Another day, another crime

[solarbird]

Oh, you know how the Bush administration lost all those FOIA battles, trying to suppress evidence of the torture regime, and how the Obama administration kept fighting them to further that suppression, and has been withholding torture evidence against court orders while they generate new appeals to stall for time? I do!

Well, it turns out Mr. Obama has been working with Senator Lieberman to retroactively exempt torture evidence from FISA. It's akin to the retroactive immunity Mr. Obama supported as a candidate that let them suppress the illegal domestic spying programme Mr. Bush started, only for the government itself.

Glenn Greenwald has commentary here, including a rundown of all the things Mr. Obama has done to protect Mr. Bush's torture programme, as well as some of his administration's other efforts against governmental transparency - they're significant.

edit: I typed "FISA" for "FOIA" original; thanks to mathmuffin for the correction.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I'm curious: what is it you want done about all of this? I don't mean what do you want the administration to do -- that's obvious, and I agree with you, though I don't think any administration we have any chance to get is going to do it. I mean what do you want your readers to do? Throw out the Obama administration next election? And replace it with what? Hilary Clinton, who was involved in some of the other worst coverup fiascos in White House history? Mike Huckabee, who's more likely to win the next election than any Democrat except Obama? Sarah Palin, likewise?

What result are you trying to achieve, and what's your blueprint for how to get there? I'm not being critical, I'm honestly curious. Your economics posts have convinced me you think these things through better than I sometimes can; I want to know where you're trying to get to and how.

pt1, ran long, sorry

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I'm (obviously) not solarbird, but as someone who admires her tireless efforts to keep posting about things like this, which keeps me occasionally posting when I have long since given up on my fellow Americans on a very fundamental level, I can tell you what I hope she achieves:

(1) Get people to look beyond CNN etc and see the actuality of what most Democrats are, which is to say, except in a very wishy washy way on most social issues, not really on "our" side; that is to say, those of us who hated everything about the Bush administration, to very loosely define things. Most people on my f--list still think these people are actually making an honest effort to work for the common good, and care about advancing liberal social causes and protecting our privacy and civil liberties. A few of them are, but if you're paying attention, I don't think you can say that about most of them. Thy are on the side of people with a lot of money who can give them cushy perks and contributions, which includes everyone from insurance companies to the (increasingly private) military industrial complex.

(2) One reason the administration is being as completely evil as the Bush/Cheney administration was is because they can. If posts like this gets people's heads out of their asses and makes them realize their hero and our wonderful 60-vote majority are continuing everything from spying on citizens to wolf slaughter to dolphin killing sonar, and said people actually start complaining in sufficient numbers, there is a chance for improvement. See the health care debacle. It would be a far worse debacle without the tireless efforts of people like Corrente and Susie Madrak and many other bloggers; while something actually genuinely good is still a long shot, it still is a *shot* at all only because of these people, and there's, at this point, a 50/50 chance, at least!, that this administration won't make things worse for people and better for the insurance companies under the guise of doing the opposite (actually, it's looking better than 50/50, but I'm still waiting for the last minute cave-in and the reinstatement of the original Baucus bill in all its glory, or something similar). Hopefully people like Solarbird and Greenwald can have a similar effect on civil liberties issues. Alas, people seem to care less about this, and without mass outrage, you don't even have to spend money to slap this shit pastthe general public, so, let's keep trying. Go mass outrage! Go, primary challenges and withholding of funds and voting elsewhere!. Those are the only weapons we've got. The congressional dipshits do want to get reelected. So does Obama.

pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

(3) Why not run a primary challenge to Obama? I don';t think one will win, primarily because of head in the sand fools who still think he's the Lightbringer and secondarily because of the vast horde of inertia-driven sheep out there, but if there is hope for real change, it comes from posts like this. To answer the Hillary comparison, she introduced a bill to get rid of companies like Blackwater, which the rest of the Senate and the general public completely ignored, and unlike Obama she voted the right way on telecomm immunity last summer, and had been slightly better than him (admittedly, not remotely as good as she should have been) previous to that. She also personally spelled out specifics of programs she wanted to implement, from solar power to microlending operations to ways to improve the lot of Native Americans, instead of spouting vague bullshit and saying "look at my frequently rewritten website," and *anyone* who gets specific is going to be more accountable.

Not saying she's remotely perfect, and as for other candidates, yeah, they are all going to have flaws, but the idea is to get someone who has good points to balance out the flaws. Most of them have those, some more than others. Obama has really none other than electability/likability/speech-making; policy wise? He sucks shit. The Ledbetter act his first couple of days in office and the probably good Sotomayor appt are the only good things he's done the whole time he's been in office. That is woefully inadequate' under current circumstances, and under any circumstances when copared to the bad thigns he's done. The only reason we can't run better people is because of self-fulfilling prophecies come voting time (helped by media collusion; they kill candidates they don't like, such as Dean 2004, very quickly; they only reason Hillary survived past January is she already had a very loyal base and she is, quite honestly, tougher than anyone else running, something her hubby also had).

(4) Okay, so we're most likely going to be stuck w/Obama; get a better congress! Run primary challengers, get a grassroots efforts going. Should the same people win, vote 3rd party. There is no way, absolutely no way, even our current media can spin Democratic incumbent losses that look like R: 45%; D: 40%; Green: 13%, L: 6%; Other: 1% as a sudden failure of the Democrats to be sufficiently conservative or moderate. Short term tactical losses to achieve long term strategic improvements, and they're not even really losses, cause, see the whole "our guys are doing the same thing as their guys were, jsut with better rhetoric" thing.

Ultimately, it's about what gets done, not whether there's an R or D by whoever gets elected. If the only way to keep the biosphere from being destroyed and the world from turning into a giant police state w/a third world economy is to let the Dems wonder what they did wrong for 2 years, then so be it. Risky, but no more risky than hoping they suddenly all have an epiphany (which would also require people writing posts like hers, and my far less frequent, far less viewed, ones, and the full time bloggers like greenwald and the good people at correntewire.com and susiemadrak.com (I really hope I spelled her name right; Suburban Guerrilla should get ya there too) and Krugman and Naked Capitalism and various other places. Seriously, they gotta actually vote and speak (both! tho voting is more important, but both!) like they stand for worthwhile goals or we gotta get rid of them and get another party going to oppose the Rethugs.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I'm cool with getting a better Congress if possible, and with pressuring Obama into the realization that, as Molly Ivins put it, "You got to dance with them that brung ya." The liberal grassroots put Obama in office; his votes may have come from a mix including the swing center, but the enthusiastic volunteers who rounded them up were progressives, and there were things they wanted from him, and I've no objection to knocking that forcibly into his head.

I'm a liberal atheist-Jewish lesbian, and I am willing to put up with a lot rather than risk another fundamentalist Christian president. So I'm not keen on dividing the party on a presidential challenge unless someone is proposed who I think would *both* be better *and* be able to win, and there is nobody I can think of in current politics who meets both criteria. I'm all for scaring him a bit, though, and getting a Congress more willing to push him.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[loopback.livejournal.com]

"I am willing to put up with a lot rather than risk another fundamentalist christian president"

except, well, the fundie christians & right wingers talk a lot of hate, but don't enact laws.

who enacted DOMA? who is holding up DADT? ayup.

and they KNOW that people in your demographic will never vote for 'the other team', so why should they do anything for you? the other guy is worse.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I disagree that they don't enact laws. They mostly don't pass statutes at the federal level. They do appoint judges who make huge differences in what laws it is possible for them to pass at the local and state levels without being blocked in the federal courts, which is what's got us "gay civil rights are prohibited" (rather than merely not enacted) laws in 20-something states by now.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[solarbird]

I'm a liberal atheist-Jewish lesbian, and I am willing to put up with a lot rather than risk another fundamentalist Christian president.
And iteration on this after iteration on this over the last 30-odd years is how we got here.

Just sayin'.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's all of how we got here, but I recognize that it's some of it. Revolution is a tricky thing to institute; people not only have to be angry, they have to be angrier than they are frightened, and yet still manage to have some hope along with their nothing-left-to-lose. It's a tricky balance to achieve in enough people to get it going. I don't have any qualms about saying I'm not there yet but it might be a better thing if I were.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[solarbird]

I don't think it's all of how we got here
It's not all of it, but it's most of it. I've watched and been involved in this up close and personal, and to my eyes, it's been the dominating factor for many years.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

In order for us to have gotten here, there needed two factors: the left doing nothing and the right doing something active. The rise of hard-core fundamentalism as the dominant characteristic of the Republican party and conservatism in America, and the corresponding decline in scientific thinking, rational presentation of political argument, or the very notion of facts, was a separate matter. The left didn't help prevent it, but it didn't cause it either. Whatever else was going on there, it was going on in the minds of a different group of people, and I'm not positive what it was or why it happened but it didn't happen because the left was docile. It may have been offered power because the left was docile but that doesn't explain how it developed enthusiasts in the first place.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[solarbird]

Oh, I see. Your scope is larger than mine in this discussion. In that scope, yes, of course.

I can fault the left in a variety of ways for the rise of fundamentalist power, but no more than I can fault, say, the libertarian right or what used to be mainstream Republicanism.

Re: pt2 (and apologies if i got a little too heated/lengthy)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

That's fair.

[avram]

One of the tragic failures of American democracy is the tendency for Americans to think of the President as the be-all and end-all of government. The Founders intended the President to be subordinate to Congress -- you'll notice that it's not the President who has the power to remove Congress from office.

So there's one option: Write to your Senators and Representative. If enough people do this, Congress can hold Obama's feet to the fire on this issue. (Which is also part of the problem -- most Americans don't actually mind the idea of prisoners getting brutalized, as long as they think of the prisoners as bad guys. That's why so many Americans support the death penalty, and make jokes about prison rape.)

The other option is public agitation: Marches, demonstrations.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

A good political science course I once took described the president as having "the first default chance at power." If he/she doesn't take it, someone else will, but they have the best chance at being able to get things done (good or bad) simply because the president is by definition a united front and Congress is usually heavily divided. Publicity also helps a lot, and being a single face helps a lot with the publicity end of things. So I am particularly nervous about who gets that shot at power, even when it is the difference between bad and slightly worse. I agree that, if Congress can be persuaded to get off its collective tail, that's probably the way to push the president into acquiescence, if not action.

[solarbird]

I mean what do you want your readers to do?
Frankly, I'd like to see them come up with some ideas. I've laid out my opinions on what needs to happen many times, but since they don't involve shoring up the Democratic Party, I get yelled at a lot by people who say "but omg that means we might get a REPUBLICAN omg!!1!" ignoring the fact that that's how we've arrived here. As I've said many times: rewarding an "opposition" party that does not actually oppose means that you are telling them not to oppose. The Democrats have been amply rewarded for pretending to oppose while actually actively enabling the things they pretend to oppose; so of course they're going to carry on the same way.

There are people reading this who believe the Democratic party can be salvaged in its current form. I disagree. The party leadership and most of the core party are the problem, and in trying to take over that party, co-option or marginalisation appear inevitable, with the latter being most likely. (That includes in this administration and with this party leadership, which will do its best to take you out if you primary-challenge or even target anyone with a (D) by their names.)

Most of the beltway "liberal" groups have of course fallen into line, which is, again, how we got here.

Unfortunately, I also believe that most Americans have been so thoroughly indoctrinated from elementary school forward against anything but The Two Parties of The Two Party System that mounting a proper new party, while the most likely way to get us out of this mess, is nearly impossible. Accordingly, I hope that enough Americans will be disgusted by this that they will be prompted into coming up with some solution I don't list here.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation. I think we will get a third party, but it's more likely to be a far-right one than a solidly left one for the moment; hopefully we can use that as impetus to create a fourth one which means something.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I'm horrified. I really didn't expect this to continue; thought the Senate would stop it. Seriously. And this is me who calls for the heads of the Dem leadership and gets yelled at by others for doing so. I *still* expected better.

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

solarbird, I think you meant FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) rather than FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Though FISA had been in the news again a few months ago with a failed challenge to telecom immunity (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/03/MND41808DC.DTL).

With the Obama administration promising to never use torturous interrogation techniques again, they have no operational reason to keep the evidence of torture secret. The remaining reasons are protection of people who honestly thought they were working within the law and avoiding feeding our opponents' propaganda machines. And the protection reason might be valid, but the propaganda reason cited in the article falls flat. Officially declaring that the photos are so bad that we can never make them public is already prime fodder for anti-American propaganda.

[solarbird]

Oops, thanks; fixed.

Mr. Bush promised never to use torture and that the US was not torturing many times, including while torture was ongoing. This is not an assertion that Mr. Obama's administration is actively torturing anyone; just a note that such assurances mean absolutely zero. Taking the word of one chief administrator over another because you like one over the other is in my mind a bad idea.