I am well and truly disgusted with the stance taken by the Obama Administration in not only maintaining the Bush Administration's position that "if we say it is secret, that's it, and if we say it is secret when you say that violate your privacy, you can't sue us."
I voted for Obama and I donated money to his campaign. I gave it to him because he promised that he would roll back what Bush did to our Constitution, to step back from the elected tyrant system of government. I was terrified at the breadth of power that Bush and his chief assassin Cheney arrogated to themselves. I wanted to see a president who regarded the Constitution as more than "just another goddamn piece of paper," as George Bush is alleged to have remarked.
This is a hot-button issue for me. I don't give a frak if Obama is very popular. We are supposed to be a nation of laws; nobody is above the law, not even the president. A president with the powers of a tyrant is still a tyrant, regardless of how he uses those powers. A benevolent monarch has the same power as a monarch who decimates his population. The evolution of the law since the signing of the Magna Carta has been to make the executive accountable, not just at the time of an election, but all the time.
The president is not above the law. If he is above the law, if his word is law and if everything he does is legal, then the only difference between Josef Stalin and George Bush was that Bush was "elected." Now we have Obama claiming the same level of presidential insularity from the law as did George Bush and I find it revolting and thoroughly disgusting. George Bush was, as president, an ignorant and incurious dolt who paid no attention to anything that did not comport with his preconceived notions. Barack Obama, on the other hand, graduated from one of the top law schools in the nation and he went on to teach constitutional law. Bush didn't know any better but Obama surely does.
Power corrupts and we may be seeing the land speed record for the corruption by power. I don't care how much good Obama does: He can fix health care and cure the economy and save the auto industry and reverse global warming and bring peace to the Middle East and rid the entire world of nuclear weapons, but if he does it at the expense of the Constitution, then the price is too high.
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9 comments:
I understand your anger and it mirrors my own. But somehow I also believe that there must be a back story to all of this. Being on the outside it is difficult to discern the intent of his actions and I will trust my gut on this. He is not interested in power, he is intersted in truth.
Whenever Bush was spitting on the Constitution and Rethugs were making excuses for Bush, I said to them, "do you really think President Hillary Clinton is going to voluntarily give up these powers that Bush is seizing for himself once she becomes President?" At which point they promptly ran screaming from me and hid in the closet until I left.
Well, here we are. The President's name is Obama rather than Clinton, but... (shrug). Just as I predicted. Chief executives simply *do not* willingly give up any power that prior chiefs have seized, that's just how it works, how it has always worked, always will work, regardless of the political party of the executive in question. Congress and/or the courts are going to have to step in here. And given how gutless they are -- and, for that matter, how gutless the majority of the American People are, who are quite willing to trade freedom for some illusionary safety gained via tyranny -- I don't have any delusions that things are going to change in the near future, at least.
- Badtux the Cynical Penguin
I so hope you are wrong on this one, EB... but I can't bring myself to the same level of confidence that Russ expresses.
Lockwood, I am not as cynical as BadTux, but I am closer to his position than I am to Russ's.
I am losing my trust. I see Obama veering more towards the shiny levers of power than the gritty truth.
I sympathize. I was infuriated when I heard about the AT&T network tap in SF, the tap feeding all internet traffic on the switches to NSA. It's the reason I passed on the iPhone, AT&T only.
However.
I have heard some things about attacks circumvented by this technology. I can't say much about it. But I now view all my internet traffic as postcard public, and have resigned myself to this reality.
I know this stings, I felt it too. But the programs are sensitive to privacy and I now believe it's worth the trade off. Apparently so does Obama.
My gut tells me actions mean more than words, and by his actions Obama showed that this was the kind of government he wanted long before we elected him. He had John Brennan as one of his policy advisers long before he won the primary. His vote on FISA was an obvious clue.
This is what Obama believes in, and he's not going to change until someone makes it worth his while.
Sarah, it is more than Internet traffic. It was all telecomm traffic, phone calls and faxes.
I am done with vague claims of how this has "made us safe" or "averted attacks." That is the line espoused by Dick Cheney. I am not willing to accept "we can protect you if you give up some privacy, trust us."
I have no trust. I believe that if the government has the power to listen in to all of us, the uses that are made of that power will also be nefarious and, ultimately, destructive of our democracy.
Unfortunately, I agree with you, Comrade E.B.
EB
I believe that this is a make it or break it issue for this country going forward. If this does not get fixed properly, that is, open government, then I feel this country will no longer be a functioning constitutional democracy.
I agree with BT.
If the courts and congress will not make these changes that only leaves Obama and like BT I don't see that happening any time soon.
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