First Obama:
"As much as anything else, what fueled the extreme hostility towards the Bush/Cheney administration were their imperious and radical efforts to place themselves behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and above and beyond the rule of law. It would require a virtually pathological level of tribal loyalty and monumental intellectual dishonesty not to object just as vehemently as we watch the Obama DOJ repeatedly invoke these very same theories and, in this instance, actually invent a new one that not even the Bush administration espoused."
New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ
Keith Olbermann's scathing criticism of Obama's secrecy/immunity claims
TPM: "Obama Mimics Bush on State Secrets"
Obama and habeas corpus -- then and now
An emerging progressive consensus on Obama's executive power and secrecy abuses
The differing views of the "rule of law" in Spain and the U.S.
Then the Right:
"All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State -- from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA "reforms" to massive increases in domestic "counter-Terrorism" programs -- are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them."
The ultimate reaping of what one sows: right-wing edition
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Oh, but I like Obama. This news is making me sad. Why is the news making me sad? Stop it news.
Maybe this will help a little?
Over the weekend, I'm sitting in an uptown-Manhattan church garden on a bright sunny summer-come-early day with a group of our friends who, as suggested just by the school we all went to, are quite liberal. And there is discussion of what fun it would be to creatively injure Dick Cheney. And I mention this news about the Obama DOJ, about which I know admittedly little, but which unfortunately seems worthy of some outrage. And I am met with a bunch of shrugs and blank stares. And so I say, "come on, doesn't anybody read Kate's blog?"
Maybe this has been ill-reported, or maybe our friends, being busy, just haven't had a chance to notice. And for that I don't criticize; I am often absolutely oblivious to the news, so I could not expect anything more from them. But as Cheney is being imaginatively evicerated, I find it hard to imagine that the imaginers are taking whatever piece of their hatred stems from the Bush/Cheney disregard of civil liberties and serving it to Obama. Which is one reason why I don't share in the imaginative execution, however fun it may seem; because I have no doubt that Cheney is worse than Obama (or Biden, or, well, lots of people), but I also think politics are complicated and wanting to dismember someone for their political actions, however distasteful, is an oversimplification.
Preachy, I know.
Anyway, Kate, thanks for blogging. You are at least helping this woefully underinformed citizen become slightly less woefully underinformed.
As for your comment and the article it points to...sure, that helps. A little. Just a little.
I still like Obama. And I secretly always knew that idealizing him, even as a better-than-ever politician, was not a great idea. But did he have to prove it, so plainly, so soon?
Post a Comment