The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

Isn't this what we would be doing by electing the Republicans back into office?

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You've been voting for Republicans?  Maybe you should stop doing that.

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.  When tea-partiers yell, "Get government out of healthcare" and in the same breath, "Don't touch my Medicare!", then education is the solution.

For more than 2 decades, the DLC (the corporate, Republican-wing of the Democratic Party) has controlled the Democratic Party.  The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal', educate the starstruck fans of Ronald Reagan when Reag­an, Lee Atwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism , and how liberals were responsibl­e for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgvnned by election dirty tricks & fraud. 

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characteri­ze themselves as far-anythi­ng or extreme, but mainstream­. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicamen­t of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritar­ian intimidati­on are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

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 and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama knows how to do this.  He does it to get Republican policies and legislation through.  It seems you want more of this.
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The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

NDAA has been signed for almost 8 months. I have yet to hear anything about unjustified detention of innocent U.S. citizens. And believe me, people are definitely looking to bring that to light of day to attack Obama.”

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There are certain comments that, on their face, look as if they've been made by reasonably mature, intelligent people.  But then they'll contain some abzurdum, that includes words like, "And believe me", (as if huskog is in a position on this anonymous website to be someone to believe on national security matters, or in a position to "yet hear about unjustified detention of innocent U.S. citizens", when just this week press admits that it gives the government editing control over what it publishes), that makes it supremely easy for me to dismiss them, not further engage in discussion with them, and not look back.  

This was just such a comment.
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The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

When Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process, Democratic voters were up in arms.  Yet now, here’s Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President — even Barack Obama — vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process.

Also, during the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince conservatives to oppose that administration’s radical excesses would often ask things like this: would you be comfortable having Hillary Clinton wield the power to spy on your calls or imprison you with no judicial reivew or oversight?  So for you good progressives out there justifying this, I would ask this:  how would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you in the hands of, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann?

Obama's most ardent supporters resemble Bushies with each passing day.



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The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

The whole OUTRAGE was sparked by the fact that Obama ordered a drone hit on Anwar al-Alawki, the guy that was going to take over Osama Bin Laden's position. I don't give a crap about him being U.S. citizen if he is plotting terrorist attacks against the U.S. 

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How do you know that?  

No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen expertsabout whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  

Thus, Obama transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world.  The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.

What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.


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The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

Don't be a terrorist? A lot of that is predicated on the suspicion that you are a terrorist. I just don't care about the constitutional rights of terrorists, and for that matter, for mass murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc.

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The changes in the laws aren't being done to protect Americans from terrorists.  

Harper's Index, 2011 -

Number of delayed-no­tice search warrants granted by federal judges last year under the Patriot Act: 


1150




Number that were related to drug offenses and terrorism, respective­ly:


844, 6

In fact, no one has been convicted on terrorism charges as a result of the changes in the laws.  All our previous laws served to do the job and get convictions.
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The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

The New York Times Editorial Page today denounced these new rules as “spiteful,” cited it as “the Obama administration’s latest overuse of executive authority,” and said “the administration looks as if it is imperiously punishing detainees for their temerity in bringing legal challenges to their detention and losing.” Detainee lawyers are refusing to submit to these new rules and are asking a federal court to rule that they violate the detainees’ right to legal counsel.

But every time the issue of ongoing injustices at Guantanamo is raised, one hears the same apologia from the President’s defenders: the President wanted and tried to end all of this, but Congress — including even liberals such as Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders — overwhelming voted to deny him the funds to close Guantanamo. While those claims, standing alone, are true, they omit crucial facts and thus paint a wildly misleading picture about what Obama actually did and did not seek to do.

What made Guantanamo controversial was not its physical location: that it was located in the Caribbean Sea rather than on American soil (that’s especially true since the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the camp).


What made Guantanamo such a travesty — and what still makes it such — is that it is a system of indefinite detention whereby human beings are put in cages for years and years without ever being charged with a crime. President Obama’s so-called “plan to close Guantanamo” — even if it had been approved in full by Congress — did not seek to end that core injustice. It sought to do the opposite: Obama’s plan would have continued the system of indefinite detention, but simply re-located it from Guantanamo Bay onto American soil.
 
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp.  President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention — the defining injustice of Guantanamo — as his own policy.

Read the timeline and more here.
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The Dark Side Of The Obama White House

You will also recall that Obama's attempts to close Gitmo were blocked by the very same Congress.

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The Obama GITMO myth  - New vindictive restrictions on detainees highlights the falsity of Obama defenders regarding closing the camp

Obama defenders invoke a blatant myth to shield the President from blame: he wanted and tried so very hard to end all of this, but Congress would not let him. Especially now that we’re in an Election Year, and in light of very recent developments, it’s long overdue to document clearly how misleading that excuse is.

Last week, the Obama administration imposed new arbitrary rules for Guantanamo detainees who have lost their first habeas corpus challenge. Those new rules eliminate the right of lawyers to visit their clients at the detention facility; the old rules establishing that right were in place since 2004, and were bolstered by the Supreme Court’s 2008 Boumediene ruling that detainees were entitled to a “meaningful” opportunity to contest the legality of their detention. The DOJ recently informed a lawyer for a Yemeni detainee, Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail, that he would be barred from visiting his client unless he agreed to a new regime of restrictive rules, including acknowledging that such visits are within the sole discretion of the camp’s military commander. Moreover, as SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston explains:

Besides putting control over legal contacts entirely under a military commander’s control, the “memorandum of understanding” does not allow attorneys to share with other detainee lawyers what they learn, and does not appear to allow them to use any such information to help prepare their own client for a system of periodic review at Guantanamo of whether continued detention is justified, and may even forbid the use of such information to help prepare a defense to formal terrorism criminal charges against their client.

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