Labels: atrocities, Barack Obama, bipartisanship, collateral damage, corporate military industrial government complex, GOP, kill list, predator drones, Republicans
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posted by profmarcus at
6/24/2012
Here are the bill’s three most important provisions:
(1) mandates that all accused Terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system; it also unquestionably permits (but does not mandate) that even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil accused of Terrorism be held by the military rather than charged in the civilian court system (Sec. 1032);
(2) renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); and,
(3) imposes new restrictions on the U.S. Government’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo (Secs. 1033-35).
I haven’t written about this bill until now for one reason: as odious and definitively radical as the powers are which this bill endorses, it doesn’t actually change the status quo all that much. That’s because the Bush and Obama administrations have already successfully claimed most of the powers in the bill, and courts have largely acquiesced. To be sure, there are dangers to having Congress formally codify these powers. But a powerful sign of how degraded our political culture has become is that this bill — which in any other time would be shockingly extremist — actually fits right in with who we are as a nation and what our political institutions are already doing. To be perfectly honest, I just couldn’t get myself worked up over a bill that, with some exceptions, does little more than formally recognize and codify what our Government is already doing.
Indefinite, charge-free military detention of people accused — accused – of Terrorism has been fully embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations (it’s one of the reasons some of us have been so vocally critical). The Obama administration has gone even further and argued that it has the power not merely to detain accused Terrorists (including U.S. citizens) without due process, but to kill them. It is true that the Obama DOJ has chosen to try some accused Terrorists in civilian courts — and this bill may make that more difficult — but the power of military detention already rests with the Executive Branch. And while it would be worse for Congress to formally codify these powers and thus arguably overturn long-standing prohibitions on using the U.S. military on U.S. soil, the real legal objections to such detention are grounded in Constitutional guarantees, and no act of Congress can affect those. In sum, this bill would codify indefinite military detention, but the actual changes when compared to what the Executive Branch is doing now would be modest. That’s not a mitigation of this bill’s radicalism; it’s proof of how radical the Executive Branch under these two Presidents has already become.
We have the same story with this provision. On paper, Levin/McCain would expand the War on Terror by codifying more expansive language defining the scope of the conflict than is contained in the 2001 AUMF. The old AUMF only authorized force (which the Supreme Court found includes military detention) “against those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attack and those nations which harbored them. By contrast, Levin/McCain would also authorize force against “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” This is intended to allow force to be used against groups that did not even exist at the time of 9/11 — such as the ones in Yemen and Somalia — as well to allow force against persons who may not be a member of those groups but who provide “substantial support.”
Here again, though, this is already what the U.S. Government is doing. The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted – and some courts have accepted — that the 2001 AUMF already includes not only Al Qaeda but “associated forces.” Thus, insists the Obama administration, it has the right to bomb Yemen and Somalia under the terms of the 2001 AUMF even though the targeted groups didn’t even exist at the time of the attack — and to detain people who had nothing to do with 9/11 — because they are already interpreting the 2001 AUMF in the same way as Levin/McCain define the war: Al Qaeda and “associated forces,” and not just members of Terrorist groups but those who “substantially support” such groups.
Let’s be very clear, though, about what the “veto threat” is and is not. All things considered, I’m glad the White House is opposing this bill rather than supporting it. But, with a few exceptions, the objections raised by the White House are not grounded in substantive problems with these powers, but rather in the argument that such matters are for the Executive Branch, not the Congress, to decide. In other words, the White House’s objections are grounded in broad theories of Executive Power. They are not arguing: it is wrong to deny accused Terrorists of a trial. Instead they insist: whether an accused Terrorist is put in military detention rather than civilian custody is for the President alone to decide.
If someone had said before September 11 that the Congress would be on the verge of enacting a bill to authorize military detention inside the U.S., it would be hard to believe. If someone had said after September 11 (or even after the 2006 and 2008 elections) that a Democratic-led Senate — more than ten years later, and without another successful attack on U.S. soil — would be mandating the indefinite continuation of Guantanamo and implementing an expanded AUMF, that, too, would have been hard to believe. But that’s exactly what Congress, with the active participation of both parties, is doing. And the most amazing part of it all is that it won’t change much, because that is more or less what Washington, without any statutory authorization, has already done. That’s how degraded our political culture is: what was once unthinkable now barely prompts any rational alarm — not because it’s not alarming, but because it’s become so normalized.
Labels: 9/11, AUMF, bipartisanship, Congress, executive power, Glenn Greenwald, indefinite detention, National Defense Authorization Act, war on terror
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/01/2011
Barack Obama is gutting the core principles of the Democratic party
[...]
[I]t is now beyond dispute that President Obama not only favours, but is the leading force in Washington pushing for, serious benefit cuts to both social security and Medicare.This week, even as GOP leaders offered schemes to raise the debt ceiling with no cuts, the White House expressed support for the Senate's so-called "gang of six" plan that includes substantial cuts in those programmes.
The same Democratic president who supported the transfer of $700bn to bail out Wall Street banks, who earlier this year signed an extension of Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and who has escalated America's bankruptcy-inducing posture of Endless War, is now trying to reduce the debt by cutting benefits for America's most vulnerable – at the exact time that economic insecurity and income inequality are at all-time highs.
Where is the "epic shitstorm" from the left which Black predicted? With a few exceptions – the liberal blog FiredogLake has assembled 50,000 Obama supporters vowing to withhold re-election support if he follows through, and a few other groups have begun organising as well – it's nowhere to be found.
Therein lies one of the most enduring attributes of Obama's legacy: in many crucial areas, he has done more to subvert and weaken the left's political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party's leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe.
This dynamic has repeatedly emerged in numerous contexts. Obama has continued Bush/Cheney terrorism policies – once viciously denounced by Democrats – of indefinite detention, renditions, secret prisons by proxy, and sweeping secrecy doctrines.
He has gone further than his predecessor by waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seizing the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process far from any battlefield, massively escalating drone attacks in multiple nations, and asserting the authority to unilaterally prosecute a war (in Libya) even in defiance of a Congressional vote against authorising the war.
And now he is devoting all of his presidential power to cutting the entitlement programmes that have been the defining hallmark of the Democratic party since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The silence from progressive partisans is deafening – and depressing, though sadly predictable.
The nature of American politics is that once a policy is removed from the partisan wars – once it is adopted by the leadership of both parties – it is removed from mainstream debate and fortified as bipartisan consensus. That is why false claims in the run-up to the Iraq war, endorsed by both parties, received so little mainstream journalistic scrutiny. And it's why the former Bush lawyer and right-wing ideologue Jack Goldsmith – back in May 2009 – celebrated in The New Republic the fact that Obama was doing more to strengthen Bush/Cheney terrorism policies than his former bosses could have ever achieved: by embracing the very terrorism approach he once denounced, Obama was converting it from rightwing radicalism into into the official dogma of both parties, and forcing his supporters to defend what were, until 2009, the symbols of rightwing evil.
Identically, Obama is now on the verge of injecting what until recently was the politically toxic and unattainable dream of Wall Street and the American right – attacks on the nation's social safety net – into the heart and soul of the Democratic party's platform. Those progressives who are guided more by party loyalty than actual belief will seamlessly transform from virulent opponents of such cuts into their primary defenders.
And thus will Obama succeed – yet again – in gutting not only core Democratic policies, but also the identity and power of the American Left.
Labels: bailout, Barack Obama, bipartisanship, Democrats, George Bush, Glenn Greenwald, Guardian, Republicans, Social Security, terrorism, two-party system, Wall Street
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/21/2011
But more generally, what Brooks so envies about British political culture -- a small, incestuous, aristocratic, homogenized group of trans-partisan elites harmoniously resolving their differences -- is exactly what already drives American policy and politics. And that is what establishment spokespeople like Brooks always mean when they yearn for "bipartisanship": wise old men getting together in secret and reaching agreements that exclude democratic debate and render irrelevant genuine differences among the citizenry.
Labels: bipartisanship, David Brooks, elites, Glenn Greenwald, NYT, participative democracy, super-rich, United Kingdom, United States
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/24/2011
Barack Obama rode a wave of voter passion in 2008 fed largely by intense dislike of President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, plus excitement among young and minority voters at the notion of electing the nation's first black president.
Now, as Obama cranks up his re-election campaign, all those factors are absent.
The president has many tools, of course, for inspiring and exciting potential voters. But he faces a different landscape, one in which key supporters are disappointed by concessions he has made to Republicans, and discouraged by huge Democratic losses last fall.
Obama acknowledged the challenge last week in Boston. "Somebody asked me, how do we reinvigorate the population, the voter, after two very tough years?" he told Democratic donors. "How do we recapture that magic that got so many young people involved for the very first time in 2008?"
One answer, the president said, is to persuade hardcore liberals to swallow their anger over political compromises the administration reached with Republicans, even when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress.
Labels: Barack Obama, bipartisanship, compromise, Democrats, liberals, Republicans
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/15/2011
Behind the wonderfully engaging smile of this president there is the increasingly disturbing suggestion of a cynical power-grabbing politician whose swift rise in power reflects less the earnestness of his message and far more the skills of a traditional political hack.
[...]
The more one learns about the political roots of our economic meltdown, the more the Democratic Party stands revealed as an equal partner with the Republicans at the center of corruption. ... We are drowning in a bipartisan cesspool of corruption, and the sooner we grasp that fact the better.
Labels: Barack Obama, bipartisanship, corruption, Democrats, economic collapse, financial meltdown, Republicans, Robert Scheer
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/20/2010
The country is drowning in a severe and worsening unemployment crisis. People are losing their homes by the millions. Income inequality continues to explode while the last vestiges of middle class security continue to erode. The Obama civil liberties record has been nothing short of a disgrace, usually equaling and sometimes surpassing the worst of the Bush/Cheney abuses. We have to stand by and watch the Commander-in-Chief fire one gay service member after the next for their sexual orientation. The major bills touted by Obama supporters were the by-product of the very corporatist/lobbyist dominance which Obama the candidate repeatedly railed against. Rather than take responsibility for any of this, they instead dismiss criticisms and objections as petulant, childish, "irresponsible whining" -- signaling rather clearly that they think they're doing the right thing and that these criticisms are fundamentally unfair.
Labels: bipartisanship, Bush Administration, Civil liberties, Democrats, elites, leftists, Obama administration, Republicans, super-rich, surveillance society
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/28/2010
President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.
The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.
Labels: Attorney General, Barack Obama, bipartisanship, civilian law enforcement, Democrats, Eric Holder, George Bush, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, military tribunals, Republicans
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/05/2010
Obama gives Patriot Act another year with no privacy protections
If the Patriot Act hadn't been approved for another year, Sunday would have looked much different.Sunday could have meant the government was no longer given permission to wiretap the phones of Americans and seize their records and property.
But since the bill was approved by Congressional Democrats earlier this week and signed into law by President Obama on Saturday, this Sunday is just another Sunday for Americans living with the Patriot Act.
To be fair, many Democrats asked for additional protections for the privacy rights of American citizens.
But Republicans said that would detract from the ability of the country's intelligence agencies to track down terrorists. Lacking a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to pass the bill with the extra provisions, Democrats left them out.
Democratic Rep. Jane Harman opposed the House's approval of the extension, citing abuses during the administration of President George W. Bush.
"While I strongly support using the most robust tools possible to go after terrorists, Congress must revise and narrow -- not extend -- Bush era policies," Harman said.
Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com had the following to say of the overwhelming support of the law's extension:
One of the strangest prongs of conventional Beltway wisdom is the lament that there is not enough bipartisanship. The opposite is true: many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted on a fully bipartisan basis -- the most destructive political act of this generation, the invasion of Iraq, was fully bipartisan, as were most of the post-9/11 civil liberties abuses and other Bush-era initiatives-- and, at least in certain areas, the harmonious joining together of Republicans and Democrats continues unabated.
Labels: 4th Amendment, bipartisanship, domestic surveillance, Glenn Greenwald, Jane Harman, Patriot Act, privacy, U.S. Constitution
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/28/2010
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Carter said. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that share the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans."
Carter continued, "And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply."
US President Barack Obama does not believe current criticism of his policies is based on the colour of his skin, the White House has said.
It was responding to comments by former President Jimmy Carter that much of the vitriol against Mr Obama's health and spending plans was "based on racism".
[...]
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Mr Obama "does not believe that the criticism comes based on the colour of his skin".
"We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we've made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by this administration," Mr Gibbs said.
Labels: Barack Obama, bipartisanship, Jimmy Carter, MSNBC, racism, Robert Gibbs
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/16/2009
The White House and congressional Democrats, fed up with a failed effort to woo Republican support, may proceed without the opposition party in passing comprehensive healthcare reform, reports signaled Wednesday.
Speaking to the New York Times, White House powerbroker and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel declared that the Republican party was standing in the way of progress. His remarks seem to mark a shift from more conciliatory language previously being used by the White House.
“The Republican leadership,” Emanuel quipped, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
Democrats can pass healthcare reform without Republicans using a rule that allows them to pass a measure with a simple majority, or 50 votes. This method was used to pass President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
Labels: Barack Obama, bipartisanship, Congress, Democrats, George Bush, health care, Rahm Emanuel, Republicans, White House
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
8/19/2009
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said yesterday that financial markets have stabilized since March, when the collapse of investment house Bear Stearns roiled Wall Street, and said he expects economic growth to rebound by the end of the year.
A severe housing slump remains "the biggest risk to our economy," Paulson said, adding that he was "very encouraged" to see "bipartisan progress" in Congress on a comprehensive plan to address the downturn.
"The markets are considerably calmer now than they were in March," Paulson said to business leaders gathered at a downtown hotel for a forum sponsored by The Washington Post. "In my judgment, we are closer to the end of the market turmoil than the beginning."
Labels: Bear Stearns, bipartisanship, economic collapse, economy, financial markets, financial meltdown, Henry Paulson, housing market, Treasury Secretary
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/17/2008
Last week it was "pretty certain" that House Democrats would quickly move forward with contempt citations against two Bush administration figures who were stonewalling Congress. Then the economy started circling the drain.The planned citations now appear to be on hold as Congress and the White House work on a bipartisan economic stimulus package, the central tenet of which involves cutting virtually everyone an $800 check.
Democratic leaders and aides tell The Politico that pursuing the contempt citations in conjunction with the stimulus package would "step on their message" of bipartisanship.
Labels: bipartisanship, Bush Administration, contempt of Congress, criminal Democrats, economic stimulus plan, economy, Harriet Miers, House of Representatives, Joshua Bolten, Republicans, White House
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/23/2008
[W]e have a perfect oligarchical system in which, literally, our most powerful and well-connected elite are free to break the law with impunity, exempt from any consequences. While exempting themselves, these same figures impose increasingly Draconian "law and order" solutions on the masses to ensure that even small infractions of the law prompt vigorous prosecution and inflexible, lengthy prison terms.As Matt Stoller recently noted in an excellent post on the bipartisan orthodoxies that are untouchable in political debates, "there are 1 million people put in jail for doing what Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George Bush have done" (buying and consuming illegal drugs) and "2 million people are in prison in America, by far the highest total of any other country in the world." It's almost impossible for the non-rich to defend themselves effectively against government accusations of criminality, and judges have increasingly less sentencing discretion to avoid imposing harsh jail terms. Punishment for crimes is for the masses only, not for members in good standing of our political and corporate establishment.
Where our political elite break the law, our leading media stars and pundits fulfill their central purpose by dutifully arguing that establishment figures who have broken the law have done nothing wrong and deserve protection, even our gratitude, when they do so. In the view of our establishment, even mere civil liability -- never mind criminal punishment -- is deeply unfair when imposed on lawbreaking corporations, as we see in the "debate" over telecom immunity.
[...]
Naturally, our establishment sees itself as Good, and thus, whatever their most powerful leaders do -- even when illegal -- is never really bad. It can't be, because they do it. Hence, George Bush's and Lewis Libby's felonies aren't really like the felonies of the "drug dealers" and the other street dirt. Neither the Law nor Jail are for the clean, good, upstanding establishment members, so sayeth Jay Rockefeller and Fred Hiatt and Joe Klein and David Ignatius and the rest.
[...]There is a mildly increased desperation that is palpable among our political and media elites to protect and defend their system. The extent of their wrongdoing over the last several years -- political, legal and economic -- is so extreme that the potential for upheaval in the event of accountability is extreme as well. Their chief weapon to protect those privileges is immunity from the rule of law, and most of our political controversies -- over presidential power and state secrets and executive privilege and torture and eavesdropping and these CIA videos -- really share the same root: the effort of the establishment to maintain their immunity from impropriety-exposing legal proceedings and, thus, from political consequences.
Just as the warrantless eavesdropping revelations did, the CIA video scandal presents an extremely clear and straightforward case of serious lawbreaking by our highest government officials. It's far less complex and far more serious than the scandals that brought down Richard Nixon. That a rational person would be highly skeptical about the prospects that we will find out what happened, let alone that there will be consequences for any of it, is pretty compelling evidence of the kind of country we are becoming.
Labels: accountability, bipartisanship, CIA, domestic spying, draconian, elites, executive privilege, George Bush, Glenn Greenwald, oligarchy, pundits, Salon, Scooter Libby
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/30/2007
“I won’t even wait until I’m inaugurated, but as soon as I’m elected I’m going to be asking distinguished Americans of both parties — people like Colin Powell, for example, and others — who can represent our country well, including someone I know very well,” Mrs. Clinton said, according to a Fox News Web report. “Because I want to send a message heard across the world. The era of cowboy diplomacy is over.”
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, bipartisanship, Colin Powell, cowboy diplimacy, Hillary Clinton, U.S. foreign policy
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/27/2007
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Barack Obama, bipartisanship, New York Times, Paul Krugman, Social Security
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/16/2007
Labels: bipartisanship, Tom Tomorrow
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/01/2007
Ronald Brownstein:
Partisan bickering won't end the war
How can Americans lecture Iraqis about 'reconciliation' when we can't even manage it at home?
September 12, 2007
Not for the first time, self-awareness was in short supply across Washington during this week's marathon congressional hearings on Iraq with Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
The one point that drew agreement from Republicans and Democrats alike was that Iraq's political leaders have too often failed to transcend their narrow sectarian interests to forge compromises in the national interest.
Pot, meet kettle.
Here in the U.S., the two parties are doing much the same thing. President Bush and congressional Democrats are each so determined to win the argument over Iraq that they have lost sight of their joint interest in finding a way forward that can attract broad and lasting support from a public disillusioned and dangerously polarized over the war. More than ever, the parties this week structured the debate as if it were an electoral campaign. Each asked Americans to ponder only the pieces of the picture most congenial to its arguments.
Labels: bipartisanship, Congress, David Petraeus, Democrats, George Bush, Iraq, Republicans, Ryan Crocker
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/12/2007
consultation
... a chance for lawmakers to hear about decisions [Bush] had already made
bipartisanship
... a chance for Democrats to join Republicans in rubber-stamping those choices
Congressional oversight
... self-serving and possibly seditious
capitulation
... the point when ... Congress bowed and backed out of the room [after] the White House ... predictably accused the Democrats of being soft on terrorism for opposing illegal wiretapping and of partisan politicking in their attempt to get to the bottom of the attorneys scandal
Labels: bipartisanship, blogosphere, capitulation, Congress, consultation, Democrats, George Bush, Republicans, White House
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/01/2007
John Edwards' poor scam
The would-be president and former ambulance chaser wants you to think he's the champion of the underclass.
There's a little hustler in every politician. But sometimes there's a little politician in a hustler. Such is the case with John Edwards.
Dear Sirs:
I can see how the 2008 campaign is going to shape up - hyperventilating huffers and puffers, sitting in their foxholes, tossing out feces-laden grenades, and hoping none either roll back into their holes or get lobbed their way. Ok, if that's the kind of opinion writer you choose to support, so be it. Let me make a small request.
I would feel somewhat better about seeing such vituperation in print if the opinion writer in question, Mr. Goldberg, would opine in a more bipartisan fashion. It seems there are hypocrites and idiots galore in the current field of presidential candidates, both Democrat and Republican. When entire op-ed columns are dedicated to savaging only one party's candidates, serious editorial bias starts to become a little bit obvious, don't you think? Even George Bush occasionally makes the effort to appear bipartisan (I emphasize the word "appear"). Couldn't you encourage Mr. Goldberg to follow suit?
Best regards,
Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.
When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.
And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.
Labels: 2008 candidates, bipartisanship, Democrats, George Bush, John Edwards, John McCain, Jonah Goldberg, LA Times, Mitt Romney, Paul Krugman, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/29/2007
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