After the Inauguration, I shared my thoughts on President Barack Obama’s address. I liked the speech but, as with many civil libertarians, I do not share the faith in his commitment to principle — at least not the principles behind civil liberties. Below is today’s print column that touches on some of the same themes with a few additional observations.
OBAMA AND THE LEAP OF FAITH
The theme of President Obama’s second inauguration speech was promoted as “Faith in America’s Future.” Indeed, speaking to a smaller crowd with polls showing his popularity at a low of 49 percent, Obama was clearly speaking to the faithful – a core who continued to rally around this iconic figure. For others, the theme seemed often seemed more “Hope Over Experience.”
Though the president spoke eloquently of fulfilling Martin Luther King’s dream, his first term was most notable for fulfilling Richard Nixon’s dream of an “Imperial Presidency.” From kill lists to warrantless surveillance to drone attacks to secret evidence, Obama eviscerated values that once defined liberals. Then, by sheer power of personality, he made them love him for it.
Notably, the inauguration speech spoke of civil rights rather than civil liberties. The references to gay rights were unprecedented and commendable. However, it also reflected the difference between equality and liberty in Obama’s vision.
Civil libertarians have long complained that Obama has lowered the baseline of rights for all citizens with eroding privacy protections, unilateral presidential powers and limits on due process. We can all be treated equally and have few rights. Equal denial of rights is nothing to celebrate.
While heralding America’s triumph over the “tyranny of a king,” Obama has acquired near authoritarian powers in some areas. Early in his first term, the president shocked many by going to the CIA and publicly assuring CIA officials that they would not be prosecuted for torture — despite Obama’s recognition that waterboarding used by the Bush administration is indeed torture.
Ultimately, Obama has not only embraced the controversial Bush policies on surveillance, secrecy and presidential powers, he has also expanded those policies. Most notorious was his assertion of the power to kill any U.S. citizen considered a threat to the nation’s security.
His administration also has moved to squelch lawsuits designed to protect citizens from warrantless surveillance and investigations. The White House has adopted the rejected Nuremberg defense of “just following orders” in blocking charges against government officials responsible for torture and other abuses. Further, the administration has embraced the military tribunal system and the use of secret evidence in prosecuting certain defendants.
Even on the very values of equality embraced in the speech, Obama was offering hope over experience. Politics rather than principle have long guided this president.
Obama’s passion for gay rights was notably missing in his first term. During much of the past four years, the Obama administration fought against gay rights in a variety of cases in federal court, from challenges to “don’t ask, don’t tell” to the Defense of Marriage Act.
Even today, after switching legal positions on issues like DOMA in court, Obama has been unwilling to support the claim that sexual orientation should be given the same constitutional protection as race or even gender. It was Vice President Biden who forced Obama to publicly embrace same-sex marriage toward the end of his first term — public statements that Obama admitted angered him.
Though some insist that the president was merely exercising political realism in avoiding such divisive issues before re-election, it meant that he repeatedly chose politics over civil rights in his first term. The test of principle is to support equality even when it is not to your advantage.
Obama’s repeated insistence that “we must act” may foreshadow even more unilateral action in the future. The president has already proclaimed in the immigration area that he will not enforce certain laws. He has asserted the right to unilaterally define what constitutes a congressional “recess” to allow him to appoint high officials without Senate confirmation. He has claimed the right to attack other nations with drones based solely on his view of national interest.
To put it simply, Obama is the president Nixon longed to be. It will take more than a lip-synched Beyoncé performance to quiet these concerns. What was once a system of checks and balances has been replaced by a leap of faith that these powers will be used by Obama and his successors wisely.
It is faith in Obama, not our future, that has lulled too many into silence in the face of an Imperial President.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.
January 23, 2013
Gene H, re: Concerned citizen: “Aaron Swartz suicide shines the harsh bright light on what America and its lawmakers are doing to the bright, young people in America.”
GH: “Your scope is bit narrow. It’s not just the bright, young people in America being targeted. It’s anyone with the gumption to challenge the corporatists from any and all parties and their ever overreaching grab for absolute power.”
GH, You ARE right. The point I was making is the tremendous fear, as a young man, that would drive him to commit suicide. He knew the reality of the full force of the government coming after him, seizing his assets and leaving him with nothing to fight with. We are all “Aaron Swartz”.
When they can reach the bright young people and destroy them? Then what hope do any of us have? The lawmakers, with the help of the “prosecutor / lobbyists” who sit in the legislatures and Congress daily have brought us to this and so much more — #1 Jailer in the World — a shameful distinction. I don’t see them voting to “undo” the Patriot Act, Torture and address the broken criminal justice system, sentencing reform and prison reform.
Who knows, with all these “hits” maybe the good guys will even score a run one of these days. If they don’t get indicted first . . . .
I didn’t see the Frontline piece. Did they really do a such a credible job exposing Breuer; can’t believe it’s so closely linked in time.
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From FDL:
“Somehow Frontline was able to get multiple persons involved in fraud in the mortgage market to go on camera while Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who was interviewed for the program, claimed he and the Justice Department could not make a case against Wall Street. Breuer was asked about a speech he gave to the New York City Bar Association in which he claimed to have been worried about the consequences of prosecuting big banks – a concern that seemed to trump his commitment to enforcing the law. Breuer’s FBI counterpart, also interviewed, expressed frustration at the inability to make criminal cases against bankers claiming to have argued continually with Breuer and divulging that on a personal level he felt there was criminal fraud.”
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/23/frontline-exposes-dojs-failure-to-prosecute-wall-street/
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Another sterling example of Obama justice, whistleblower prosecution (also FDLl ink)
“Kiriakou appeared on an episode of “Citizen Radio” this morning. Interviewed by the show’s co-host Allison Kilkenny, he revealed that his attorneys have a document showing that he clearly was the victim of a selective prosecution.”
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/23/former-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-justice-department-is-targeting-whistleblowers/
Thanks, shano, for both of those links.
Good riddance, Lanny.
Here’s a portion of the twitter exchange:
FRONTLINE: Marty – some viewers have wondered about whether or how the Justice Department or other government agencies have responded to the film. Any word?
Martin Smith: Frontline – Well, the justice department called and said they thought it was a hit piece, that i came with an agenda and that they will never co-operate with us in the future.
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Ah, yes. Just another “hit piece.” Thanks again, shano.
Some good news:
Goodby Lanny!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/doj-criminal-division-chief-stepping-down/2013/01/23/e4331e32-64e0-11e2-b84d-21c7b65985ee_story.html
Haha AP! Want to see the Justice Depts. reaction to this film?:
https://twitter.com/QuietAmerican55/status/294175269550432256/photo/1
The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions
A new PBS Frontline report examines a profound failure of justice that should be causing serious social unrest
by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/untouchables-wall-street-prosecutions-obama
Excerpt:
PBS’ Frontline program on Tuesday night broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.
What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with impunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.
Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs (who, just by the way, overwhelmingly supported Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign) as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig put it two weeks ago when expressing anger over the DOJ’s persecution of Aaron Swartz: “we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House.” (Indeed, as “The Untouchables” put it: while no senior Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, “many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers” have been).
As I documented at length in my 2011 book on America’s two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is overwhelming. That evidence directly negates the primary excuse by Breuer (previously offered by Obama himself) that the bad acts of Wall Street were not criminal. …continues
“Aaron Swartz suicide shines the harsh bright light on what America and its lawmakers are doing to the bright, young people in America.”
Your scope is bit narrow. It’s not just the bright, young people in America being targeted. It’s anyone with the gumption to challenge the corporatists from any and all parties and their ever overreaching grab for absolute power.
Yes, a young, gifted man with an outstanding recognition in his field and the world, would NEVER imagine he would go to prison in America much less have the great potential of dying there. Aaron Swartz suicide shines the harsh bright light on what America and its lawmakers are doing to the bright, young people in America.
Lawmakers are responsible for the laws that put innocent people at risk for three felonies a day. Prosecutors have used draconian and poorly written laws as a weapon for plea bargains. We have become a nation of “plea bargain trials”, which is NO trial at all.
This has resulted in the mass incarceration of America’s people — in “land of the free”. Prosecutors having the awesome power in the states and the DOJ should be doing their jobs as gatekeepers for fair justice, NOT convictions at all cost to become the next state Attorney General or next Governor. The pattern is well established. Informed citizens can see this and are not being heard by their lawmakers. Instead, the lawmakers are ignored the involved, informed citizen, sweeping the unbalanced justice system “under the rug” and moving on and up in their careers toward lucrative retirement and pensions. Time to stop this “scam” against our own people. Misdemeanors turned into felonies punishable with long draconian sentences — silencing voices until they move on and up.
http://prisonlaw.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/new-study-prosecutors-not-police-have-driven-prison-population-growth/
Prison Law Blog by Sara Mayeux
New Study: Prosecutors, Not Police, Have Driven Prison Population Growth
“The United States prison population has exploded over the past 40 years. But why? Have police been making more arrests? Have prosecutors been charging more people with crimes? Have judges been issuing longer sentences? Have parole boards become stricter? (All of the above?) Since many accounts of mass incarceration collapse “the criminal justice system” into a single monolith, it can be hard to know exactly what part of the system has driven the growth in the prison population.
A new empirical study by Fordham law professor John Pfaff aims to provide a more granular explanation of the causes of mass incarceration. Pfaff concludes that only one other relevant number has changed as dramatically as the prison population has: the number of felony case filings per arrest. In other words, police haven’t been arresting more people:
[B]etween 1982 and 1995, arrests rose by 26% (from 3,261,613 to 4,118,039) while mean [prison] admissions rose by 149% (from 212,415 to 530,642); between 1995 and 2007, arrests fell by 28.6% while admissions rose by another 31.9%. It is thus clear that arrests are not driving the growth in incarceration—and by extension neither are trends in crime levels, since their effect is wholly mediated by these arrest rates.
Rather, prosecutors have become more likely to charge those arrested with crimes: …. (excerpt)”
Well said JT.
The gov has a lot to hide. And when the feds decide to target you, your life will never be the same. They’re very good at destroying people.
If anyone has ever seen the flick, Leap of Faith, it is pertinent. And..a great soundtrack!
From the FDL article:
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/23/former-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-justice-department-is-targeting-whistleblowers/
“Agents followed him wherever he went—when he was grocery shopping, when he was out to dinner and even when he was in church. They still follow him.
It’s a “very emotional psychological tool they use against you,” he said.
The result of being a government target has been losing his friends, having people push away from him because they don’t want to be involved and risk the possibility of the FBI coming after them. He also has racked up “legal fees approaching a million dollars.” It would take “multiple lifetimes” to pay his legal bills.”
========
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92207687 ”
FBI Surveillance Team Reveals Tricks Of The Trade by Dina Temple-Raston )
Excerpt:
“And, he says, you’d have a team dressed for the occasion. SSGs carry entire wardrobes in their cars — a business suit in case they need to go to Wall Street, gym shorts in case surveillance requires them to go for a jog through Central Park.
Muldoon says he has some SSGs who travel with a bicycle in their trunk so that at a moment’s notice they could ride through the streets of New York pretending to be a messenger. “They are prepared for anything,” he says.”
From the earlier FDL piece: “Kiriakou appeared on an episode of “Citizen Radio” this morning. Interviewed by the show’s co-host Allison Kilkenny, he revealed that his attorneys have a document showing that he clearly was the victim of a selective prosecution.
( http://wearecitizenradio.com/2013/01/23/20130123-former-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-on-the-obama-administrations-war-on-whistleblowers/ )
The criminal justice is broken and NO politician is addressing it except for Senator Jim Webb. Prosecutorial misconduct is rife with abuse of power. T
It’s time to end immunity for prosecutors. It’s time to criminalize prosecutorial misconduct. Then, these witch-hunts and “high-profile” targets-for-political-and-financial gain would evaporate, along with the obscene amounts of money being made in the “criminal justice industry” — a “War on America”!
Aaron Swartz Tip of Iceberg in Justice System Rife w/Intimidation & Prosecutorial Overreach? – YouTube
Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou: Justice Department is Targeting Whistleblowers
By: Kevin Gosztola Wednesday January 23, 2013 11:46 am
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/23/former-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-justice-department-is-targeting-whistleblowers/
Excerpt:
On the Citizen Radio program, Kiriakou described his evolution from an officer to a whistleblower. “I’ve learned so much about the psychology of whistleblowing,” he recounted. “I did not set out to be a whistleblower. I’ve learned that no whistleblower sets out to be a whistleblower.”
What happened was while he was in the CIA he was asked if he wanted to be trained in the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”—torture. This he found out involved waterboarding, putting people in dog cages, sleep deprivation, etc. He had a “moral problem” with that and turned down the opportunity. He also said he was “uncomfortable with it as a policy.” Then, news broke that “videotaped instances of waterboarding” had been destroyed.
He was contacted by ABC News. Someone with the network told him they had a source who says you waterboarded Abu Zubaydah.” Kiriakou thought that could not be true because he “was the only person kind to Abu Zubaydah.” He was invited to go on ABC News and defend himself and wound up doing two things that were ground-breaking.
Kiriakou was the “first former or current CIA officer to confirm the CIA was torturing prisoners.” He also “said it was not a product of rogue officers but official policy that went all the way up to the president.” And, after that interview, the FBI never stopped investigating him, he said.
Agents followed him wherever he went—when he was grocery shopping, when he was out to dinner and even when he was in church. They still follow him.
It’s a “very emotional psychological tool they use against you,” he said.
The result of being a government target has been losing his friends, having people push away from him because they don’t want to be involved and risk the possibility of the FBI coming after them. He also has racked up “legal fees approaching a million dollars.” It would take “multiple lifetimes” to pay his legal bills.
Kiriakou is the only CIA officer involved in the agency’s torture program to be convicted of a crime. He used to think it was not a good idea to prosecute officers responsible for torture because he believed only “guys at the working level” would be prosecuted but he has changed his mind.
“Now that we know more about who was involved and how many people were involved, it makes me sick to my stomach that this was a program that really was on quite a large scale with people at every level of the CIA and the National Security Council and in some cases in the Justice Department,” Kiriakou declared. “Nobody is facing the music for committing serious crimes. We even have al Qaeda prisoners or alleged Al Qaeda prisoners, who were killed during their interrogations, and nobody faced charges for that.”
He reported that support for commutation or a pardon is growing. Ralph Nader, Bruce Fein and Joan Claybrook signed a letter to President Barack Obama. A Change.org petition has been circulating as well as one from the Greek-American community. Another letter has also been signed by “more than a dozen and a half CIA officers,” FBI agents who served with Kiriakou in Pakistan and “notable Americans like Pete Seeger, Oliver Stone and Daniel Ellsberg.”
POLITICO obtained some of these letters. Gerstein reported:
“Many years later after the capture of Abu Zubaydah, people at work would stop him in the hallway to thank him for his service to our country, and John would laugh and remark to me how amazing it was that strangers would stop to speak to him,” one former colleague at CIA, Elizabeth Reidel, recalled. “I recognize that he has pled guilty to a crime but staunchly believe that he remains a man of upright character, decency and integrity,” wrote Riedel, a veteran analyst. (Her husband, former CIA official Bruce Riedel, chaired the interagency review on Pakistan and Afghanistan policy President Barack Obama ordered as he took office in 2009.)
“John is a highly ethical individual,” wrote former CIA officer Gene Coyle. “I actually use John as a positive example in my classes that I teach at Indiana University when discussing matters of consicence and ethical behavior by government employees, and where he has been a guest speaker….Hopefully, [his] time in prison will be as short as the law allows.”
“I cannot condone the crime to which John has pleaded guilty, but John Kiriakou is a fundamentally decent, loyal, honorable, and patriotic man who has repeatedly risked his life for our country and who has already suffered economic ruin as a result of this case,” wrote Donald Roberts, a former foreign service officer who worked with Kiriakou in Bahrain.
In conclusion, Kiriakou acknowledged the government’s prosecution has had a chilling effect with the New York Times reporting “many of their security sources have completely dried up.”
“The Justice Dept can deny all they want that they’re targeting whistleblowers, but I think the evidence is clear that they are targeting whistleblowers,” he stated.
If they’re not prosecuting whistleblowers or leakers that exposed official policy, then they are pursuing sports stars or Internet activists, especially those connected to WikiLeaks or Anonymous hacktivism. They are not prosecuting crimes, like fraud on Wall Street or torture by those who authorized it in the highest echelons of government during the administration of President George W. Bush. They are putting truth-tellers in prison and letting the ones who actually abused, hurt or devastated people roam free.
Woman Handcuffed, Detained & Strip-Searched on Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 Files Lawsuit Against Racial Profiling
By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday January 22, 2013 6:01 pm
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/22/woman-handcuffed-detained-strip-searched-on-tenth-anniversary-of-911-files-lawsuit-against-racial-profiling/
Excerpt:
Hebshi penned a blog post for the ACLU, where she describes how she was “scared and alone” in a “dirty cell” and “can’t begin to describe the humiliation” she experienced:
…No one would tell me what was going on despite my repeated requests for information. No one told me of my rights or when I would be able to call my family who had no idea where I was. You can imagine this was very difficult for them as the last time they heard from me was when I hung up the phone with my husband in Ohio saying that stairs were coming and I thought I’d be home soon. I was in the dark about why I was being held until I was interrogated by an FBI agent. Though it still didn’t make sense, I deduced that it was because of my proximity to the men who apparently got up to go to the bathroom a few times during the flight…
Right after the incident, she published a stirring and eloquent account of what happened to her, where she characterized what she was subjected to as “some real shock and awe.” Her post noted that an FBI agent had apologized to her, thanked her for “understanding and cooperating. He also said, “It’s 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren’t there.” And, “they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like.” In fact, “50 other similar incidents across the country” had occurred that day.
Those who are victims of civil liberties violations—those who have their dignity trampled upon—must at least make the government go through the motions of having to defend its senseless acts. Hebshi understands that this case is not just about her but also about others who have experienced the horrors of racial profiling. If people like Hebshi do not attempt to show the agents and officers are wrong when incidents like this happen, this type of conduct becomes acceptable. They figure they have the power to violate whomever they choose and, if they make a mistake, they can just apologize and everything will be okay for them. They never have to think twice about dehumanizing people without any evidence or probable cause. And that is why lawsuits like Hebshi’s are critical, especially in the post-9/11 new normal of which all US citizens can be subjected at any time.
(http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/some-real-shock-and-awe-racially-profiled-and-cuffed-detroit)
DonS,
I understand, but every election is a choice between two or more candidates who have strengths and weaknesses. We have to choose the one that we believe comes closest to the ideal that we are looking for.