Yikes!
The legal memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.
Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo.
"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."
So far, the Obama administration, instead of rejecting these post-constitutional executive maneuvers, is basically saying "Yeah Yoo Right!"
Greenwald:A unifying belief among liberals (and many principled non-liberals) for the past several years was that Bush's secrecy theories and assertions of unchallengeable executive power were grave and tyrannical threats to liberty.
...
But -- after a few symbolic (and potentially important) decrees in the first week, which I praised at the time -- the Obama administration's approach to civil liberties, constitutional protections and the reining in of executive power abuses has been absolutely abysmal. None of this has anything to do with complaints that he hasn't yet done enough. It's the opposite: these are all affirmative, even extraordinary, actions undertaken by the Obama DOJ not merely to copy, but in the Al-Haramain case, virtually to surpass, the worst aspects of the Bush/Cheney/Addington use of extreme secrecy and assertions of unlimited executive power.
Very disturbing.
Labels: Bush, Obama
5 Comments:
Also... not really ending the war either.
Here's Marcy Wheeler today:
"You guys have all totally missed the plot!!
You have gotten completely distracted by utterly predictable squabbling about how this will move forward.
You have missed the fact that DOJ just admitted that Bush lied provided "inaccurate" information to the Courts, and that DOJ has just submitted new material that presumably corrects that lie "inaccurate" information."
More from Emptywheel:
"Now, don't get me wrong. I consider DOJ's brief from Friday to be a horrible example of Cheneyesque reasonsing. But also understand what's going on here. They're not defying the Appeals Court. They're not defying any order that Walker has already made. They are saying that if he orders them to turn over the information on the program, they will appeal. [...]
What's going on is that the government has finally turned over real details (though who knows whether they're complete, given the "inaccurate" information they did not correct for three years?) on the warrantless wiretapping program. At precisely the moment that it is at most risk of being made public."
- - -
I think Glenn Greenwald wants the scab of the Bush years ripped off. Maybe that's the way it should go down but I don't think that's necessarily right and definitely not how things are going to play out. I think the abuses of the last 8 years have ended even as the concealment of the abuses continues. These past abuses will take time to understand and reveal. Think about the series of ever smaller bandages on Jack Nicholson's nose in Chinatown. The shrinking bandages show a clear sense of time and healing as well as a reminder of the ugly scar beneath, you just don't see the wound or the healing. The Obama DoJ isn't going to show you the wound while it's fresh, they are going to show you a shrinking series of bandages.
I think the country has rot everywhere and rather than try to fix everything at once the Obama administration is trying to fix one thing and mitigate damage everywhere else. Then when one thing is fixed, fix the next. Maybe that isn't right or just but I think it's pragmatic and things are bad enough that I think it's a good approach.
Ever had a car with a bad alternator that you couldn't shut off because the battery was dead and couldn't restart it? I think our nation is a bit like that at the moment. You shut the car off and fix it when you park the car at the garage and not before. Eventually things get fixed if you are lucky but there's nothing ideal about the situation. It's unsafe to drive like that but what's the alternative?
Let's be honest, Obama's DoJ is just being "cowardly"...
GO - Right. Because I quoted something at length that included the phrase "a horrible example of Cheneyesque reasoning" because I'm trying to throw people off the scent of the truth.
joejoejoe,
Can you take a joke? Geezus...
I'm sorry I tried to post something pithy instead of pay attention to your book report.
I'll try harder next time.
