dagblog - Comments for "ACLU Says the Presidents Defense Authorization Veto Threat is Strong and Principled"

You and your Firebagger

we are stardust — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:33:04 +0000

You and your Firebagger names, Brew; grow the fuck up. Gaga is a blogger now? Well, Harry Reid's a Tweeter! Did ya miss this part of Gaga/Reid and her video appeal to Congress?

"Pop star Lady Gaga wasn't in the Senate chamber Saturday, but she was among the celebrities virtually taking part in the historic vote to repeal the 17-year policy known as "don't ask, don't tell."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Saturday sent Lady Gaga a message on Twitter: #DADT on it's way to becoming history. Later he tweeted: @ladygagaWe did it! #DADTis a thing of the past.

After the Senate voted 65-31 to give final congressional approval to end the ban on openly gay troops, Lady Gaga tweeted: Can't hold back the tears+pride. We did it!i Our voice was heard + today the Senate REPEALED DADT. A triumph for equality after 17 YEARS.

The Grammy Award-winning singer inserted herself into the debate in September when she addressed 2000 people in a Deering Oaks Park, Maine, rally where she stood alongside Air Force, Army and Marine veterans who were discharged because of the policy."

p.s. Obama's DoJ did finally stop defending DOMA in court; well, pretty much...kinda. But both efforts took some major LGBT groups announcing they would withhold contributions to re-elect. Glad they had some financial muscle, myself, but it shouldn't have taken that, IMO.

Isn't sleep deprivation

Obey — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:32:58 +0000

In reply to Manning wasn't "tortured," by

Isn't sleep deprivation torture?

It used to be, until Democrats started defending it. I guess the meaning of words changes depending on who's president.

Al Awlaki is in Yemen, you ignoramus. Is that also a battlefield? Maybe, but then we are basically saying anyone, Americans included, can be assassinated anywhere without legal recourse. I brought him up specifically because the ACLU themselves sued the government for targeting him.

My point about worrying trends on whistleblower protections comes from this kind of thing, from the New Yorker:

When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined.

"...you can add in DADT

brewmn — Sun, 29 May 2011 14:46:10 +0000

In reply to Agreed, and if you want to

"...you can add in DADT repeal, though I still think that Gaga helped..."

Ah yes, another in the classic Firebagger series, "Everything Bad that Happens Under Obama is His Fault and His Alone; Everything Good is Due to the Heroic Efforts of Progressive Blogger."

Manning wasn't "tortured," by

brewmn — Sun, 29 May 2011 14:43:43 +0000

In reply to Give me a break!Brew, read

Manning wasn't "tortured," by any definition of that term currently in use. And, as the Mayer article pointed out, Obama hasn't expanded either surveillance or whistleblower protections; almost everything in her article is based on action taken under Bush, and are simply wokring their way through the legal and policy processes. The War Powers Act, the constitutionality of which no President has acknowledged, has been "ignored" for like, what, two weeks? And, whether you and I like it or not, Afghanistan and the tribal areas in Pakistan are a war zone; so calling the drone strikes "assassinations" stretches that term beyond any useful definition as well.

But, other than being flat-out wrong about nearly every item in your list (or, at least, putting Firebagger spin on each one to distort them beyond fair debate), great comment.

Blew right past this one,

we are stardust — Sun, 29 May 2011 13:03:26 +0000

In reply to First, how many people have

Blew right past this one, perhaps:

"The Obama administration has also retained its authority to engage in extraordinary renditions."

And the Patriot Act hurry-up-and-pass-it urging by Obama used reasons that simply didn't hold water, includes all these reaons to spy on American citizens that are so secret that DiFi doesn't want it debated in public, about which Ron Wyden's press release says this:

"Speaking on the floor of the U.S Senate during the truncated debate on the reauthorization of the PATRIOT ACT for another four years, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) – a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- warned his colleagues that a vote to extend the bill without amendments that would ban any Administration’s ability to keep internal interpretations of the Patriot Act classified will eventually cause public outrage.

Known as Secret Law, the official interpretation of the Patriot Act could dramatically differ from what the public believes the law allows. This could create severe violations of the Constitutional and Civil Rights of American Citizens.

I have served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for ten years, and I don’t take a backseat to anybody when it comes to the importance of protecting genuinely sensitive sources and collection methods. But the law itself should never be secret – voters have a need and a right to know what the law says, and what their government thinks the text of the law means, so that they can decide whether the law is appropriately written and ratify or reject decisions that their elected officials make on their behalf."

and from washingtonsblog:

"On September 10, 2010, President Obama declared:

Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. Consistent with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register the enclosed notice, stating that the emergency declared with respect to the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, is to continue in effect for an additional year.

The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of a national emergency continues. For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2010, the national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat.

The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001:

Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law.

Just a few points...and not all of them are from Glenn Greenwald.

Give me a break!Brew, read

Obey — Sun, 29 May 2011 12:06:11 +0000

In reply to First, how many people have

Give me a break!

Brew, read the first line:

January 19, 2010.

It's from a year and a half ago! Before Manning was tortured, Before Al Awlaki was targetted for assassination, before the War Powers Resolution was ignored, before any number of measures large and small involving expansion of surveillance and eroding whistleblower protections.

And he hasn't added anyone to Gitmo ... because he's assassinating them all with drones!

I don't think Democrats would be so sanguine about these moves, if it were a Republican doing them. And so, the Republican wouldn't get away with it. Now we have two parties united in their support for the imperial executive.

First, how many people have

brewmn — Sun, 29 May 2011 04:24:21 +0000

In reply to In all seriousness, Destor,

First, how many people have been added to Gitmo since Obama took office? Also, if you read the Jane Mayer piece on whistleblower prosecutions, it's pretty clear that we are still dealing with the fallout from the excesses of the Bush adminstration.

That Obama hasn't walked back these excesses back far enough or quickly enough is a fair criticism. That he is expanding them is a valid criticism only on the fevered mind of market-niche hogging polemicists like Greenwald.

But you don't have to take my word for it; you can take the ACLU's. A quick Google search turned this up (apparently, your search engine also has an ingrained anti-Obama bias):

http://www.aclu.org/organization-news-and-highlights/aclu-issues-report-...

Can't speak for 'the

we are stardust — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:45:11 +0000

In reply to Interesting.First thing I

Can't speak for 'the progressive blogosphere', but I think it's fucking hilarious! I love hired or volunteer commenters coming on to blogs to spin me around! As far as indie media and blogs, as long as they are beining subsidized by corporate ads, they are not INDIE. (Paging Josh Marshall and his MSNBC gigs, etc....) As long as they are playing for a Team (red or blue) they are not INDIE!

Gotta go; groceries and Chinese takeaway are comin' up the driveway, but I grabbed this to say how I feel right now about everybody talkin' at me:

Interesting.First thing I

artappraiser — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:14:15 +0000

In reply to In yet another spate of

Interesting.

First thing I thought was it would make Josh Marshall's work as an editor a lot easier, he'd get an official daily talking points memo now to help him decide where to put coverage resources, rather than trying to imagine what the Obama administration and the DNC wants him to cover, as it often appears to me he has been doing since 2008.

But then I checked it out further and turns out Jesse Lee is mentioned here at TPM about "Obama blogosphere outreach" by Jared Bernstein back in Feb. 2009 by Matt Cooper,

Here's Greg Sargent at TPM in Nov. 2008:

A transition source tells us that that Macon Phillips, a key Obama campaign Web official, has been tapped to head new media for the transition, and Jesse Lee, a leading Web operative who handled Rahm Emanuel's DCCC internet outreach operation during the 2006 take-back of Congress, has been hired to do online communications. Obama's transition team confirms the hires.

Here's Lee's bio used in an announcement on "key staff" from the White House in Feb. 2009:

Jesse Lee, Online Programs Director
Lee worked in the New Media department for the Transition team doing online outreach, having done online communications for the Democratic National Committee during election season. Prior to that he was Senior New Media Advisor to Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the 110th Congress, having worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee online from 2004-2006. Lee graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 2002

That said, what would be the "progressive blogosphere" beef about doing this? I read often enough lots of bitching from progressive blogosphere activists that the Obama administration is lousy at messaging, needs to improve its messaging, needs to counter what the right wing media machine does, etc.

I don't like it, but then I don't like the advocacy/activist journalism that is a lot of the blogosphere, that many, including Josh Marshall, like to trumpet as being the future of political media. I'd rather have the kind of journalism where people tell us, like Sam Stein here, who the talking points memo people are for the various interests, and what talking points they might be pushing at the moment and why, rather than helping out on the talking points for the political interests one prefers. Just because the right wing does it doesn't mean I want some from the left wing; there's a reaonable argument to be made that in the current media environment one needs to be out there pushing spin to manipulate the voting public, but that doesn't mean I desire to be a consumer of that spin. I prefer journalism that tries to hunt down and decode the spin from all sides, it gets rarer all the time, sometimes it seems everyone blogging wants to spin, everyone blogging fancies themselves a Jesse Lee, with the holy grail of "going viral."

Agreed, and if you want to

we are stardust — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:13:38 +0000

In reply to Let me give it a try:At least

Agreed, and if you want to add in civil rights to civil liberties...well, you can add in DADT repeal, though I still think that Gaga helped. ;o) And the first thing that I saw Obama objecting to in the McKeon version of the NDAA was delaying the implementation of the act (we spoke of it on another blog, I remember).

So with the civil rights criterion I googled for more, but sadly I found more groups stating the opposite. In education of kids of color and major protection for LGBT citizens. Lily Ledbetter, etc. And this position paper on criminal justice. Can't possibly comment; I'm bailing for now...

Wonder what a blog on your original question to Destor might elicit...the civil libertarians I read are just gobsmacked on this administration. CCR is the only organization we send our crap twenty bucks to in these frugal times. ;o)