No, a couple of judges are rejecting the puny settlement agreements
Here's one article about the pressure from the Obama administra
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What makes you believe that?
About Barack Obama
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Cheadle's error is in presuming Obama to be a Democrat, and a liberal one at that. He's not. Obama's not even a centrist Democrat: "Privately, Obama describes himself as a BlueDogDem
BlueDogDem
Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to Americans. When most Americans want Medicare and other government programs which they've benefitted from to continue and teabaggers shout "No government control of healthcare
The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReag
When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characteri
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless doing what politician
But Obama only does that to progressiv
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination
Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What the Bush years taught us: If you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics, anyone can sell anything to Americans.
It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politician
KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It's perfectly legal to crash the global economy
How many of you believe that Obama is against the indefinite detention, even execution, of American citizens without any due process (no charges, no trial, no courts), just on a president'
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Talk of Democratic politician
Democratic and Republican poIitician
Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. The annual company picnic, the manufactur
Once in power, Democrats consolidat
Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigan
Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tai
The "thinning of the herd" is what's happening. Obama was put into power by the CorporateM
Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-contro
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Third, the most persistent and propagandistic set of myths about Obama on detention issues is that he tried to end indefinite detention by closing Guantanamo , but was blocked by Congress from doing so. It's true that Congress blocked the closing of Guantanamo , and again in this bill, Congress is imposing virtually insurmount able restrictio ns on the transfer of detainees out of that camp, including for detainees who've long ago been cleared for release (restricti ons that Obama's now going to sign into law). But, and this is not a hard point to understand , while Obama intended to close Guantanamo , he always planned, long before Congress acted, to preserve Guantanamo ’s core injustice: indefinite detention.
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. That’s what makes the apologias over Obama and GITMO so misleading : the controvers y over Guantanamo wasn't that about its locale (that it was based in the CaribbeanS ea) so that simply closing it and then relocating it to a different venue would address the problem. The controvers y over Guantanamo was that it was a prison camp where people were put in cages indefinite ly, for decades or life, without being charged with any crime. And that policy's one that Obama wholeheart edly embraced from the start.
Totally prior to and independent of anything Congress did, Obama fully embraced indefinite detention as his own policy. He's a proponent — not an opponent — of indefinite detention. Just review the facts, the indisputab le facts:
NewYorkTimes, May 23, 2009
NewYorkTimes, January 22, 2010
NewYorkTimes, February 21, 2009
ACLU, December 15, 2009
This is why even some progressive senators such as RussFeingo ld and BernieSand ers ultimately voted to deny funding to the closing of Guantanamo : not because they favored GITMO, but because they wanted first to see Obama’s plan for what would replace it, because they did not want to allocate funds to a plan that would simply relocate GITMO and its defining injustice, indefinite detention, onto US soil.
Can any rational person review these events and try to claim that Obama is some sort of opponent of indefinite detention? He is one of American history’s most aggressive defenders of that power. As HumanRightsWatch put it: “Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.” There is no partisan loyalty or leader-rev erent propaganda strong enough to obscure that fact.
Any doubt that this was the WhiteHouse’s only concern with the bill is now dispelled by virtue of the President’ s willingnes s to sign it after certain changes were made in Conference between the House and Senate. Those changes were almost entirely about removing the parts of the bill that constraine d his power, and had nothing to do with improving the bill from a civil liberties perspectiv e. Once the sole concern of the White House was addressed — eliminatin g limits on the President’ s power — they were happy to sign the bill even though (rather: because) none of the civil liberties assaults were fixed. As Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer explained:
This morning I wrote that by making the mandatory military detention provisions mandatory in name only, the Senate had offered the administration an opportunit y tosee how seriously it takes its own rhetoric on civil liberties. The administra tion had said that the military detention provisions of an earlier version of the NDAA were “inconsist ent with the fundamenta l American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”
The revised NDAA is still inconsistent with that fundamenta l American principle. But the administra tion has decided that fundamenta l American principles aren’t actually worth vetoing the bill over.
That’s because, as Serwer explained in a separate post, Congress (in response to the veto threat) made changes “addressing the security concerns, but not the ones related to civil liberties and the rule of law” (by “security concerns,” the WhiteHouse means: don’t restrict what the President can do). That the WhiteHouse cared only about the former (president ial discretion ), and not at all about the letter (civil liberties) , is proven by its willingnes s to sign the bill when only objections to the former have been addressed. For more proof on this point (and the perfect encapsulat ion of it) see this comment here.
Second, Obama’s veto threat was never about substantivKEEP READINGe objections to the detention powers vested by this bill; put another way, he was never objecting to the bill on civil liberties grounds. Obama is not an opponent of indefinite detention; he’s a vigorous proponent of it, as evidenced by his continuous , multi-face ted embrace of that policy.
Obama’s objections to this bill had nothing to do with civil liberties, due process or the Constitution. It had everything to do with Executive power. The WhiteHouse ’s complaint was that Congress had no business tying the hands of the President when deciding who should go into military detention, who should be denied a trial, which agencies should interrogat e suspects (the FBI or the CIA). Such decisions, insisted the White House, are for the President, not Congress, to make. In other words, his veto threat was not grounded in the premise that indefinite military detention is wrong; it was grounded in the premise that it should be the President who decides who goes into military detention and why, not Congress.
Even the one substantive objection the WhiteHouse expressed to the bill (mandatory military detention for accused AmericanTe rrorists captured on US soil) was about Executive power, not due process or core liberties. The proof of that, the definitive , conclusive proof, is that CarlLevin has several times disclosed that it was the WhiteHouse which demanded removal of a provision in his original draft that would have exempted US citizens from military detention. In other words, this was an example of the WhiteHouse demanding greater detention powers in the bill by insisting on the removal of one of its few constraint s (the prohibitio n on military detention for Americans captured on US soil). That’s because the WhiteHouse ’s NorthStar on this bill was Presidenti al discretion : they were going to veto the bill if it contained any limits on the President’ s detention powers, regardless of whether those limits forced him to put people in military prison or barred him from doing so.
First, while the powers this bill enshrines are indeed radical and dangerous, most of them already exist. That’s because first the BushAdministration and now the ObamaAdmin istration have aggressive ly argued that the original 2001 AUMF already empowers them to imprison people without charges, use force against even US citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of AlQaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who “substanti ally supports” those groups and/or “associate d forces” (whatever those terms mean).
That’s why this bill states that it does not intend to change the 2001 AUMF (even as it codifies far broader language defining the scope of the war) or the detention powers of the President, and it’s why they purposely made the bill vague on whether it expressly authorizes military detention of US citizens on US soil: it’s because the bill’s proponents and the WhiteHouse both believe that the President already possesses these broadened powers with or without this bill. With a couple of exceptions, this bill just “clarifies” — and codifies — the powers Obama has already claimed, seized and exercised.
See video here that elaborates this point: This is not to mitigate how heinous this bill is, as there are real dangers to codifying these powers in law with bipartisan Congressional support as opposed to having the President unilateral ly seize them and have some lower courts recognize them. Instead, it’s a reflection of how horrible the civil liberties status quo has become under the Bush and Obama administra tions. This is the reason why civil libertaria ns have been so harshly critical of this President. It’s the reason civil liberties groups have been saying things like this even when saying them was so unpopular: it’s because Obama has, for three years now, been defending and entrenchin g exactly the detention powers this law vests, but doing it through radical legal theories, warped interpreta tions of the 2001 AUMF, continuiti es with the BushCheney template, and devotion to EndlessWar and the civil liberties assaults it entails. See the newspaper excerpts below for more proof of this.
Obama's NDAA signing statement does not address indefinite detention powers, but his ability to transfer from Gitmo. And FWIW, even if Obama's signing statement had declared NDAA null and void, it wouldn't commit future presidents
[A]fter spending months threatening to veto the NDAA, Obama announced that he would instead sign it into law (this is the same individual , of course, who unequivoca lly vowed when seeking the Democratic nomination to support a filibuster of “any bill that includes retroactiv e immunity for telecom[s] ,” only to turn around (once he had the nomination secure) and not only vote against such a filibuster , but to vote in favor of the underlying bill itself, so this is perfectly consistent with his past conduct).
The ACLU that the bill contains “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the US military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world” and added: “if President Obama signs this bill, it will damage his legacy.”
HumanRightsWatch said that Obama’s decision “does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad” and that “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”
Both groups pointed out that this is the first time indefinite detention has been enshrined in law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when — as the ACLU put it — “HarryTruman had the courage to veto” the InternalSe curityAct of 1950 on the ground that it “would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights” and then watched Congress override the veto. That Act authorized the imprisonme nt of Communists and other “subversiv es” without the necessity of full trials or due process (many of the most egregious provisions of that bill were repealed by the 1971 Non-Detent ion Act, and are now being rejuvenate d by these War on Terror policies of indefinite detention) . Obama, needless to say, is not HarryTruma n. He’s not even the CandidateO bama of 2008 who repeatedly insisted that due process and security were not mutually exclusive and who condemned indefinite detention as “black hole” injustice.
...he [Obama] had to sign them in order to help normal Middle Class Americans from going under.
Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines is greatly exaggerate d, just like Obama's timidity or "failure to lead" are myths: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base. I think Obama's "led" brilliantl y. He's managed to deliver to his Corporate Masters while convincing his 'most ardent supporters ' that he's either too nice, inept, or that his failures are because of Republican s, [pick your excuse].
Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protection s, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare , WallStreet reform, environmen tal and energy issues, etc.).
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experience d politician s in US history (including the RoveMachin e) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politician s (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks ?
Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.
Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politician s have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
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