Justice opposes:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration insists it has no obligation to provide access to a top secret document in a wiretapping case, setting up a showdown next week with the judge who ordered it released.

Justice Department lawyers, in a response Friday with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, also argued that Judge Vaughn Walker had no cause to penalize the government over its refusal to turn over the document.

Walker on May 22 threatened to punish the administration for withholding the document, which he ordered given to lawyers suing the government over its warrantless wiretapping program.

The judge has ordered department lawyers to appear before his court Wednesday to make the case why he should not award damages to the now-defunct Oregon chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. That group is challenging the wiretapping program.

In its response, the department said that in this case "disclosure of classified information—even under protective order—would create intolerable risks to national security."

The filing said President Barack Obama has authorized access to classified information on a "need-to-know" basis and argued that the government "cannot be sanctioned for its determination that plaintiffs do not have a need to know classified information."

The Al-Haramain case has been a focal point for civil liberties groups questioning the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program, and has become one of several instances where the current administration has taken its cue from the Bush administration in citing national security as justification for keeping secrets.

Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a review of all state secrets used by the Bush administration to protect anti-terrorism programs from lawsuits. But the Obama administration is also fighting the court-ordered release of prisoner-abuse photos and is reviving, in a revised form, military tribunals where suspected terrorists have limited access to information.

The Bush administration inadvertently turned over the top secret document to Al-Haramain lawyers, who claimed it proved illegal wiretapping by the National Security Agency.

The document was returned to the government, and the lawyers have argued they need the document back to prove their case.

The Treasury Department in 2004 designated the charity as an organization that supports terrorism.

Not that I agree with Obama's policies RE: Gitmo, et al, but I would hope that the above posts get the same derisive responses that were normally reserved for Host.

Just more smoke and mirrors.

of course you don't agree with the assessment in the article i posted, ace. to agree with it would be to position obama as what he always really was: a centrist. conservative mythology requires that he be some Radical--it doesn't matter that the idea is patently absurd--if he wasn't framed as some Radical than this, even more ridiculous line of conservative argument wouldn't have been able to get started.

but this is no longer a debate thread: it's a conservative circle-jerk. there are many many many more interesting things in the world than the right's sad attempts to salvage itself, and the silly arguments that it throws around in a desperate attempt to locate Traction.

Nobody can say they didn't see it coming -- or they didn't have the imagination to see it coming. Apart from being a politician, Barama-san was an unknown quantity from Day One. Oh, we knew he was smart and cunning, but apart from that, nobody knew squat. Nobody knew squat because there was nothing to know; the man never ran anything. People were howling in the streets not to put an inexperienced senator with zero governing experience in the White House in charge of America at such a sensitive time. Barama had 2 things going for him that proved irresistible to the faithful: George W. Bush and Charisma. It's been scientifically proven that babies are more attracted to so-called "beautiful" faces (beauty, which in this case also scientifically explained by such characteristics as bone structure, symmetry, facial expression), and such was the spellbinding powers El Barama commandeered.

I never had a problem with the Patriot Act, wiretapping, the privilege of state secrets, the revival of the Bush Administration Military Commission, enhanced interrogation so it makes no difference to me. I think Barama is doing the right things to maintain the security of the country, and I especially like that its an articulate, intellectual liberal doing it this time around. Because if an articulate intellectual liberal says these things must be upheld, then its somehow more legit.

My first reaction to the above was that, Obama is not a centrist. I believed Obama is one of the most left leaning politicians in Washington. However, upon reflection I thought he is left but that his quest for power trumps his being a "leftist" and that his quest for power has made him a "centrist", suggesting that I actually agree with the article. So, I think my real problem is that with Obama what we are dealing with is a person with a hidden agenda combined with the intellect and patience to carry out his agenda. And at the end of the day, just like many "revolutionary" leaders of third world countries we are probably dealing with an individual who is really only interested in power and is using the "left" agenda when needed, a "centrist" agenda when needed and a "right" agenda when needed. Perhaps I was wrong when I said he has no conviction, perhaps is only quest is a quest for power.

Your article actually had an impact.

From a Canadian perspective, it seems to me that Obama has a hell of a lot more leaning to do before he moves beyond centrist.

Obama continues (more of) Bush war policy
 

Yesterday the Obama administration won a stay from the judge who ordered the Department of Justice to grant habeas corpus to suspected terrorists held at Bagram in Afghanistan:

To the chagrin of many on the left, Obama had essentially adopted the Bush administration’s position that prisoners at Bagram could not bring challenges in U.S. courts. On April 2, Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, rejected the Bush-Obama stance, ruling that three prisoners flown into Bagram from other countries could pursue so-called habeas corpus cases seeking release.
However, Bates agreed Monday to allow the government to appeal his ruling immediately and to put the original ruling on hold while the appeal proceeds.
“These cases present extraordinary circumstances,” Bates wrote. “Although this Court believes that its conclusions are correct, given the novelty of the issues courts could reasonably differ.”

(W.H. gets breathing room on detainees - Josh Gerstein - POLITICO.com)

Kudos to the Obama administration for sticking to the George Bush ("war criminal") position on this issue. Realize, of course, that President Obama does it with thoughtfulness and finesse.

gee, i would have expected some decontextualized and abused version of obama's speech this morning in cairo to follow on the series of nonsensical posts that have clogged up this thread of late full of specious "evidence" that somehow the bushworld hysteria and policies it leaned on are legitimated by obama's choices. but maybe this speech is such an obvious and wholesale break with the "logic" of bushworld that not even the right media apparatus can chew it finely enough to turn it upside down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/wo...ef=global-home

have a look.

The Guardian had a link to the entire speech earlier today,
but now they don't seem to.
I found it here.

Barack Obama speech: the full transcript - Telegraph


oh..and is it okay for me to say ditto, to the post above?

..

I'm not at all surprised that this thread shut right down in the last couple days. Hard to talk crap about "more of the same" when all the cable news stations are parading your country's 180, even those who are arguing we shouldn't be doing that.

I see far more pussy being wantonly exposed by American conservatives in the last six weeks than I can ever recall in my lifetime. It has reached truly pornographic proportions.

Only idiots equate hubris with strength.

Obama's speech was eloquent and generous and I loved it. But I have been moved by his speeches before. My eye is still on his actions. I want to know what he is going to do about our conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

Yes, because more of the same and stayin' the course has worked so well.

My god. What, was he suppose to go over there and start another war?

Maybe he should have alienated the Muslim world even more. Because, you know, any one of them could be a terrorist. :rolleyes:

If you want to note the tectonic shift in foreign policy here, just go to the full text of the speech and search for the string "terror". You won't find it.

Never mind.

Following the practice of The Dumbest Evil Genius in the History of Fascism, The Most Transparent Administration Evah (Hopenchange) won't release WH visitor log:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.
Obama blocks access to White House visitor list - White House- msnbc.com

I can't read through this whole thread, it would take hours, but I have read a page or two, and I guess my 2 cents about the original question/comment is this:

1- Yes, Obama probibly walked into the White House thinking, based on a pre-presidential, non-POTUS security clearance essentially that limited what he knew about the true nature of the situation in Gitmo, the brutal TRUTH that if we walked away from Iraq right now, in 6 months to a year the country would be the epicenter of a kind of rogue nation that would make North Korea look like a Sunday school-girl. The ember of hatred has been stoked in extremists of our way of life, (in their reality an unholy, god-less bunch of heathens are we, an opinion stoked by their belief in a twisted, ugly version (in OUR eyes anyway)of a otherwise legitimate world religion . (not to start a religious debate, please, lol.) I think the conservatives jump way too quickly and way too loudly shouting a chant that the country has grown tired of, distrust, suspicion, condemnation. Their chosen view of the collective reality is legitimate in their eyes to just the same extent as liberals shout their chants of whatever it is their chanting that week, the political flavor of the month so to speak. I think personally, that I believe that Obama is at least as smart as me. Maybe smarter. And therefore, I also believe that he can take stock of the reality of the political promises that were the ONLY WAY HE WOULD EVER GET ELECTED (by running exactly as he did and everything that entailed, the good/bad/ugly). Otherwise it would be McCain and Palin, which, I mean... COME ON. Palin is a joke, and anyone who could take her seriously, who believe she would be a good choice to help run the country, is... well... dumber than her. Obama can ride the wave he's on, he has the Political capital so to speak, so yeah he's got it to spend on the realities of the world that those who voted for him might not believe in. And I trust him to be smart enough, to be a stable enough human being that looking at all the challenges facing this country and the world, he'll do what he thinks is right. Not that he'll do exactly what I think he should do. Because I don't know what he knows, no one does, and all the FOX/CNN etc etc etc media watchers who think the media has the whole story about, well, ANYTHING besides Lindey Lohan's relationships, or Britney Spears meltdown is just blissfully ignorant. Media=Entertainment, based loosely on real life. To allow the world to be reduced to what you can read on Page 1-10 of the newspaper is living in a minuaturized version of the world. Why do you think no one cares about the war anymore? No coverage. Old news. So the media for the most part, moves on. Because they have to. Because the world is bigger, and offers more than they could ever use, and also they need the money to operate, to compete for viewer, to be ENTERTAINING- from advertisers. It's delivery is almost a collectively driven entertainment on demand, lazily playing over the world with a narrow-minded, keyhole, snapshot, simplistic microscope like a slow motion snowboarder doing S-curves down a huge mountainside.

I digress.

2- Give it some time. I agree with a much earlier post saying it will be 2012 before things will start to truly bear fruit. Give it some time. Can't change the world overnight, and I think he realizes the reality of that fact now more than ever, not less.

". . . the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."
 

Sorry, Kids, but The One has endorsed yet another Bush ("Fascist") policy.

More Hopenchange from Newsweek:

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

Obama: Not Keeping Promise of Transparency | Newsweek Politics | Newsweek.com

disappointing for sure

Meanwhile, Back at the New York Times...
 

Even NYT starting to point out Obama’s shameless broken campaign promises:

June 22, 2009

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable…

Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two…

“There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to making government more transparent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/us.../22pledge.html

that sounds suspiciously like Clintons '5 year plan'.

Have some hope, Obama will Keep the change.
 

Obama has essentially endorsed the detention policies of George Bush without the courtesy of apologizing for slandering him over the last two and a half years. Obama and his allies screeched endlessly about indefinite detentions, and not just in Gitmo, either. They specifically railed against the holding of terrorists without access to civil courts in military detention facilities around the world, specifically Bagram, but in general as well. Not even six months into his term of office, Obama realized that Bush had it right all along.

Did he even have the grace to admit that? No. Instead, the White House took the cowardly method of a late-Friday leak to let people know that Obama had adopted the Bush policy all over again.

I guess Obama has finally conceded to Dick Cheney on national security.

Washington Post
White House Weighs Order on Detention
Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely

By Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn
ProPublica and Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 27, 2009

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
. . . . .

White House Considers Executive Order on Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects

i don't think anything about obama's actions on detainees can be twisted into an endorsement of cowboy george's actions.
but what you are showing is that adequately truncated infotainment can be made to appear to lead almost anywhere, say almost anything.
which i would have thought self-evident.
like demonstrating that this is a sentence. you know, in that kinda way.

When one is confronted with a legacy of dozens of detainees who cannot be tried because of the illegal manner in which "evidence" was obtained....one is left with few options.

The Bush policy of torture ("enhanced interrogation")? A blight that has been eliminated...as have the policies of CIA black prisons and extraordinary rendition to nations that torture their own citizens.

In a perfect world, IMO, the separation between Bush and Obama policies would be even greater...but you play the cards you're dealt.

I wish I had a nickel for every time a liberal has shrieked "You shut up!" when his position was contradicted by facts. I could retire the $12 trillion Obama has loaned, borrowed, spent, or pledged to Hamas.

God, I've missed the clean debate of TFP, unsullied by personal attacks.

The more facts Aladdin Sane posts, the easier it is to hear crickets chirping over the dead silence where responses would be, if they were possible.

No, Derwood's right*. The joke's old and no one believes that.

*- this post never happened.

The moderators are really committed to keeping the forums polite these days. It says so in that bulletin message.

Putting aside the nonsensical comment about Hamas, in addition to ending the Bush policies of enhanced interrogation, black prisons and extraordinary rendition (to countries who torture) with one of his first EOs, the current DoJ is preparing guidelines to oveturn the Bush policy whereby detainees tried by military commissions in the U.S. would now be able to claim at least some constitutional rights, particularly protection against the use of statements taken through coercive interrogations.

Another national security related fact for you, Marv - the Obama administration is killing the Bush administration program to expand the use of spy satellites by domestic law enforcement agenices.

Marv, which of these facts dont your understand?

The funny thing is, if this thread were about a sitting republican president who had gone back on his campaign promises it would be full of faux-conservatives making excuses for their commander in chief and questioning the patriotism of the heathen liberals who dared question their fearless leader.

See: nearly every thread in politics during the Bush II years.

I mean shit: Some folks still can't admit that the "Mission Accomplished" photo op was a bad idea. Or that the government's response to Katrina was incompetent. Or that the war in Iraq was a horrible idea.

Over the previous 8 years I had gotten used to the mindless sycophantism, and in some respects it still exists with some Obama supporters. On the other hand, I think the silence in this thread is refreshing, because I know people who are disappointed that Obama doesn't seem to be coming through and I'm glad to see that the idea that we need to defend our president when we disagree with him is currently not in style.

I think you and aladdin just need hugs: you clearly have so much emotionally invested in proving Obama supporters wrong. To me it just seems like such a ridiculous stand to make. Seriously, are you trying to imply that Obama supporters would have been happier and/or less regretful if they had voted McCain? Because that's just dumb.

Obama knows that our country needs to be protected from radical Islam by renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Predator assassinations, and persistence in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he also knows the public feels bad when some (like an earlier Obama himself) demagogue the issue, alleging a war against constitutional rights.

So he offers the noble lie of denouncing these Bush protocols that his antiwar base abhors — even as he maintains or expands them. He is certain that the average Joe cannot quite figure out what is going on, and would never suspect that a charismatic, postracial Guardian would ever deceive the people.

I had to go back 2 pages to see exactly what Marv was quoting me about. Talk about old material....

Dc_dux had an actual list of quite significant changes from the Bush years. Of course, I wish there more, but still, there are quite significant changes that have deep consequences for US policy.

so if i understand such logic as there is behind this kinda pathetic exercise in conservative self-justification...

obama accepts the notion of a "war on terror" to the extent that he continued the bush-engagement in afghanistan, where "terror" meant al-qeada i thought but now apparently means the taliban. nearly all of the factoids adduced in this thread follow from that. naturally, they're presented without context and lined up as "evidence" which "demonstrates" the absurd claim that in the end the bush people were justified because obama has ended up doing some of the same thing, maintaining some of the same policy orientations. what's excluded, in addition to the contexts that would rationally be presupposed in a normal conversation, is also the magnitude of what obama has rejected about the bush people's worldview.

but that is to be expected.
more conservative therapy fobbed off as a set of claims about "realism"
funny stuff.

No need to make things more complicated than they are.

A price needed to be paid for 9/11 and the decades of defiant behavior from irritating dictators. Peace and order occasionally needs a show of force, strength and conviction. In our new age uni-sex society where boys are taught to be sensitive there is cause to be concerned. Does the metro-sexual, sensitive to everyone's feelings, Obama, actually get it? Is he an alpha? Just when we think that he might be, he disappoints us.

Alpha's can not explain alpha behavior to those who are not one.

9/11 wasn't an attack by absolutely everyone that ever scoffed in our direction. It wasn't an attack by Iraq, it wasn't an attack by the Hamas, and it wasn't an attack by the Taliban. It was an attack by a very small extremist group, mostly made up and funded by Saudis but that happened to be planned in Afghanistan. After being attacked, we figured out it was OBL, and realizing OBL was in Afghanistan started bombing. Then as asked if we could invade and remove the al Qaeda. Afghanistan, understandably, said no. We got mad.

And as someone that's been called a "metro-sexual" one or two times, I must say that being interested in proper grooming, style, and wearing your empathy on your sleve does not necessarily preclude a man from being able to lead. Case in point? .

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v410/powerclown/N.jpg


Left thinking people scoffed when Bush claimed that liberating Iraq would spread the seeds of democracy throughout the region. Now look what his twisted policy has gone and done. How is George W. Obama ever going to claim credit for this grassroots Iranian revolution? Is it too late to republish his Cairo speech and add a few lines calling on the people of Iran to rise up?

I would love to hear the reasoning that links Bush's former policies, an invasion for false purposes, and what is happening in Iran right now in the manner you described.

Never mind that the idea that Iran is currently undergoing some sort of democratic awakening is nothing more than a fantasy that both underplays Iran's democratic past and overplays Mousani's reformism. Especially since he was prime minister from 81 to 89 and supported Khatami, the president until 2005. But Im not surprised that Bush's supporters would try to claim that the election of a hard liner like Ahmadinejad in 2005 had nothing to do with Iraq, but the struggle to bring back the reformists that were in place until 2005 has everything to do with it...

Re Powerclown: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA

I mean no offense - but I am a person who after 14 years of marriage can brag that I have never run out of soap in 14 years.

I took the quiz at this link, they said I barely knew what the term metro-sexual means.

Personality Quiz: Are You a Metrosexual? A quiz for men.

I would not have called JFK metro-sexual. I would bet he only cared about appearance to the degree that he could win the hearts of some of the best looking women around.

I guess I'm not a metro-sexual either, then.

there are a million answers to this question but the real answer is STUPIDITY

Obama Embraces Yet Another Bushitler Security Program (BUT WITH BROADER POWERS)
 

The more Barack Obama learns about George W. Bush, the more he seems to like his predecessor. In yet another reversal from his campaign rhetoric and another broken promise to the Left, the Obama administration has adopted a Bush administration plan to use the NSA to secure private computer networks. The decision contradicts Obama’s earlier position that he would not allow the NSA to have access to private communications networks:

The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.

President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve “monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic,” and Department of Homeland Security officials say the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems.

That was then. This is now:

But the program has provoked debate within DHS, the officials said, because of uncertainty about whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role NSA should play and whether the agency’s involvement in warrantless wiretapping during George W. Bush’s presidency would draw controversy. Each time a private citizen visited a “dot-gov” Web site or sent an e-mail to a civilian government employee, that action would be screened for potential harm to the network.

“We absolutely intend to use the technical resources, the substantial ones, that NSA has. But . . . they will be guided, led and in a sense directed by the people we have at the Department of Homeland Security,” the department’s secretary, Janet Napolitano, told reporters in a discussion about cybersecurity efforts.

Under a classified pilot program approved during the Bush administration, NSA data and hardware would be used to protect the networks of some civilian government agencies. Part of an initiative known as Einstein 3, the plan called for telecommunications companies to route the Internet traffic of civilian agencies through a monitoring box that would search for and block computer codes designed to penetrate or otherwise compromise networks.

washingtonpost.com

In a sense, this is no different than George Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program at the NSA — only Bush’s TSP required some reasonable cause for surveillance. TSP intended to prevent terrorist attacks by surveilling communication traffic from or to people outside the US, prompted by discoveries of suspected terrorist communication points. The NSA in this program checks communications entirely within the US, as well as coming from outside, in order to find potential attacks on our infrastructure. AT&T will route any communications to any government website through NSA for surveillance during the Einstein 3 test phase, for instance, regardless of probable cause, and the rest of the carriers would follow suit once Einstein 3 passes its initial tests.

This represents a major shift from the campaign, and even from last May, for Obama, who appears to like the power against which he railed for more than two years as a candidate. Of course, he exercises it with charm and finesse, which exempts him from charges of "fascism."

After listening to the Democrats screech for the last two years about the rule of law, this Jake Tapper report should be surprising …. but it’s not. Apparently, Barack Obama finds treaty ratification a little too complicated, and so he figures he can just commit the US to nuclear disarmament and bypass Congressional oversight:

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

“The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified,” said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. “If we’re not able to do that, we’ll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty.”

Samore said administration lawyers are exploring the “different options that are available. One option is that both sides could agree to continue the inspections by executive agreement; that would work on our side. On the Russian side, as I understand it, that would require Duma approval.”

The fact that the administration is preparing for such an extraordinary measure shows just how much pressure the two administrations are under to arrive at an agreement before the 18-year-old treaty expires.

US-Russian Arms Negotiators "Under the Gun," Might Temporarily Bypass Senate Ratification for Treaty - Political Punch

Uh, pardon me, but how many seats in the Senate does Obama’s party hold? Isn’t it 60? If Obama is simply moving forward with a straightforward, supportable treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles in an effective verification system, why couldn’t he get a quick ratification? The GOP gave George H. W. Bush enough support in 1991 to pass the original START treaty, so it’s not as if ratification would be impossibly complicated.

And as much as the Democrats howled over the supposed devotion of George Bush to a “unitary executive,” Obama seems to have no trouble bypassing the check on executive power for treaty negotiation written explicitly into the Constitution, in Article II, Section 2:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;

Words. Just words.

Given that much of Bush's TSP was illegal, by bypassing FISA, and was done w/o any notification to Congress and in complete secrecy.....IMO, there is no comparison.

As you failed to note, the current administration is also committed to provisions to balance personal privacy with the need to safeguard govt computer networks.....adn you are reading about it in advance (transparency?).

BTW, the Obama administration also recently announced plans to kill a Bush program that would use U.S. spy satellites for domestic (state/local) law enforcement.

More of the same? - a bit of a stretchhhhhhhhh

---------- Post added at 08:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:55 PM ----------

Given that Bush had no interest in extending START, but instead, replacing it with a far weaker, SORT......IMO, it is unreasonable to expect a full and complete renegotiation of START in eight-nine months,given the range of complex issues left by Bush, particularly missile defense in eastern Europe, relations with Georgia, etc.. along with discussions of the issues of cuts in delivery systems: long-range missiles, submarines and bombers, etc.

At least now, both sides are committed to some extension snd a continued draw down of nuclear weapons and inspection/verification.

As to extending START on a interim basis so as not to disrupt current inspections, etc, perhaps the president should go to Congress for that authorization.

On the other hand, he is not implementing a new treaty (which wold require ratification), but simply continuing the current status quo past the deadline date....and a president has the power to sign executive agreements between the US and other nations, which is done far more often than treaties.

IMO, another stretchhhhhhhhhh, dude.

---------- Post added at 08:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:09 PM ----------

I'm also still waiting on your response to the other significant policy changes that I identified earlier:

- ending the Bush policies of enhanced interrogation
- closing and ending the use of black prisons
- limiting rendition (banning rendition to countries that torture their own citizens)
- new DoJ guidelines being prepared to oveturn the Bush policy whereby detainees tried by military commissions in the U.S. would now be able to claim at least some constitutional rights, particularly protection against the use of statements taken through coercive interrogations.

More of the same?

Please explain how that is the case.

BTW, I dont agree with all of Obama's national security policies. I knew he was committed to titling a bit towards national security over personal privacy (I might tilt a tad the other way)....but the balance between the two is far closer than anytime during the last eight years.

Hey, didn't anyone else notice that there wasn't really any good explanation for the drop in gas prices after Obama started his office? We're using Iraqi oil, folks, Bush passed the buck to Barack's guys, business as usual.

Aladdin.....Obama and Medvedev signed several executive agreements today....one to allow the US to transport arms and military personnel across Russian land and airspace into Afghanistan.... another to resume military cooperation, suspended after Russia invaded neighboring Georgia last year.. and a third to create a framework for a replacement to START and reduce nuclear warheads and delivery systems to a level lower than Bush.

Are you suggesting these agreements require Senate approval or somehow represent a "unitary executive"?

How is proposing to slash nuclear stockpiles much more significantly than Bush's rigid lower limit "more of the same"?
...

It took the Senate about 15 months to ratified START after GHW Bush signed it. Yes it is complicated and signing a new framework today hasnt bypassed anything.

Perhaps the "words. just words" and the "screeching and howling" are coming from partisan right wing editorials that have no interest in presenting anything beyond superficial talking points, if instead, they can stir up their base and spread their less than forthright message.

They might even applaud your recent efforts here on their behalf.

What happened to transparency?

Obama blocks access to White House visitor list - White House- msnbc.com


I am sure there must be a few good reasons for Obama being in lock step with Bush on this issue. I wonder if it is just a simple matter of Bush not being as evil and secretive as he was made out to be - nope that can't be it. Must be that the "change" bit was b.s.

wake me when this debacle of a thread goes beyond conservative therapy.

O.k., but I doubt it will happen.

Poking at Obama never gets old. You call it a debacle, I call it fun. Kinda like Ramirez political cartoons.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IMAGES/...toon070609.gif

I liked your use of parody in your post.

Here is some more of that article you quoted from:

I am a simple person. What I included from the article is clear and easy to see and understand. Obama is not disclosing visitors to the WH. What you included is obscure, vague, and seems like public relations talk. I don't know what it means from a practical point of view, do you?

Again, the biggest problem I have with Obama is the seeming lack of clarity in his words as compared to his acts.

It's under review. It's a current undertaking. Obama can't just wave a magick wand and make things transparent. Transparency in and of itself is not a virtue. Otherwise, these things wouldn't be an issue, would it? Otherwise, why not just televise everything that goes in the in the White House and broadcast it on the Internet 24/7?

ace...it's funny that you persist in imagining some unified front of support for obama that is bothered by what the conservative factoid machine generates as paper-thin "critiques." they amount to almost nothing but they continue to be produced and dutifully repeated. if you read them from even a slightly dispassionate position---which i try to do, believe it or not, until i start laughing---it is obvious that this is not about obama at all, really. it is about maintaining a sense of coherence for the conservative brand by maintaining a sense of coherence amongst its demographic. that's all that's happening, ace. so there's little possibility of waking back up after this because there's no there there apart from conservative self-help.

the underlying assumption behind all of this nonsense, when you strip away the ludicrous rhetoric of "hypocrisy" and other such, is basically that george w bush represented a kind of pure recognition of raison d'etat (look it up)--which is hilarious---so that any accomodation that obama finds himself making as he moves (and he still is) into occupying power on an everyday scale, so every rapprochement with the notion of raison d'etat, amounts to a vindication of george w bush.

once upon a time the neocons could be seen as the mayberry machiavellians. now, in the pathetic afterglow of 8 years of the bush administration, the collective memorybanks of the conservative factoid-generating machine has been purged of any trace of contact with machiavelli.

it's funny stuff.

My mom bakes a mean raison d'etat. The trick is using brown sugar.

nice. save me a piece: i'll be over in about a month.

There are times when the need to ensure the right flavor means ignoring the recipe. :thumbsup:

I agree, and add most critiques are not worth the paper they are written on. When I spent time here defending Bush, it would always come to the bottom line of - what others thought did not matter, I knew why I supported Bush and most of his policies. I expect it is the same for those who support Obama, except for the fact that they don't really support his policies. Ouch!

---------- Post added at 05:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------

Personally, I don't eat what I can not pronounce. Is that French or something? Does it taste anything like good old American apple pie?

Nevermind.

It depends on who's making it. It's usually a bit bitter, and while it's suggested with seemingly selfless intentions, it's usually just the threat of baking it more than it is actually buying the ingredients and warming up the oven. In the case of Bush, though, the thing turned out bloated, uneven, and burned to a crisp, which means that Obama is left washing the dishes, cleaning out the burnt smell from the oven and airing out the kitchen for a while. Don't confuse the burning smell for what Obama's got planned, though.

This joke-turned-illustration is getting way out of control.

Just seems to me that Obama is embarrassed by what is in the national interest of the U.S. I want people, even if I disagree, to be strong advocates for at least what they believe to be in our national interest. Obama has failed to present a compelling case for how his acquiescence on a world stage to big principle issues like Honduras, Iran (elections), N. Korea (missile testing), apology tour, etc., moves our national agenda.

I am not clear on your position on this issue. I understand why some people find issue with raison d'etat. I don't think the human race is ready to be - one.

Looking forward to getting back to more of the "more of the same, Bush third term gotchas".....but come on, right -minded guys, make them a little more challenging to refute.

For the most part, they have been baseless drivel that plays well in the wingnut circuit but cant really stand the test of scrutiny.

My position is Obama is already miles and miles better than Bush (or a hypothetical McCain administration), but he's making mistakes I'm not comfortable with. Or are you just referring to the raison d'etat thing? That was a joke that turned only about half serious.

I missed the refutes. Think I should re-read this thread from the beginning, or can we agree there has not been any now?

ace....start with #177 and #179 and work backwards :)

Perhaps you can answer how:

- ending the Bush policies of enhanced interrogation
- closing and ending the use of black prisons
- limiting rendition (banning rendition to countries that torture their own citizens)
- new DoJ guidelines being prepared to oveturn the Bush policy whereby detainees tried by military commissions in the U.S. would now be able to claim at least some constitutional rights, particularly protection against the use of statements taken through coercive interrogations.

is "more of the same"

Or how the Obama' administration's consultation with privacy groups in meetings at the WH on protecting federal cyberspace is in any way comparable to Bush's TSP (as suggested by alladin) which was done in total darkness, circumvented the existing law (FISA), was blocked from Congressional oversight.....

The recession early in the Bush term was short and his tax plan helped. The Obama administration is already saying what they underestimated the recession and their plans probably won't work and we may need another bailout.

The war in Iraq eventually lead to a strategy that worked and Bush always had clear principled goals and objectives. The Obama, Afghanistan strategy lacks clarity and is destine to fail, everyone knows it and no one has the courage to speak up.

Your "miles and miles better" comment does not seem to be based in reality. At some point the - I inherited... - line has to get old, don't you agree?

---------- Post added at 09:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:26 PM ----------

Just as an example: The TSA program was modified before Bush left office, what has changed since January? Perhaps, I am ignorant on what Obama has done, this is an educational opportunity for me.

You are dodging the specific examples I provided. Alladin did the same.

Try to focus on the differences in the treatment of detainees I noted and Alladin's attempt to compare Obama's proposed federal cyberspace security program that has been discussed openly to the totally secretive TSP.

How do they represent more of the same or a Bush 3rd term?

First off, you're comparing apples to planets. Second, the tax plans that the Bush advisers set up provided at best temporary relief as a trade off for an even worse crash once the bubbles actually started bursting. I'm not saying President Obama is making all the right decisions, but at least he's trying to address them instead of passing it along to the next administration.
You couldn't be more wrong. We invaded to located WMDs. Since there are no WMDs, no strategy can "work". We lost as soon as we invaded and no amount of surges can fix that. At best, we leave the country in shambles.
[quote=aceventura3;2665077]The Obama, Afghanistan strategy lacks clarity and is destine to fail, everyone knows it and no one has the courage to speak up.[QUOTE]
I speak up. A lot of people here on TFP are vocally against the war in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, because of the ignorant strategies of the right, all politicians must pretend they're warmongers lest they be painted as weak. It's disgusting. The weakest people in American history are the people that commit to unnecessary wars.
Yes, it might some day. For right now, only 6 months after taking office during 2 wars, and economic free fall and unbelievable human rights violations, things are at least headed away from the wrong direction.

I think it would serve you well to not get your information from right wing news outlets anymore. I've not read Kos, Huffington, or the New Republic for some time and I've found that I am more easily able to see through BS on my side of the spectrum. Considering that you often echo Republican and conservative talking points on cue with their media release tells me that you frequent place like Drudge, Fox News, National Review, WorldNetDaily, etc. Having the same ideologies as an organization does not mean they should be given a free pass.