President Barack Obama continued his replication of the Bush policies today with the disclosure that he will now restart the controversial Bush tribunal system — now to be called the Obama tribunal system. This follows Obama’s adoption of an even more extreme theory of executive privilege in court, the reversal of the decision to comply with a court order and turn over abuse photographs, the continuing effort to extinguish dozens of public interest lawsuits on privacy violations, and the proposed adoption of the Bush policy of holding detainees indefinitely without trial, here. In the meantime, he and Attorney General Eric Holder continue to block the appointment of a special prosecutor despite mounting evidence of war crimes committed by the prior administration. I will be discussing these recent developments tonight on Countdown.
What is astonishing is how muted the response from democrats and liberals has been despite the fact that Obama has now adopted the very same policies that made George Bush an international pariah. It is clear that Obama has determined that these men stood a chance of being released if they were given full legal protections and procedures. Thus, he has discovered the value of extrajudicial punishment with indefinite detentions and tribunals. The tribunal system is run on rules written by the Bush Administration to ensure convictions. It has even fewer protections than allowed in the military system and has been widely ridiculed, even by some conservatives, as Kangaroo trial system. While Obama will reportedly alter the rules, the principled position would be reject the notion of special justice for certain defendants and to rely on our legal system to mete out blind justice.
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Hey – just let a few things happen – these are bloody dangerous times! Sometimes the justice systems doesn’t work and we just have to do in on the down low. Keep your nose clean and don’t hang out with creepy Arab people who keep automatic rifles in the basement and mumble to themselves.
GW Law School Mom,
Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. Don’t get cynical (or don’t just get cynical), get angry. Cynicism can lead to inaction, which I believe is a disaster. Obama is doing things that are wrong. We will not be able to stop him if we get too cynical to say what he’s doing is wrong. We must protest and keep screaming and keep acting until this country turns around and lives up to what it should be. We should be very honest about what is going on and with that clear view in our hearts and minds, take action.
Gyges,
For my part I don’t think obama is bush. I think bush should be on trail for what he did. I also think obama needs an accounting for what he’s doing: ie: failing to investigate bush, allowing torture in Gitmo, spying on our populace, denying legal rights to detainees and warmongering resulting in civilian deaths (to name a few). Each man is responsible for his own actions and should be held to account for his own actions, no exceptions. Have fun fishing this weekend!
Mike,
Maybe I should have just stuck with my Caricature comment. It applies to both sides of this equally. Obama isn’t Bush, he might not be cleaning up Bush’s mess the way some of us want him to, but he didn’t make the mess. The flip side is that the best way to draw attention to the fact that somebody doing acts they LOUDLY criticized someone else for is to draw a comparison between the two.
I suggest we all just take the weekend off and go fishing. I know stream full of brook trout that need to be thinned.
“The only mention of impeachment in this thread was a jokes. Civilized discourse is a lot easier if we don’t make caricatures out of the other side.
While I agree that we should wait until we see what those rule changes are before passing judgment, what’s wrong with putting a little pressure to ensure that the rule changes address the right issues?”
Gyges,
Impeachment was the use of irony as you well know. However, when people actually are stating that there is no difference between Obama and Bush, and hyperbolic hooters like BVM are afoot, avoiding ridicule is I confess difficult. This Administration is a little more than 100 days old, it faces a total wall of Republican resistance and a host of Blue Dog Democrats that are at best right of center moderates. Money still rules D.C. despite who is in power. I believe that given that, this Administration is doing very well and certainly represents a sea change from the last.
There’s nothing wrong with putting a little, or a lot of pressure on this Administration and 75% of my comments urge it. I believe that the Administration wants this pressure and needs it to make them act. However, when some on my side basically retreat to the everything is rotten position, then they preclude hope and to me ensure that nothing changes.
That is the subtlety of my position. Pressure is good and necessary is good, making it all seem hopeless is bad.
Back in the 60’s all us radicals would talk constantly about organizing and then we would discourage or alienate just those people who we needed to organize. Gee but those late night strategy sessions were fun, each of us trying to outdo the other with exhibitions of the purity of our political beliefs. They were so good we elected Nixon who tried to prove to us our belief about what a Fascist country we lived in.
I don’t know about you but I’m really disappointed. Just when you think it is safe to trust a politician it turns out that one is really not that different from another. Republicans trusted Bush when he campaigned in 2000, and promised that we would go to war to fight and win battles and not for the purpose of nation building. Fools they turned out to be. Democrats trusted Obama when he campaigned on a platform of change promising to end these awful wars, close Gitmo and the black ops sites and once again I hear that awful giant sucking sound of that was then and this is now.
I try and I mean I really try to avoid cynicism. It isnt easy. I have to say that I a beginning to feel like Charley Brown at the beginning of football season. Lucy is holding the ball and I think the words I am looking for as she snatches it away are “Oh, good grief”
well, may not those words exactly,but the sentiment is there.
Of course all presidents love power. they love the airplane and the helicopter and the weekend place and never having to wash dishes or make kid’s lunches and pick up their dirty socks. They love it that their wives have hair stylists on call that they ask someone else if they look fat in those pants, and their kids ride to school in the limo with the flags and even the puppy that someone else trains and cleans up after. No more cleaning out the gutters on fall weekends. They love Yo Yo Ma playing at their xmas party and the cool maps in the Situation Room. Who wouldn’t get carried away with all that?
I worry about those little girls. They are still young enough to be fooled by servants and every flavor if ice cream one can imagine but one day they will ask their father what he really did during those years in the White House about serious stuff like sending young men and women off to a war we can’t win and we won’t win and what he did and did not do about torture. Their dad is the one guy who could really change things if he cared to keep his promises and what about that? a father who couldn’t keep his promises to the folks who elected him?
Here is the cynicism creeping in again: even the Nazis had kids who loved their fathers and who played with them and sang them Deutchland Uber Alles as they drifted off to sleep and let them wear their boots and hats before they went off to work in the morning dreaming up more efficient ways to eliminate Jews, Gypsies, Gays, intellectuals and other undesirables who got in the way of their 1000 year Reich. I’m glad that I am not Michelle Obama telling her kids, “Daddy has to do stuff that he really doesn’t want to do but its for the good of the country.”
Does any of this make you wonder where we’d be if Hilary Clinton had been elected?
Maybe I should have bit my tongue instead of putting it in cheek. It’s just lousy taking the news instead of making it. I’ve had the privilege to vote four times for Barack Obama. I detest sounding like a person with four loaves of bread under each arm crying POOR! With expectations, it’s difficult to balance.
“Civilized discourse is a lot easier if we don’t make caricatures out of the other side.” – Gyges
Thank you Gyges.
Mike and Mespo,
The only mention of impeachment in this thread was a jokes. Civilized discourse is a lot easier if we don’t make caricatures out of the other side.
While I agree that we should wait until we see what those rule changes are before passing judgment, what’s wrong with putting a little pressure to ensure that the rule changes address the right issues?
Well someone has got out some photos:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5325444/New-prisoner-abuse-photographs-emerge-despite-US-bid-to-block-publication.html
Don’t war crimes have to be prosecuted by military commissions?
“Personally, I’ll wait to see the rule changes before heading out to build the scaffolding.”
Mespo,
Why wait? You know he’s evil let’s just impeach him now! Things will be so much better then. We already had some people determine his unfitness, both trolls and civil libertarians.
Thing were oh so much better before he got elected. At least we had targets with which to vent our hate. This deceiver with his 68% favorable rating is just no fun for those of us who are so politically pure.
“Personally, I’ll wait to see the rule changes before heading out to build the scaffolding.”
Mespo,
Why wait? You know he’s evil let’s just impeach him now! Things will be so much better then. We already had some people determine his unfitness, both trolls and civil libertarians.
Thing were oh so much better before he got elected. At least we had targets with which to vent our hate. This deceiver with his 68% favorable rating is just no fun for those of us who are so politically pure.
Personally, I’ll wait to see the rule changes before heading out to build the scaffolding. If he eliminates hearsay evidence or requires prosecutors to show it is reliable prior to admission, reinstates the right not to testify (and no comment thereupon), and permits choice of counsel, he has made significant improvements over the old quasi-Star Chamber system set up by Bush. Congress may also impose its own rules on the MCA according to the published report that JT cited. I like to look before I leap, but I will concede the trend is troubling.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-military-tribunal15-2009may15,0,4322036.story?page=1
What’s the under over on JT calling for President Obama’s impeachment?
FF LEO,
Is that Trojan or Ramses? I think I am needing to practice safe Blawging.
An atty. from human rights watch made the following points concernign military commissions.
1. MC fall under the executive branch. As such they are vunerable to undue influence by the executive. She pointed out the many prosecutors who resigned because of pressure for convictions by the bush administration.
2. The idea that MC will expedite the process of “justice” is a non-starter. As before, because there are many illegalities under the MC system, there will be years worth of challeges to the illegal aspects of them. Until those court challenges are resolved, people are left without a fair trial, to rot in jail.
3. She pointed out that civilian courts have handled over 100 terrorism cases while MC have handled exactly 3. We have just had 2 cases of Gitmo detainees in American civil courts. These cases had no difference from other people being held, awaiting trial in Gitmo.
4. Hearsay evidence will be allowed if the prosecution can “prove” the testimony is worthy of being considered. The executive branch will decide if it’s worthy.
5. This act does grave damage to our image abroad. It is one more example of the refusal of our nation to live by the rule of law. Convictions in these types of situations will be questioned by the world. They will make heroes of people like KSM who can claim his trial was unjust, which in fact, it would be.
Yesterday Holder told Nadler that we could hold people in indefinite detention if it’s within the framework of our or international law. He then mentioned that we could hold people for the duration of a conflict as one example of this framework.
When bush said these things, people understood that it was wrong, that it was a grab for power by an unjust executive. Something that was unjust did not become just under a new leader. We do not trust the executive to be a benevolent dictator. We demand our executive follows the rule of law. Our loyalty should not be to a person. Our loyalty belongs to the Constitution and the rule of law.
Military Commisions are a dangerous veering into unchecked executive power. That is what they were under bush and that is what they are under Obama.
The Notorious Liar Obama is guilty of War Crimes. He has voted at least 11 times to fund the Wars of Aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding a War of Aggression is conspiracy in War Crimes. Obama has been a War Criminal for years in funding, conspiring and waging US-led Wars of Aggression.
I understand Obama is also responsible for bombing murders in Pakistan.
See how rapidly the virus spreads! It mutated my Bush 2.0 intention into Obama 2.0 when I posted it.
Therefore, the latest version is aka OBushBama 2.01 (Beta…any testers?)
Warning: There is a major bug and intrusion in the software/hardWar version of Obama 2.0.
A trojan virus will rapidly spread to infect the U.S. Constitution and the Rule of Law. Once established it cannot be removed by the brightest constitutional lawyers.
The Bill of Rights will morph into the Will of Wrongs…