As many of us expected, President Obama’s decision to block any investigation or prosecution of war crimes has led Republicans to rehabilitate George Bush’s legacy. The latest claim came from former Vice President Dick Cheney who previously boasted about the torture program in public — unconcerned about any prosecution from Attorney General Eric Holder. Now, Cheney is boasting that Obama has “learned from experience” that some of the Bush administration’s decisions on terrorism issues.
Cheney stated “I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he’s learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election.” He added “I think he’s learned that he’s not going to be able to close Guantanamo . . . That it’s — if you didn’t have it, you’d have to create one like that. You’ve got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans.”
Obama opened himself up to his unwanted alliance when he decided to protect Bush officials from prosecution despite the obligation of his Administration under existing treaties to investigate and prosecute acts of torture. Just last week, a senior former Justice official denounced the Administration for its complicity and said that it would leave a lasting stain on the country.
Cheney also called Obama a one-term president. If so, Obama has earned both Cheney recommendation and his loss of a second term. As promising the Senate that he would not continue his political conduct from the Clinton years at Justice, Holder proceeded to make the ultimate political act by blocking prosecutions after Obama promised that CIA officials would never be prosecuted for the alleged war crimes. It was the triumph of politics over principle — even war crimes principles were not enough to risk alienating the right. Politics should not have been part of the equation, but it also proved to be a remarkably illogical choice since the right never warmed to Obama despite a series of compromises from the White House. The result is that Obama is both unpopular and unprincipled in this area.
Source: The Hill
Jonathan Turley
SM,
The thing is, justice requires you punish people you agree with for crimes as well.
If credible evidence comes to light that President Obama may have commuted a High Crime or Misdemeanor, well then the impeachment process needs to start.
Existential Philosophy:
What exists is what can exist.
What does not exist is what can not exist.
That which will not exist until tomorrow does not exist today.
Except as Existence does not Exist?
Harris:
🙂
Tootie,
So be it!
Harris:
Let me what if.
You said: So, what is the situation?
The answer to that is: the situation is that every last person on earth is corrupt (most likely genetically from birth).
Being born,then, is the situation that permits the disposition to take form.
The next question is: what to do about it since there is no escape?
My answer: Believe Christ.
Why?
He let people lie about him. Beat him. Assault him. Torture him. Spit on him. And then nail him to a tree.
Yet he asked for their forgiveness. His situation had no bearing on his disposition which was ever virtuous from the start and not dependent on the situation.
He did not have the same genetic code as the rest of human race because he did not have human father.
The rest of us are marked. We have sin. The English word sin comes from the Greek hamartano meaning to “miss the mark” or “be without a share in”.
We have the disposition of being without a share in the perfection.
That is until Christ came along and provided a means to enter into it.
If I wanted clear and convincing evidence that the psychological hogwash that human behavior is controlled by situational factors, as has been demonstrated by folks such as Stanley Milgram, David Rosenhan, and Philip Zimbardo, the situation into which every new president rather unwittingly stumbles and tumbles and the way the conduct of the Office of the President is utterly dominated by situational factors which act as though totally outside the willful control of any person or group of persons may nowhere be better demonstrated as in the Obama Presidency having been driven, human resolve notwithstanding, into the continuing conundrum which people decry with more than due diligence while acting as though perfectly incapable of acting otherwise.
The traditional notion is that there are two clusters of behavior-determining factors, one dispositional and the other situational.
In that traditional notion, people may properly be held accountable for dispositional-grounded choices, because disposition is defined as purportedly within a person’s locus of control; and people may not properly be held accountable for situational-grounded choices because situation is defined as outside a person’s locus of control.
Alas, a sufficiently accurate study of the relationship between what is actually dispositional and what is actually situational, using biological pattern methodologies with resolute rigor, appears to unambiguously demonstrate that all factors deemed dispositional are purely the result of situational factors, and disposition is itself entirely situational.
And, dear folks, that is a latent psychology Ph.D. thesis awaiting someone willing and able to write it.
‘Tain’t the person’ ’tis the situation.”
So, what is the situation?
So, again, what if the answer is, “What is the question?”.
Jill, Appreciate your voice but do not support impeachment of Obama.
“Blouise,
I’m guessing you think I am engaging in presidential race hyping.” (Jill)
========================================================
Nope … I was speaking in general. In my opinion 2012 is done.
The real threat to 2016 and the chance to do something constructive about lessening the threat is within the individual State elections in 2012. Hype over the Presidential election in 2012 takes one’s eye off the real contests that will be taking place within the States.
I have presented my opinion for the consideration of all.
“Jill,
One more thing.
No need to
flatterinsult yourself.”There.
That’s better.
Elaine,
You could be right, but she hasn’t shown the sense to back herself out of anything, except her job as Governor. As Swarthmore Mom suggested,maybe delusion is a better description of her instead of a lack of knowledge. I also think Blouise is correct in directing our attention to the redistricting that is going on right now. I would also add that we should keep our eye on the Republicans in the Senate. I believe that they will continue to block judicial nominations to the point of stifling the courts and preventing the Dems from putting “liberal” judges into positions that could prevent the Republicans from playing games come 2012 and beyond.
Jill,
One more thing.
No need to flatter yourself. If we were making the same arguments I wouldn’t have to quote so extensively from Hayek in an attempt to show you where you are wrong.
Jill…
I sure would like Swarth to reply to my post because if I’m being a racist to call Obama a honkie who is being racist by calling him an African American?
I do this sort of thing just to dislodge the left from their own biased mule-headed nonsense.
Obama’s mother was white, white, white. And she was an American. She wasn’t an African. If she was an African, then Obama cannot be an American because it is ONLY by his mom’s legal status as an American that Obama acquires HIS legal status as an American.
African American, as leftists use it, refers to people of black ancestry. Well, Obama is half white. So the term I used is no less racist than anything else said when referring to Obama. Though, it is slang, to be sure. And, indeed, I didn’t say anything racist and neither did Swarth.
I made a joke on myself, a white girl, to prove a point.
And that point being that Swarth and those like her look at Obama like he is only a black man. He is not.
And this has nothing to do with the subject at hand and Swarth didn’t need to bring into the conversation.
Then, again, I wouldn’t have had this much fun messing with all the pompous self-righteous members of the left.
I’m the one who has the honest debates about race in America. Like the fact that Obama is a white guy if he is a black guy.
🙂
Swarthmore mom,
I think Palin reads the polls–and I think she probably realizes that she won’t be able to play the victim when other Republicans running for president criticize her and call her out for some of her idiotic comments. She knows she garnered a lot of support in the 2008 campaign because of all the accusations she made against Obama…all of the negative things she said about him. She must also realize that she wouldn’t be able to call up the same kind of support by making snarky comments about and accusations against other Republicans in the run-up to the election.
S.M.,
I feel moral consistency is very important. Therefore, I spoke out against bushcheny and I would speak out against Clinton and I will now speak out against Obama.
I think Palin is delusional enough to run.
Tootie,
We don’t agree and I feel calling Obama a honkie is racist as is wondering why African Americans don’t go back to Africa. Both are offensive. I ask that you do not claim we are making the same arguments because we are absolutely not.
Blouise,
I’m guessing you think I am engaging in presidential race hyping. If that is accurate, let me tell you that I am not doing this, I am saying something much more profound than guessing who will win a horse race. I am saying that we must pay attention to Obama’s actions and oppose them now. They are illegal. They are immoral. They are not allowed under our system of govt. If liberals will not oppose wrongdoing now, we will be a part of allowing our own govt., our nation, our own people and other people around the world to be harmed. This is why I really don’t care about the horse race. I care about who is in power right now and what they are doing with that power. Since that power is being misused, that misuse is my duty as a citizen to oppose and I will oppose it though every peaceful means.
Elaine M.
1, January 18, 2011 at 11:40 am
rafflaw,
I think there’s a distinction between being ignorant and being dumb/stupid. It’s true that Palin may think she “should” run for president–but I think even SHE knows that she isn’t informed/educated enough about history, economics, world affairs, etc., to be able to go through the months and months of incessant questioning from the media that she’d have to endure. I also think she’s too lazy to start “hitting the books” and cramming for a run and for the debates she’d have to have with her fellow Republicans.
Then again, I could be wrong.
================================================
I don’t think so … sounds right to me.
Jill Yes I would if she were to be impeached and her male predecessors who committed the same or more grievous acts were not.
rafflaw,
I think there’s a distinction between being ignorant and being dumb/stupid. It’s true that Palin may think she “should” run for president–but I think even SHE knows that she isn’t informed/educated enough about history, economics, world affairs, etc., to be able to go through the months and months of incessant questioning from the media that she’d have to endure. I also think she’s too lazy to start “hitting the books” and cramming for a run and for the debates she’d have to have with her fellow Republicans.
Then again, I could be wrong.
S.M.,
As a woman, if Hillary Clinton was president and had committed the same offenses as Obama is now, would you consider it bad messaging to women to hold her accountable for her war and financial crimes?
I will say for my part that I consider it a bad message to send to women that we are somehow not accountable for our actions. Breaking the laws Obama has broken don’t have anything to do with his race. His impeachment it is a matter of justice. It seems odd to claim that black men and women would not desire justice for the U.S. Certainly, all of us, no matter what color we are should reject racism. Equally, all of us, no matter our color should reject a president’s wrong doing and violation of his oath of office.