Read this story very carefully and take in the difficult information it contains. Our President objects to limitations on his power to detain, interrogate and prosecute WHOEVER, WHEREVER, WHENEVER. He believes in his right to send detainees, without charging them, to secret foreign prisons to be tortured if so desired. He wants to codify…
Read this story very carefully and take in the difficult information it contains. Our President objects to limitations on his power to detain, interrogate and prosecute WHOEVER, WHEREVER, WHENEVER. He believes in his right to send detainees, without charging them, to secret foreign prisons to be tortured if so desired. He wants to codify the abandonment of democratic principles, the violations of the Geneva Convention and the violations of the Constitution that began under Bush.
That is who he is. That is what he believes in. That is what he wants to allow ALL future Presidents to do. As a Democrat, it is now impossible for me to support him. I want him impeached.
The President should not compromise the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This is what he did. He says he will not use the dictatorial powers it provides but what about those who follow him? I believed in him, now I see him as just one more major cog of the cabal that is destroying our country and our rights as a free people. He will not get my vote again. He is a traitor to his oath of office as are all those who voted to pass this bill.
Mario Savio famously said, "...There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. ..."
That's where I'm at with Republicans and Democrats. Much gets made of their toxic disagreements. It's the stuff they agree on that I find so frightening; unjust war, empire building, the drug war, Guantanamo Bay, torture, warrantless surveillance, voodoo economics and a long list of other ills.
I've spent 30 years in the service of this country and I've reached that point Savio talks about, I'm sick at heart, I can no longer pretend that the Democrats present a substantive alternative to the Republicans. They are two sides of the same rotten coin.
Pick your poison. The perfidiousness of Obama, or the pure perfidy of the Republicans. Obama's “the devil made me do it,” vs the evil incarnate. They all can't wait to destroy democracy. And these are our choices in a so-called election year. Good corporatist vs bad corporatist. But there is no good in any of it.
Big mistake. He has become everything he promised us he wouldn't. He has destroyed Due Process. He has greatly expanded the Endless War. He has greatly expanded the Surveillance State. He has widened government secrecy to a point that is could be considered an Iron Curtain. His detention of Bradley Manning is inexcusable in its inhumanity, trashing every concept of fairness embodied in the Geneva Conventions. I WILL NOT vote for him in 2012. I will support Ron Paul in the republican primaries and if he is not the nominee then I will not vote in the general election. The "lesser" of two evils is no solace or excuse.
It is hard to imagine that America will experience a darker day than today, the day we lost our right to habeas corpus. This was a right so important that it was stated by our founding fathers in Article 1 of the Constitution.
The right to Habeas Corpus is one of the most ancient and fundamental rights of free men, preceding but mentioned in the Magna Carta. So it is incredible that the low scum who represent us and the spineless president who is charged with protecting the rights of all the people have the audacity to suspend this most important of all rights with the stroke of a pen.
On the other hand, it is easy to understand why they want to do this. Once someone has been seized by the government, denied the right to counsel, possibly tortured, held for an indeterminate amount of time without charge, what civil court would proceed against them? Clearly the next step will be creation of a kangaroo secrete judge to try them as we now have a secrete kangaroo judge to issue warrants in accordance with the Patriot act.
This is a terrible thing that happened today but what is worse is the mild and disinterested fashion in which it has been reported by the American press and the lack of outrage by the people. We have given up this most fundamental right for the illusion of security but in fact we now have neither rights nor security.
Our Founding Fathers advisedly used the term "person" -- as opposed to "citizen" (used elsewhere in the Constitution to protect the rights of "citizens") -- when they drafted and adopted the Fifth Amendment due process clause, absolutely prohibiting our federal Government from denying any "person" life, liberty or property without "due process of law." The Fifth Amendment is not and never has been limited to protecting US citizens, so President Obama's purported concern for the rights of "citizens" does not meet the Fifth Amendment's requirement that all "persons" be accorded due process by our Government. And of course indefinite detention without any criminal charges or a trial cannot be considered "due process of law" under numerous Supreme Court interpretations of the Fifth Amendment. As a former professor of constitutional law, President Obama knows this just as well as do I (another former professor of constitutional law). President Obama is a disgrace to the legal profession and a traitor to the Constitution which he has taken a sworn oath to uphold and defend. He should resign immediately and seek private employment commensurate with his ethical values, such as selling used cars or fraudulent derivatives.
As a loyal supporter of President Obama since voting for him in the New Jersey Primary, and a proud veteran of our military, I am totally disheartened by the President’s capitulation in signing the current defense legislation. This Bill is a direct injection of autocratic architecture into our system of government. To allow our country’s military to arrest some US citizens on suspicion of some crimes, to hold them indefinitely, and to strip them of their right to a hearing in civilian court is not “defending the constitution”. I doubt that we will see the worst repercussions of these terrible provisions in the immediate future, but there is now a virus in our system of justice. Have none of the President’s advisers noticed that this is precisely the type of law that protestors throughout the Arab world rebelled against in the biggest global story of the year just ended? It is a sad day for our constitution, and a sad day for our country. Perhaps it was not surprising that the law was signed in the last dark hours of the year, when the nation’s citizenry were engaged in their year-end diversions. I cannot know how many votes the President has lost by this action. I can only count my own.
It is quite ironic that a country that fought wars in the 20th Century for freedom and democracy is slowly transforming itself into a state we fought against. Very soon a blog commentary like this will be considered terrorism against the state.
What's next? Special military prisons for American citizens (gulags)?
Yes, and they are called FEMA camps. And don't worry about the Supreme Court being involved because people "detained" in this manner may never come to trial, they will simply disappear at the President's whim.
One small stroke of a unitary executive pen, one giant leap backward for democracy. ACLU Director Anthony Romero calls this craven act the moment when Barack Obama gained the dubious distinction of becoming "forever remembered as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law."
Obama's accompanying signing statement is disingenuous at best, cynical at worst. It was a cowardly New Year's Eve news dump. We are told to trust him unquestioningly because he is the good guy, the Democrat, who would never go against the Constitution and deny an American citizen due process. If he has thought at all about possible dangerous successors waiting in the wings to broaden the scope of this dangerous and muddy bill to accusing and "disappearing" peaceful domestic protesters, it was not enough to make him veto it. This should scare us all to death.
We finally know why the president chose not to prosecute the Bush war criminals. He shares many if not most of the same neocon values and is using the same fear factor to keep the populace cowed, "secure" and stripped of their basic rights.
And this is the man who dares ask us to help him fight a recalcitrant Congress? When it comes to enabling the Security State and the Military Industrial Complex, the two warring political factions never fail to jump into each other's arms to call a complicit truce.
One more reason to Occupy, as if we needed another reason.
Read this story very carefully and take in the difficult information it contains. Our President objects to limitations on his power to detain, interrogate and prosecute WHOEVER, WHEREVER, WHENEVER. He believes in his right to send detainees, without charging them, to secret foreign prisons to be tortured if so desired. He wants to codify the abandonment of democratic principles, the violations of the Geneva Convention and the violations of the Constitution that began under Bush.
That is who he is. That is what he believes in. That is what he wants to allow ALL future Presidents to do. As a Democrat, it is now impossible for me to support him. I want him impeached.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The President should not compromise the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This is what he did. He says he will not use the dictatorial powers it provides but what about those who follow him? I believed in him, now I see him as just one more major cog of the cabal that is destroying our country and our rights as a free people. He will not get my vote again. He is a traitor to his oath of office as are all those who voted to pass this bill.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is our country's darkest hour.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So much for The Magna Carta...
It was fun while it lasted.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mario Savio famously said, "...There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. ..."
That's where I'm at with Republicans and Democrats. Much gets made of their toxic disagreements. It's the stuff they agree on that I find so frightening; unjust war, empire building, the drug war, Guantanamo Bay, torture, warrantless surveillance, voodoo economics and a long list of other ills.
I've spent 30 years in the service of this country and I've reached that point Savio talks about, I'm sick at heart, I can no longer pretend that the Democrats present a substantive alternative to the Republicans. They are two sides of the same rotten coin.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pick your poison. The perfidiousness of Obama, or the pure perfidy of the Republicans. Obama's “the devil made me do it,” vs the evil incarnate. They all can't wait to destroy democracy. And these are our choices in a so-called election year. Good corporatist vs bad corporatist. But there is no good in any of it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Big mistake. He has become everything he promised us he wouldn't. He has destroyed Due Process. He has greatly expanded the Endless War. He has greatly expanded the Surveillance State. He has widened government secrecy to a point that is could be considered an Iron Curtain. His detention of Bradley Manning is inexcusable in its inhumanity, trashing every concept of fairness embodied in the Geneva Conventions. I WILL NOT vote for him in 2012. I will support Ron Paul in the republican primaries and if he is not the nominee then I will not vote in the general election. The "lesser" of two evils is no solace or excuse.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is hard to imagine that America will experience a darker day than today, the day we lost our right to habeas corpus. This was a right so important that it was stated by our founding fathers in Article 1 of the Constitution.
The right to Habeas Corpus is one of the most ancient and fundamental rights of free men, preceding but mentioned in the Magna Carta. So it is incredible that the low scum who represent us and the spineless president who is charged with protecting the rights of all the people have the audacity to suspend this most important of all rights with the stroke of a pen.
On the other hand, it is easy to understand why they want to do this. Once someone has been seized by the government, denied the right to counsel, possibly tortured, held for an indeterminate amount of time without charge, what civil court would proceed against them? Clearly the next step will be creation of a kangaroo secrete judge to try them as we now have a secrete kangaroo judge to issue warrants in accordance with the Patriot act.
This is a terrible thing that happened today but what is worse is the mild and disinterested fashion in which it has been reported by the American press and the lack of outrage by the people. We have given up this most fundamental right for the illusion of security but in fact we now have neither rights nor security.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Founding Fathers advisedly used the term "person" -- as opposed to "citizen" (used elsewhere in the Constitution to protect the rights of "citizens") -- when they drafted and adopted the Fifth Amendment due process clause, absolutely prohibiting our federal Government from denying any "person" life, liberty or property without "due process of law." The Fifth Amendment is not and never has been limited to protecting US citizens, so President Obama's purported concern for the rights of "citizens" does not meet the Fifth Amendment's requirement that all "persons" be accorded due process by our Government. And of course indefinite detention without any criminal charges or a trial cannot be considered "due process of law" under numerous Supreme Court interpretations of the Fifth Amendment. As a former professor of constitutional law, President Obama knows this just as well as do I (another former professor of constitutional law). President Obama is a disgrace to the legal profession and a traitor to the Constitution which he has taken a sworn oath to uphold and defend. He should resign immediately and seek private employment commensurate with his ethical values, such as selling used cars or fraudulent derivatives.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a loyal supporter of President Obama since voting for him in the New Jersey Primary, and a proud veteran of our military, I am totally disheartened by the President’s capitulation in signing the current defense legislation. This Bill is a direct injection of autocratic architecture into our system of government. To allow our country’s military to arrest some US citizens on suspicion of some crimes, to hold them indefinitely, and to strip them of their right to a hearing in civilian court is not “defending the constitution”. I doubt that we will see the worst repercussions of these terrible provisions in the immediate future, but there is now a virus in our system of justice. Have none of the President’s advisers noticed that this is precisely the type of law that protestors throughout the Arab world rebelled against in the biggest global story of the year just ended? It is a sad day for our constitution, and a sad day for our country. Perhaps it was not surprising that the law was signed in the last dark hours of the year, when the nation’s citizenry were engaged in their year-end diversions. I cannot know how many votes the President has lost by this action. I can only count my own.
It is quite ironic that a country that fought wars in the 20th Century for freedom and democracy is slowly transforming itself into a state we fought against. Very soon a blog commentary like this will be considered terrorism against the state.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's next? Special military prisons for American citizens (gulags)?
Yes, and they are called FEMA camps. And don't worry about the Supreme Court being involved because people "detained" in this manner may never come to trial, they will simply disappear at the President's whim.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One small stroke of a unitary executive pen, one giant leap backward for democracy. ACLU Director Anthony Romero calls this craven act the moment when Barack Obama gained the dubious distinction of becoming "forever remembered as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law."
Obama's accompanying signing statement is disingenuous at best, cynical at worst. It was a cowardly New Year's Eve news dump. We are told to trust him unquestioningly because he is the good guy, the Democrat, who would never go against the Constitution and deny an American citizen due process. If he has thought at all about possible dangerous successors waiting in the wings to broaden the scope of this dangerous and muddy bill to accusing and "disappearing" peaceful domestic protesters, it was not enough to make him veto it. This should scare us all to death.
We finally know why the president chose not to prosecute the Bush war criminals. He shares many if not most of the same neocon values and is using the same fear factor to keep the populace cowed, "secure" and stripped of their basic rights.
And this is the man who dares ask us to help him fight a recalcitrant Congress? When it comes to enabling the Security State and the Military Industrial Complex, the two warring political factions never fail to jump into each other's arms to call a complicit truce.
One more reason to Occupy, as if we needed another reason.