The More Things Change...
While driving to work on Saturday, this classic Who song came on the radio. Mind you, I'm not implying that Barack Obama is George Bush - I'll leave that to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the gang - but with regard to the last blog I wrote on government surveillance, the Obama Department of Justice stance, and what it means to our individual liberties, I am growing increasingly concerned. I looked up the lyrics to the song and found some disturbing parallels. It may just be a 38 year old rock song, or it may portend something far more ominous.
"Won't Get Fooled Again"
lyrics by Pete Townshend
We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
The change it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
Yeah!
There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Monday, April 13, 2009
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
And Justice For Some! 
A victory and a setback for the Justice Department this month. Is one out of two as good as it gets these days?
The decision last week by Attorney General Eric Holder to “dismiss the indictment” of former Alaskan senator Ted Stevens and “not proceed with a new trial,” signaled a radical departure from the standard operating procedure of the Justice Department that for the last eight years presided over a long list of one embarrassment after another. Stevens' lawyer, Brendan Sullivan Jr., praised Holder as "a pillar of integrity" for his decision to disregard a jury verdict that they said was obtained unlawfully. He called the prosecutors' behavior "stunning." Actually, stunning doesn’t quite sum up the conduct of the Justice Department under George Bush. When it wasn’t firing attorneys due to politics, it was blindly ignoring the Constitution by looking the other way while detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were tortured. No, obscene is a far more appropriate description, and Holder’s decision to walk away from the conviction speaks volumes not only to his good judgment, but his determination to, slowly but surely, clean out the stench that has tarnished the nation’s legal arm for far too long.
All of which makes this latest decision by the Justice Department not only baffling, but infuriating. In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government’s legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping efforts. In fact, a close read of a government filing last Friday reveals that the Obama Administration has gone beyond any previous legal claims put forth by former President Bush. Responding to a lawsuit filed by a civil liberties group, the Justice Department argued that the government was protected by “sovereign immunity” from lawsuits because of a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act.
For the first time, the Obama Administration’s brief contends that government agencies cannot be sued for wiretapping American citizens even if there was intentional violation of US law. They maintain that the government can only be sued if the wiretaps involve “willful disclosure” — a higher legal bar. “A ‘willful violation’ in Section 223(c(1) refers to the ‘willful disclosure’ of intelligence information by government agents, as described in Section 223(a)(3) and (b)(3), and such disclosures by the Government are the only actions that create liability against the United States,” Obama Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz wrote.
Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the government over the warrantless wiretapping program, notes that the government has previously argued that changes to the Patriot Act protected the government from lawsuits surrounding eavesdropping. But he says that this is the first time that they've made the case that the Patriot Act protects the government from all surveillance statutes. "They are arguing this based on changes to the law made by the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 223," Bankston said in an email to Raw Story. "We've never been fans of 223, but no one's ever suggested before that it wholly immunized the U.S. government against suits under all the surveillance statutes."
Salon columnist and constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald — who is generally supportive of progressive interpretations of the law — says the Obama Administration has “invented a brand new claim” of immunity from spying litigation. “In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad ’state secrets’ privilege invented by the Bush Administration and now embraced fully by the Obama Administration, the Obama Department of Justice has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they ‘willfully disclose’ to the public what they have learned,” Greenwald wrote Monday.
On Tuesday’s episode of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”, in an exchange with Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, Olbermann observed that this decision by the Administration is analogous to saying “I could go and steal your money. If I don‘t spend it, I‘m not guilty of anything.”
Turley laughed then went on to say “you cannot any longer suggest that President Obama is advancing the civil liberties and the privacy interest that he promised to advance. This is a terrible rollback. It‘s a terrible decision. And the Obama people seem to be arguing that—well, the Bush people were bad people doing bad things. But you know what? It doesn‘t matter if you are a good person doing bad things. You are doing bad things. And that‘s what this is.”
Stunning is the only word that comes to mind. This decision one up’s the Bush Administration’s policy on eavesdropping. Not only is it unconscionable, it basically signals an end to any hope some have had that the Obama Administration will seek prosecution of Bush Administration officials for torture.
Slowly, but surely this president, far from being a modern-day image of Bobby Kennedy, who had a penchant for challenging the establishment much to the dismay of some in his own party, is looking more and more like his older brother John. Like the 35th president, Obama has displayed little stomach for knocking over the apple cart, as it were, and seems more concerned with pursuing policy over principals. We all remember that Kennedy had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the civil rights issues of the early ‘60s. His successor, Lyndon Johnson was far more aggressive in this arena and was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And yet, like Kennedy, Obama enjoys a popularity seldom seen among presidents.
Pragmatism can sometimes be a virtuous thing; no doubt it will serve Obama well in the months and years ahead of him, for however long his administration lasts. But there are times when it must come second to core principals and values. At some point Barack Obama must come out and definitively state what he stands for and what he is against. Closing Guantanamo and declaring that the United States does not torture, but refusing to prosecute those who did; criticizing his predecessor for past policies that violated the Constitution and then expanding on some of those very same policies isn’t just hypocritical, it undermines the very hope he promised to bring to Washington when he ran for President last year.
I hope that he comes to his senses and realizes the destiny his candidacy promised during last year’s campaign. But I fear that, far from being the transformational figure we all thought we were voting for, he will turn out to be an effective and pragmatic president; a good but hardly transformational leader. And that would be a damn shame, given his seeming talents.
A victory and a setback for the Justice Department this month. Is one out of two as good as it gets these days?
The decision last week by Attorney General Eric Holder to “dismiss the indictment” of former Alaskan senator Ted Stevens and “not proceed with a new trial,” signaled a radical departure from the standard operating procedure of the Justice Department that for the last eight years presided over a long list of one embarrassment after another. Stevens' lawyer, Brendan Sullivan Jr., praised Holder as "a pillar of integrity" for his decision to disregard a jury verdict that they said was obtained unlawfully. He called the prosecutors' behavior "stunning." Actually, stunning doesn’t quite sum up the conduct of the Justice Department under George Bush. When it wasn’t firing attorneys due to politics, it was blindly ignoring the Constitution by looking the other way while detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were tortured. No, obscene is a far more appropriate description, and Holder’s decision to walk away from the conviction speaks volumes not only to his good judgment, but his determination to, slowly but surely, clean out the stench that has tarnished the nation’s legal arm for far too long.
All of which makes this latest decision by the Justice Department not only baffling, but infuriating. In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government’s legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping efforts. In fact, a close read of a government filing last Friday reveals that the Obama Administration has gone beyond any previous legal claims put forth by former President Bush. Responding to a lawsuit filed by a civil liberties group, the Justice Department argued that the government was protected by “sovereign immunity” from lawsuits because of a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act.
For the first time, the Obama Administration’s brief contends that government agencies cannot be sued for wiretapping American citizens even if there was intentional violation of US law. They maintain that the government can only be sued if the wiretaps involve “willful disclosure” — a higher legal bar. “A ‘willful violation’ in Section 223(c(1) refers to the ‘willful disclosure’ of intelligence information by government agents, as described in Section 223(a)(3) and (b)(3), and such disclosures by the Government are the only actions that create liability against the United States,” Obama Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz wrote.
Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the government over the warrantless wiretapping program, notes that the government has previously argued that changes to the Patriot Act protected the government from lawsuits surrounding eavesdropping. But he says that this is the first time that they've made the case that the Patriot Act protects the government from all surveillance statutes. "They are arguing this based on changes to the law made by the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 223," Bankston said in an email to Raw Story. "We've never been fans of 223, but no one's ever suggested before that it wholly immunized the U.S. government against suits under all the surveillance statutes."
Salon columnist and constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald — who is generally supportive of progressive interpretations of the law — says the Obama Administration has “invented a brand new claim” of immunity from spying litigation. “In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad ’state secrets’ privilege invented by the Bush Administration and now embraced fully by the Obama Administration, the Obama Department of Justice has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they ‘willfully disclose’ to the public what they have learned,” Greenwald wrote Monday.
On Tuesday’s episode of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”, in an exchange with Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, Olbermann observed that this decision by the Administration is analogous to saying “I could go and steal your money. If I don‘t spend it, I‘m not guilty of anything.”
Turley laughed then went on to say “you cannot any longer suggest that President Obama is advancing the civil liberties and the privacy interest that he promised to advance. This is a terrible rollback. It‘s a terrible decision. And the Obama people seem to be arguing that—well, the Bush people were bad people doing bad things. But you know what? It doesn‘t matter if you are a good person doing bad things. You are doing bad things. And that‘s what this is.”
Stunning is the only word that comes to mind. This decision one up’s the Bush Administration’s policy on eavesdropping. Not only is it unconscionable, it basically signals an end to any hope some have had that the Obama Administration will seek prosecution of Bush Administration officials for torture.
Slowly, but surely this president, far from being a modern-day image of Bobby Kennedy, who had a penchant for challenging the establishment much to the dismay of some in his own party, is looking more and more like his older brother John. Like the 35th president, Obama has displayed little stomach for knocking over the apple cart, as it were, and seems more concerned with pursuing policy over principals. We all remember that Kennedy had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the civil rights issues of the early ‘60s. His successor, Lyndon Johnson was far more aggressive in this arena and was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And yet, like Kennedy, Obama enjoys a popularity seldom seen among presidents.
Pragmatism can sometimes be a virtuous thing; no doubt it will serve Obama well in the months and years ahead of him, for however long his administration lasts. But there are times when it must come second to core principals and values. At some point Barack Obama must come out and definitively state what he stands for and what he is against. Closing Guantanamo and declaring that the United States does not torture, but refusing to prosecute those who did; criticizing his predecessor for past policies that violated the Constitution and then expanding on some of those very same policies isn’t just hypocritical, it undermines the very hope he promised to bring to Washington when he ran for President last year.
I hope that he comes to his senses and realizes the destiny his candidacy promised during last year’s campaign. But I fear that, far from being the transformational figure we all thought we were voting for, he will turn out to be an effective and pragmatic president; a good but hardly transformational leader. And that would be a damn shame, given his seeming talents.
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