I don’t want to pre-judge history or anything, but you know how all the holidays for notable presidents and civil rights leaders are all scrunched together at the beginning of the year, right after all those other holidays, for religious leaders and man-made counting turnovers?
You know how, in mid-February, everyone is going, “Jeez, another day off??? How’s a person supposed to get any work done around here?”
And everyone (okay, just me probably) is always going, “I need a holiday in August. Why can’t someone born in August do something so great that we shouldn’t have to work in honor of them?”
Barack Obama was born on August 4. I’m just sayin’.
Democratic Party = party of governing, or occasional stabs at it during moments of crisis, with good and not so good members and policy positions.
Republican Party = party of obstruction to efforts at actual governance, with varying levels of skill and shamelessness. But all are, to borrow an observation from Garrison Keillor, “above average” at it. Something about brain chemistry, I suspect.
The Senate’s passage Tuesday of the economic recovery package followed a now-familiar 30 year pattern. The Democratic President Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him in 1993, faced a monolithic wall of GOP opposition to his economic program. But Republicans Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George W. Bush 20 years later enjoyed substantial Democratic support for their dangerously irresponsible and regressive tax cuts that as predicted drained the federal treasury. Now as then, for Republicans the road to economic stimulus is a one-way street.
This is why two is not enough. To borrow from another good writer: “We can do better.”
Yesterday’s news out of the Justice Department in which it indicated support for Bush’s rendition program (i.e. exit visa for torture outside of US) was horrifying. I really don’t know what to make of it. I’m not a lawyer, so was kinda hoping it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
But here’s what the lawyers think:
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From the Desk of Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU
Just as we’re in court challenging the government’s use of the “state secrets” doctrine, we must also confront the doctrine on Capitol Hill. http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=46PjOWEpAqQ-RD0Wck4BXw
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Dear ACLU Supporter,
Yesterday, ACLU lawyers encountered a recurring — and troubling –obstacle in our lawsuit seeking justice for torture victims caught up in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. But this time, the objections were not coming from the Bush administration.
To our surprise and disappointment, the new Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to dismiss our lawsuit charging a Boeing subsidiary with providing critical support for the CIA’s rendition program based on the same “state secrets” claim that the Bush administration had repeatedly invoked to avoid any judicial scrutiny of its actions. During the course of the argument, one judge asked twice if the change in administration had any bearing on the Justice Department’s position. The attorney for the government said that its position remained the same.
This isn’t the kind of change we need if we want an America we can be proud of again.
If the judges rule in the government’s favor, our clients — who were tortured as part of the government’s rendition program –will never get their day in court.
We’re still hoping the court will rule in our favor and allow our case to move forward. But, in the meantime, we must do everything we can to end the abuse of the “state secrets” doctrine both in the courts and on Capitol Hill.
Senators Kennedy, Leahy, Specter and Representative Nadler introduced legislation in 2008 to narrow the scope of the state secrets privilege — and open the courthouse doors to people who have suffered real and legitimate harm by the government. Clearly, this legislation is needed now more than ever.
This crucial civil liberties bill recognizes the need to take precautions when it comes to national security. But, it also acknowledges that courts have been competently managing the balance between the security of classified information and the right to a fair trial in criminal cases for years. And, most important of all, it makes it much more difficult for the government to abuse the state secrets doctrine to escape accountability for illegal behavior.
We can’t allow any administration to invoke state secrets to hide a reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations.
Yesterday, the Obama administration had an opportunity to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition. But, instead, the Justice Department opted to stay the course.
Now, we must hope that the court will assert its independence, reject the government’s false claims of state secrets, and allow victims of torture and rendition their day in court.
Thanks for standing with us as we work to pursue justice on this critical civil liberties issue.
And here’s another ACLU spokesperson on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight. (It’s preceded by Rachel and Kent Jones doing a little silly bit of “comedy” on the issue, which in my opinion was inappropriate for the seriousness of the problem, and not funny. But it’s the only video I could find posted this soon after the show.)
Debra Sweet from World Can’t Wait is also sounding the alarm:
Binyam Mohamed is no longer a non-person, even though he’s still in Guantanamo. After being flown around the world by the CIA, and tortured in both Pakistan and Morocco, he’s fighting the torture. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have direct testimony of torture from the five who were transported in CIA sponsored flights by Jeppesen Datalan, a subsidiary of Boeing, and testimony to show that employees of Jeppesen knew they were planning flights in what has become known infamously as the “Torture Taxi.”
Yesterday, the ACLU represented Mohamed and 4 other men who were tortured and “rendered” by the CIA in the US Court of Appeals, 9th District in San Francisco. The Bush administration had gotten a judge to throw out the men’s lawsuit against “extraordinary rendition.” The ACLU and others hoped that the Obama administration would not stand on “national security” and let the suit go forward.
But no. The New York Times reports today, “the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration.” The ACLU provided testimony from Mohamed that, “he was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.”
The World Can’t Wait continues to demand an end to torture carried on directly by the United States or its allies; the overturning of the Military Commissions Act and “enhanced” interrogation whether carried out by U.S. military, CIA, private contractors, or allied governments’ the closure of Guantanamo, Bagram and other indefinite detention facilities controlled by the United States. It believes that the rights of the people to be free of government spying supersede the secrecy rights of the government. FULL statement here
So much for “change we can believe in.” Torturers will not be punished by the American government, and that means that those who ordered them to do so cannot be held accountable, unless the World Court does the job.
Today in his hearing for CIA director before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Leon Panetta, who supposedly was selected for the job because his hands were clean of evil Bush-era practices, sold his soul and eliminated the possibility of prosecuting those who tortured on Bush’s orders. Cernig at Crooks and Liars and Newshoggers explains why this action gives legal cover to Bush, Cheney and their top-level goons.
Worse, not prosecuting the torturers sets up a malicious feedback that fatally undermines prosecutions for ordering torture. If there’s no prosecution for commission of a crime, how can someone be prosecuted for ordering what is apparently admitted isn’t a crime? No defense lawyer is going to pass up such a gift argument and the Obama administration knows it. Not prosecuting those who tortured is a “get out of jail free card” not only for the torturers but for those who ordered torture and those who falsely said torture could ever be legal. It’s a travesty of justice and one that Chris Dodd has sadly admitted Democratic leaders have looked the other way on for purely political reasons.
But Panetta — and presumably his new boss Barack Obama — is willing to take their policies even further into Bush territory.
Four civil rights groups are asking Obama to let them in to Guantánamo to survey the situation at the facility that is now a synonym for torture and report their findings, to open the infamous site to the light of truth, accountability and justice.
I know that I would trust the findings and recommendations of The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch a lot more than that of the four Republican warmongers and torture apologists who will be on the site for a predictable partisan whitewashing on Monday: Senators Jim Inhofe (OK), Pat Roberts (KS), Mel Martinez(FL) and David Vitter (LA).
There is not enough whitewash in the world to cover over that mess. When are the Republicans going to realize that no one but the corporate media is buying their twisted worldview any more?
With his policies at Guantánamo, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld made Americans more hated and more at risk than we ever were before. We can never totally erase the damage, but the sooner we close the doors, apologize and begin to rectify the injustices, the better off we and the whole world will be.
When we return to using intelligence to find and the law to punish those who do wrong, then we will be the “good guys” again. Until then, visits by the four Senators are helpful only to their own propaganda campaigns to impede what the majority of the American people want..
The company that knowingly screwed Lilly Ledbetter out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, then spent hundreds of thousands to “defend” itself from her discrimination lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, was Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Please remember that the next time you are in the market for tires.
I can’t believe that President Obama is ALREADY letting the Republicans run (i.e. ruin) his plan for an economic stimulus. Here’s an idea for putting his eloquence and now ownership of a big fat bully pulpit to use: explain to the American people exactly how family planning (more than just contraceptives) — or lack of it — impacts a family budget. In fact, most of us already know this rather obvious reality, but you can perhaps enlighten some Rethugs and the stupid media who obviously have never had to worry about money a day in their lives.
What makes me so furious is, we don’t need the Republicans to pass this package, anyway. Why, oh why are we knuckling under to the people who have already demonstrated their utter indifference to the poor – and their economic incompetence? We voted for Democrats because we didn’t want to see important legislative decisions based on right-wing memes:
Call Waxman’s office and give him an earful:
DC: 202-225-3976
CA offices:
323-651-1040
818-878-7400
310-652-3095
And contact President Obama by email here, or call:
Comments:
202-456-1111
Switchboard:
202-456-1414
I hope Pelosi turns around and gets a much bigger bill for family planning passed. It’s certainly needed, and can help families immediately and for the next several years as the economy recovers. And shame on Obama for not backing the Speaker up on this.
This is cool. That populist gesture was not spontaneous as many watchers might have thought, but the location for it was thoughtfully chosen to be symbolic on many levels.
The most obvious symbolism is the fact that the National Archives contains the Constitution, and Obama plans to make the rule of law the theme of his presidency.
But now it’s revealed that the idea has a larger backstory, one that not only echoes President Obama’s interests in honoring neighborhoods and communities, but connects him to JFK.
For this is the location of a once blighted scene that prompted President Kennedy to inquire “what’s wrong with Pennsylvania Avenue” after his own inaugural parads. Because of his notice and concern, Jacqueline Kennedy lobbied Senator Patrick Moynahan, who made it his pet cause, and a long urban renewal project began, resulting in the mixed use neighborhood that is now thriving.
But the writer of the Huffpo piece also notes another symbol Tuesday’s surprise walk held:
In a sense, the most powerful symbolic message might be if this President and his staff read their mail from well-intentioned and informed citizens, and then accept useful suggestions. We need that now.
This day embodied everything truly great and inspiring about the United States of America. The rule of law, equal opportunity, goofy optimism, goofier commercialism. Even though it also included lots of gratuitous religiosity, Obama in his inaugural address actually recognized the existence and worth of “nonbelievers.” So diversity and inclusiveness were right up there too.
Unlike some antiwar progressives, who are already condemning Obama for seeming to show way too much respect to the outgoing administration of admitted war criminals. I choose to be more patient, and reserve judgement until we see what happens. I don’t expect to see everything I would want, but I think we will see a lot of good things that we could only dream of three years ago.
I was so inspired, not by Obama, but by the masses of people who are inspired by him and what his election means. I will not discount how meaningful this breakthrough is to people of color, or dismiss their deep excitement and joy with my own agenda. Not today, that’s for sure.
The dreaded invocation by Rick Warren was so forgettable I’m embarrassed for him. It was completely eclipsed by the depth of Obama’s address and the heights of Rev. Lowery’s benediction. Not to mention the art of Aretha Franklin and Elizabeth Alexander, which immediately banished any negativity he conveyed — or at least that was my reaction and I haven’t seen much online that even mentions Warren. And isn’t being ignored the harshest sentence?
Anyway, it’s been a long, wonderful day for our country. We once again looked sane and even beautiful to the world. It won’t last forever, but enjoy the experience, and the memories it will create.
This is cool. That populist gesture was not spontaneous as many watchers might have thought, but the location for it was thoughtfully chosen to be symbolic on many levels.
