Tag Archives: Obama

Political quote of the day

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So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

– Bob Herbert, today, in his last op-ed column for the New York Times

 

Obama (again) reduces civil liberties (updated x2)

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The Obama administration has now issued new rules that allow domestic terror suspects to be held and questioned longer before being given Miranda warnings. Yet again, the Constitution (and Supreme Court precedent) takes a back seat to fear.

Update: More from the New York Times.

The existence of the memorandum was reported by The New York Times in December, but the Justice Department refused to make it public. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published an article containing excerpts from the document, and The Times later obtained access to a full copy.

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the memo could not alter a constitutional right. He portrayed it as clarifying existing flexibility in the rule — especially when investigators are willing to risk sacrificing the ability to use a suspect’s statements in trial.

Update 2: More from Jonathan Turley:

President Obama has continued his attack on basic constitutional and legal principles with an astonishing new order that allows investigators to not only hold domestic terror suspects for longer periods but to deny them Miranda rights under a strained interpretation of the public safety exception. Obama had attempted to get this change from Congress but was rebuffed. He has now again adopted a tactic of his predecessor and acted unilaterally to trump recognized constitutional rights.

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Political quote of the day

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WASHINGTON - JANUARY 20: President George W. B...

Birds of a Feather

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

– Barack Obama

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Where is Congress? (updated x3)

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Do we really need to be engaged in another war in Libya? The answer is no.

I agree with Andrew Sullivan:

At least Bush argued that Saddam posed a threat to the US. No one can seriously argue that Qaddafi poses such a threat. To launch a war on these grounds is to set a precedent that would require a kind of global power and reach that not even the most righteous neocons have pushed for. And I look forward to the actual Arab contributions to the military action. Presumably Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be involved. Or will it be what we now have – Qatar and, er, that’s it? The Arab League has no real skin in this game. And one suspects, in the end, the narrative will be America bombing the Arabs again. How many civilians might the US kill in such an action? More civilians than we are currently killing in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Have we learned nothing?

The proper response to this presidential power-grab is a Congressional vote – as soon as possible.

***

But it seems clear enough: exactly the same alliance that gave us Iraq is giving us Libya: the neocons who want to see the US military deployed across the globe in the defense of freedom and the liberal interventionists who believe that the US should intervene whenever atrocities are occurring. What these two groups have in common is an unrelenting focus on the reason for intervention along with indifference to the vast array of unintended consequences their moralism could lead us into. I do not doubt their good intentions and motives. No human being can easily watch a massacre and stand by. Yet we did so with Iran; and we are doing so in Yemen and Bahrain as we speak, and have done so for decades because we rightly make judgments based on more than feeling.

And I will take it a step further.  Shame on President Obama. The man waffled for a week, then embraced a war (aTHIRD or FOURTH war) with no reasonable explanation of the US interest furthered thereby. He sought no Congressional input whatsoever, and in fact was on a plane to South America as the decision was announced.

Where are the grown-ups in Washington? And where is the outrage from the American people? This is not a joke or a game.

Update: The United States (and Britain) have launched 112 Tomahawk missiles at targets in Libya.  Two points:

  1. The cost of 112 Tomahawk missiles is at least $569,000 each or a total of approximately $64,000,000. That does not include the cost of transport, training or personnel to launch the devices.
  2. Compare this number to the number of Tomahawk missiles launched at the beginning the Bush’s war against Saddam: 40.

President Obama calls this a “limited military action.”

Update 2: The cost of the Tomahawk missiles launched today is greater than 5 years of the NPR funding the GOP wants to cut off.

Update 3: It was exactly 8 years ago today that the US launched its invasion of Iraq.

Now not to suggest any sort of conspiracy theory, but here’s quite a coincidence: on March 19, 2003 (i.e. exactly eight years ago), US forces began military operations in the second Iraq War.

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Obama wants copyright enforcement

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The Obama White House, which cannot seem to be able to convict any of the bankers that almost took down our entire economy, has issued a 20 page proposal seeking to greatly ratchet up law enforcement activity in alleged intellectual property/copyright infringement.

A couple of highlights from a summary written by Declan McCullagh:

  • Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move “would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses.”
  • Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s generally illegal to distribute hardware or software–such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France–that can “circumvent” copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to “inform rightholders,” “provide samples of such devices,” and assist “them in bringing civil actions.”

This type of enforcement is unnecessary and is nothing but a huge subsidy to the entertainment industry who thereby avoids having to fund their own IP protection efforts.  Outrageous pandering to special interests.

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The New York Times finally wakes up

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The New York Times building in New York, NY ac...

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For a supposedly intelligent and responsible newspaper, the New York Times is sometimes scandalously slow in getting the point. I have written about the abuse of Private Manning before.

Yesterday, finally, the Times catches on and decides to call out the Obama administration for its abuse of Private Manning.

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

Private Manning is in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. For one hour a day, he is allowed to walk around a room in shackles. He is forced to remove all his clothes every night. And every morning he is required to stand outside his cell, naked, until he passes inspection and is given his clothes back.

Military officials say, without explanation, that these precautions are necessary to prevent Private Manning from injuring himself. They have put him on “prevention of injury” watch, yet his lawyers say there is no indication that he is suicidal and the military has not placed him on a suicide watch. (He apparently made a sarcastic comment about suicide.)

 

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Yet again, Obama = Bush (updated)

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Free Bradley Manning Rally

Image by mar is sea Y via Flickr

Private Bradley Manning is accused of leaking secret documents to Wikileaks. He is being held in a brig in solitary confinement for months. Now his jailers have started requiring the his clothing be removed at night and other unusual and humiliating actions. Here is a short summary of the latest coverage of these events by Glenn Greenwald:

In late January, Amnesty International wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates denouncing the conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention as “unnecessarily harsh and punitive” and in “breach the USA’s obligations under international standards and treaties.”  In the wake of the prolonged forced nudity to which Manning is now being subjected, Amnesty has escalated its denunciations: as the Associated Press put it today, the group is now “urging people to complain to the Obama administration about the confinement.”

Our President however says he is fine with all this.

With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.  They assure me that they are.  I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.

Well, I guess that handles the issue. There is no doubt that asking the Pentagon whether the Pentagon is violating the rights of an American citizen in their custody is the best way to know whether the claims are true. The Pentagon has, for the last decade, an impeccable record of appropriate treatment of its detainees.

By the way, PJ Crowley, chief spokesman for the US State Department, has publicly stated that “What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defense.”

Update: And today, PJ Crowley has been fired by the Obama White House. It is a sad day when opposition to prisoner abuse is a firing office.

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Rant of the day

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There is not a word in this essay by Charles Simic with which I disagree. This country is being destroyed by corruption funded by the (very) monied class and across political party lines.

It must be difficult for any hostess nowadays to stop her dinner guests from reciting to each other over the course of an evening the endless examples of lies and stupidities they’ve come across in the press and on TV. As they get more and more wound up, they try to outdo each other, losing all interest in the food on their plates. I know that when I get together with friends, we make a conscious effort to change the subject and talk about grandchildren, reminisce about the past and the movies we’ve seen, though we can’t manage it for very long. We end up disheartening and demoralizing each other and saying goodnight, embarrassed and annoyed with ourselves, as if being upset about what is being done to us is not a subject fit for polite society.

In an atmosphere of growing anxiety and hysteria, in which the true causes and the scale of our dire national predicament are deliberately concealed and obfuscated by our political establishment and by the corporate media, no wonder there’s confusion and anger everywhere. As anyone who has traveled around this country and talked to people knows, Americans are not just badly informed, but downright ignorant about most things that affect their lives. How nice it would be if our President leveled with us and told us that our deficit is caused in significant part by the wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the hundreds of military bases we are maintaining around the world, the huge tax breaks for the rich, and the bailout of Wall Street. As we know, we are not about to hear anything of the kind.

By the president’s calculation, telling the truth to the American people would doom his reelection campaign, since he would not be able to raise the billion dollars he needs this time around. The kind of people who have that kind of money and will agree to contribute to his campaign know very well what informed voters in a working democracy would to do to them once they understood just who has depleted the national treasury to line their own pockets. No doubt, he and his political party will do anything to avoid the truth and will propose outwardly attractive solutions—like the health care bill that not only expands coverage but greatly benefits insurance companies and does little to reduce healthcare costs. They hope that these kinds of measures will lure the majority of voters who won’t bother to learn the details, but they will also send a clear signal to the moneyed classes that they won’t be inconvenienced in the least.

Obama comes through

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Finally.

The Obama administration will no longer defend in court the provisions of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act that prohibits the Federal government from recognizing same sex marriages.  The administration believes that such provisions are unconstitutional.

President Obama believes that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and will no longer defend the 15-year-old law in federal court, the Justice Department announced today.

The decision, which stunned and delighted gay-rights activists, means that the administration will withdraw its defense of ongoing suits in two federal Appeals Courts and will leave it to Congress to defend the law, known as DOMA, against those challenges. It will remain a party to the lawsuits. The law itself remains in effect.

DOMA, signed by President Clinton in 1996, allows states not to recognize same-sex marriages preformed in other states and provides a federal definition for “marriage” that excludes same-sex couples.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the president has concluded that, given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny.”

He said that Obama also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines “spouse” as a member of the opposite sex, “fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the president has instructed the depart

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Jobs and the President (updated)

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Steve Jobs is pictured sitting to the left of President Obama at dinner yesterday evening. (Official White House Photo)

Update: More on the dinner here.

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“Looking forward” on torture

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David Cole, writing in the New York Review of Books, explains why Obama’s effort to “look forward” and not backward on the torture committed by the Bush administration, will fail and that a full accounting, at a minimum, is necessary to purge the damage done by this country’s official policy of torture under Bush.

The torturers—President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, and Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, to name just a few—are not held responsible. They remain free to travel the lecture circuit and publish books bragging about their crimes. It is the families of victims of the embassy bombings who must pay the price—in foregone justice—for the crimes the Bush administration perpetrated in its “war on terror.”

It turns out that looking forward, not back, will never resolve the torture legacy. Until we own up to and provide a reckoning for the moral and criminal wrongs committed by officials at the very highest levels of the former administration, the fact that we tortured will continue to fester—and cause problems for its successor. The prevailing view in Washington seems to be that we should move on, but such wrongs cannot be forgotten.

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