President Obama News Thread

[Jet Gorgon]

Did somebody answer my Q about why the FBI was there? A CIC decision?

Nevertheless, I am vindicated in my previous claim that the Navy Seals shoulda been let free to take out the scum. They did, but who kept them waiting so long? Oh well, the Cap is free, three pirates are deceased and the lone dickwad will be tried in the US of A. Oh, fek.

[Norton]

They did, but who kept them waiting so long?

The pirates. Snipers had to wait until they had a clear shot at all three pirates at the same time. Wouldn't have done the hostage much good if the snipers only shot two and left the other with a gun pointed at the hostage!

The second all three pirates stood up they were immediately shot.

[Texpat]

I'm starting to sense Mr Obama is a violent war monger.

His stock has appreciated markedly in my eyes over in the past few weeks.

Was the Change he often referenced directed at giving the Navy some of the spotlight?

[attaboy]

Obama administration says government abuses are 'state secrets' beyond judicial scrutiny


April 6, 12:08



The Obama administration's argument in February that even some of the worst government abuses are "state secrets" beyond the reach of the courts proves to be no temporary flashback to the Bush era. In a court filing last week, the Justice Department reiterated that argument, demonstrating that, in many ways, not much has changed just because the White House is under new management.

In the case of Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the federal government over widespread illegal surveillance of Americans' phone calls and other communication. In the case, former AT&T technician Mark Klein has testified that his old employer actually routs Internet traffic through a specific facility so that government spooks have easy access.

Summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs’ remaining claims against all parties is required because information necessary to litigate plaintiffs’ claims is properly subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege."

In response, the federal government, under first President George W. Bush, and now President Barack Obama, argues that the merits of the case don't matter, because the government's conduct is beyond the reach of the courts. According to a motion to dismiss filed on April 3 (PDF):

The grounds for this motion are that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction with respect to plaintiffs’ statutory claims against the United States because Congress has not waived sovereign immunity, and summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs’ remaining claims against all parties (including any claims not dismissed for lack of jurisdiction) is required because information necessary to litigate plaintiffs’ claims is properly subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege and related statutory privileges.

The government is effectively arguing that it can act with impunity because the evidence that the government has misbehaved is a secret that can't be used to seek to demonstrate violations of the law or the Constitution and to seek redress.
Did the feds abuse your rights? Too bad, they say, because you won't be allowed to prove it in court.

That's a remarkably pernicious argument, since it effectively puts government action beyond scrutiny. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California-Irvine, describes “state secrets” as a sort of "talismanic phrase" used to muzzle challenges to government authority without going through the bother of actually debating the merits or legality of particular actions and policies.

The Obama administration didn't create the state secrets doctrine, of course. The idea was concocted in the mid-twentieth century and then enthusiastically invoked under the Bush administration to put legally dubious actions beyond challenge by lawsuits or judicial review.

The Obama administration is now picking up where the Bush administration left off, demonstrating an apparent continuity in attitudes toward executive power from the last White House occupant to the current one.

If the courts let the state secrets argument stand, the end result may be that many constitutional and legal protections are reduced to empty words, unenforceable in the courts.


Civil Liberties Examiner: Obama administration says government abuses are 'state secrets' beyond judicial scrutiny

[attaboy]

Obama backs Bush 'state secrets' position


February 10, 2009

Will we ever know what the Bush administration was doing to whom, and if the situation will improve under the new Obama administration? The short answer is: "no." At least when it comes to the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorism suspects to countries lacking inconvenient laws against torture, President Barack Obama is every bit as enthusiastic about keeping mum about embarassing "state secrets" as his predecessor.

As the American Civil Liberties Union summarizes the issue:

The Justice Department today repeated Bush administration claims of "state secrets" in a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in the extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen was brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture.

The Bush administration had argued that the lawsuit brought by Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees should be dismissed as a threat to national security.

What does that mean?

In a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy dated March 31, 2008, opposing a congressional challenge to state secrets privilege, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey wrote (PDF):

The state secrets privilege long has been recognized by United States courts as a method of allowing the Executive branch to safeguard information regarding the Nation's security or diplomatic relations. See Totten v. United States, 92 U.S. 105, 107 (1875) (dismissing contract claim to protect civil war era espionage relationship). Over fifty years ago, in United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), the Supreme Court articulated the basic contours of the state secrets privilege. The Supretne Court held that the United States may prevent the disclosure of information in a judicial proceeding if "there is a reasotiable danger" that such disclosure "will expose military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged."

Mukasey proceeded to argue:

It is far from clear that Congress has the constitutional authority to alter the terms and conditionsof the state secrets privilege, as the bill purports to do.

Legal experts and civil libertarians were hopeful until yesterday that the Obama administration's promises to review the "state secrets" doctrine would let a little sun shine on the nastier transgressions of the U.S. government against individual rights and simple decency, and help to prevent a recurrence in the future.

Along those lines, on Monday, Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said, "It's vital that we protect information that if released could jeopardize national security, but the Justice Department will ensure the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government's actions that they have a right to know."

Well, apparently Attorney General Eric Holder's new, improved Justice Department thinks Americans don't have a right to know that the U.S. government was outsourcing its torture needs to experts in some of the world's hell-holes.

That this flies in the face of the new president's promises goes without saying. Running against the record of a Bush administration that cloaked its misdeeds in secrecy, Barack Obama talked repeatedly about "transparency" and the need for open government. Airing out civil liberties violations by the previous administration would seem to be a pretty basic baby step in that direction.
But, apparently, that's not to be.

In response to the Obama administration's move, Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU, who argued the case for the plaintiffs, said:

We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration's practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture. This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government's false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court."

It should be noted that "state secrets" privilege has also been invoked to shield illegal government wiretapping operations. With the new occupant of the White House apparently eager to hide official misdeeds from prying eyes, you have to wonder just what he has in mind.

Civil Liberties Examiner: Obama backs Bush 'state secrets' position

[attaboy]

Post your 'Meet the New Boss same as the Old Boss' examples here.

[attaboy]

April 7th, 2009 In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush's

Commentary by Tim Jones
We had hoped this would go differently.

Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments.

First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue "would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security." As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.

It's an especially disappointing argument to hear from the Obama Administration. As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration "invoked a legal tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court." He was right then, and we're dismayed that he and his team seem to have forgotten.

Sad as that is, it's the Department Of Justice's second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.

Previously, the Bush Administration has argued that the U.S. possesses "sovereign immunity" from suit for conducting electronic surveillance that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, FISA is only one of several laws that restrict the government's ability to wiretap. The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.

Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.
This isn't change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.

In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush's | Electronic Frontier Foundation

[barbaro]

In many ways, Obama is a continuation of the past 3 Presidents: G.H. Bush, Clinton, and GWB. It usually ends up this way. In particular, what the previous administration has done, is not rolled back, but is continued to be enforced as policy.

[attaboy]

According to the articles Obama has gone further down the path. Obama is not keeping his promises. They say people seldom give up power. I can understand if he needs to take more time to sort things out but he is taking it further down the path. He is not who the left signed up for.

[Texpat]

Obama campaigned for president as a freshman senator.

He didn't know shit about the presidency.

Once he was elected, before he took office, he began to receive briefings and intel he never knew existed. It's obvious his world view changed tremendously based on what he learned between November and January.

That's why I've always maintained -- little will change despite who wins the White House.

Who would have thought he would have continued the policy of rendition?
Who would have thought he would have continued shelling Pakistan?
Who would have believed he would have retained Dubya's SecDef?
Why isn't he going after Bush and boys?

He hasn't closed Gitmo -- and when he does, he'll simply move it somewhere else.

He sold this utopian view that people will love him and the Gordian knot will simply dissolve. He was wrong.

[Jet Gorgon]

^ Awww, but France took one Gitmo prisoner.
As for the wiretapping stuff, I heard he agreed to that way before. He knew it was necessary. No news to me. But, I still think he's a dufus.

[blackgang]

Who would have thought he would have continued shelling Pakistan

He said sometime before he was really in it that he would continue to bomb them, "back into the stone age" if I remember correctly, but I did not pay to much attention as who would have thought that the people would elect an empty suit, but when he started playing the race and slavery card and got the American negros on his side and a 94% voting score what else could happen.

But he did fail to mention that it was his Arab ancestors that sold the african negroes into slavery that the whites bought.

[DaffyDuck]

At what point does <strike>Obama=Bush<strike> Obama become worse than Bush? Reply to Thread

He has a very long way to go....

[raycarey]

Obama campaigned for president as a freshman senator. He didn't know shit about the presidency.

and the former govs. of texas, arkansas, california and georgia did?
GWB was part owner of baseball team. reagan was an actor.
obama was on the senate foreign relations committee and taught constitutional law.

and FFS, the election was 5 months ago.
mccain lost.
get over it.

That's why I've always maintained -- little will change despite who wins the White House.

and you're still wrong.
maybe this sort of fantasy helps you deal with what was clearly a devastating election for you and other highly partisan republicans, but even though there are some similarities in the policy positions of mccain and obama, there are even more differences. especially on issues that matter to most americans.

Who would have thought he would have continued the policy of rendition?

carefully parsed, but still inaccurate.

Who would have thought he would have continued shelling Pakistan?

err.....anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention to the campaign.
in fact, he said he'd send the US military into pakistan if necessary.

Who would have believed he would have retained Dubya's SecDef?

laughable.
gates was forced on GWB. "dubya's" secdef was rumsfeld.
perhaps you're unaware...but the country is in the middle of two wars that GWB started and couldn't finish. keeping gates on in the short term was the only practical decision to make. and conventional wisdom has gates on his way out the door by the end of '09.

Why isn't he going after Bush and boys?

obama's been in office how many days now?
the holder justice department is still uncovering the ineptitude of gonzo's justice department.....and btw, once holder and co. restore order and return competence to the justice department, gonzo might very well be the first bush administration official to be charged.

He hasn't closed Gitmo -- and when he does, he'll simply move it somewhere else.

gitmo will be shut down....but it will take decades for america to even have a chance of reclaiming the moral high ground.

He sold this utopian view that people will love him and the Gordian knot will simply dissolve. He was wrong.

so, he's been in office less than 3 months, and he's somehow expected to have cleaned up the mess created by 8 years of the GWB administration?

He said sometime before he was really in it that he would continue to bomb them, "back into the stone age" if I remember correctly,

no, you don't remember correctly....shocking, i know.

[Boon Mee]

^
Pretty lame spin there, RA.
Improve your game - there's a good lad!

On topic: It's definitely same-o, same-o with BO. Meet The New Boss is the most accurate way to express the way it is. Other than raising taxes, BO isn't going to do anything significantly different that Dubya w/respect to national security - we hope. Let's see what he'll do if Israel bombs I-Ran tho...

[Boon Mee]

Obama Rap

If this arrogant thief doesn't make you grind your teeth, don't bother getting a sign ready for the nearest Tea Party on Wednesday.

[Boon Mee]

BO's Election Explained:

Unfortunately, these kinds of folks vote...

[Jet Gorgon]

^ Probably Ray's granny; I'd say it was from ray, but he doesn't have any money.

[Boon Mee]

^ Probably Ray's granny; I'd say it was from ray, but he doesn't have any money.

That little stipend from Evergreen jr. college might be enough to buy him a bowl of kway tee ow!

[Bugs]

Not sure if this should go here of somewhere else:

CIA employees won't be tried for waterboarding - White House- msnbc.com

WASHINGTON - Seeking to move beyond what he calls a "a dark and painful chapter in our history," President Barack Obama said Thursday that CIA officials who used harsh interrogation tactics during the Bush administration will not be prosecuted.

I saw one of the talking head on CNN discussing this issue, and I'm not sure if I agree with him or not. He said this was good because these blokes in the CIA were only following orders and should not be punished for doing so. This position does have some logic. But on the other hand be it the CIA, the FBI, or the US military following an order that is illegal or immoral just because it is an order is questionable at best.

At a minimum if folks are not going to be prosecuted because they were "just following orders" that implies that something was wrong with the orders in the first place. In which case the natural course of action would be to go after those who issued the orders in the first place.

If the administration feels there was something illegal in regard to the orders being given then they are failing in their duties if they do not go after those giving the orders.

If the administration does not feel there was anything illegal with the orders being given then they should say so.

IMHO one of the two courses of action needs to be taken to be able to close this issue.

[Norton]

He said this was good because these blokes in the CIA were only following orders and should not be punished for doing so.

This was the defense used by many at the Nuremberg Trials. Didn't work out very well for most of them.

[barbaro]

This sounds like a much needed thing that needs to be implemented. The rail lines are within reasonable distances, and will be in congested parts of the US. I'm sure it will cost but I hope it goes through.

Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan




WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama unveiled his administration's blueprint for a new national network of high-speed passenger rail lines Thursday, saying such an investment is necessary to reduce traffic congestion, cut dependence on foreign oil and improve the environment.
President Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, called for clean efficient travel Thursday.






The president's plan identifies 10 potential high-speed intercity corridors for federal funding, including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England.


It also highlights potential improvements in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor running from Washington to Boston, Massachusetts.


Each of the corridors identified by the president's report are between 100 and 600 miles long. The blueprint envisions some trains traveling at top speeds of over 150 mph.

Link & Entire: Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan - CNN.com

[Cujo]

And this has what to do with Somalin pirates??

[venturalaw]

And now BO is in Mexico appologizing to Mexico for the US. Something he does so well. After all, for him, the US is always wrong. What a great leader!

[Norton]

And now BO is in Mexico appologizing to Mexico for the US.

We must have been watching a different speech! Assume you did watch it to come up with the conclusion Obama "apologized" for the US. Perhaps you can provide us with a specific quote where he apologized?

BTW, this is not an apology. Most folks would call it a statement of fact!

“I will not pretend that this is Mexico’s responsibility alone,” Obama said. “A demand for these drugs in the United States is what is helping keep these cartels in business … more than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States.”