Ron Paul has a point about that whole Boston "military-style occupation" thing

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm not saying he's entirely right, but he's certainly got a point:

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the police response to the Boston Marathon bombings was scarier than the bombing itself, which killed three and wounded more than 250.

"The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city," Paul, a Texas Republican, wrote [yesterday] on the website of the libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. "This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."

Paul said the scenes of the house-to-house search for the younger bombing suspect in suburban Watertown, Mass., were reminiscent of a "military coup in a far off banana republic."

"Forced lockdown of a city," he wrote. "Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down."

And he's right to remind us of this key fact:

"The suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public," Paul wrote. "He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police."

As a civil libertarian myself, I do sometimes find myself in agreement with Paul's libertarianism, even though his version of it is generally a rather extreme right-wing one.

In this case, I understood the over-reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing, particularly after the shootout in Watertown that left an MIT officer dead, but I also found it worrisome.

Read more »

Obama Administration defecates on Constitution, then wipes its ass with Bill of Rights

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I like Obama. I really do. But increasingly his articulation of executive power with respect to the war on terror, and generally, and the expression of that power specifically in the ongoing drone campaign against enemies of the state, however defined, often with significant civilian collateral damage, is the stain the threatens to overwhelm the rest of his presidency. And it's getting worse:

Yes, the president does have the authority to use military force against American citizens on US soil -- but only in "an extraordinary circumstance," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday.

"The US Attorney General's refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening," Paul said Tuesday. "It is an affront the constitutional due process rights of all Americans."

This is rarely the case, but I'm with Paul on this one. Even if you think Obama would never do such a thing, and if you think that you should think it over, do you really trust any president to determine just what "an extraordinary circumstance" is? I'm no anti-government nut -- in fact, I'm generally in favor of an activist federal government. But this is appalling, and truly a threat to freedom.

I don't much care for Obama

By Comrade Misfit

I truly don't.

Look, I think it was ballsy for him to approve the raid on bin Laden's compound. He had to have known that a botched attempt would have probably cost him his job.

What I do not like about him is that he has not only taken no steps to dismantle the national security state we now live in, he has increased it. He could have vetoed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, the one with the GOP-inserted language that authorized the indefinite detention of American citizens for whatever reason suits the Feds' fancy. He didn't; he only added a vague and non-binding signing statement of "of course we'd never do this."

I find that wholly inexcusable for a man who once taught Constitutional Law. Yes, I know that first-year law school Con Law doesn't get into the Bill of Rights, but I'd expect him to have a passing familiarity with it.[1]

I don't like that he has spent over three years trying to work with people who lure him in close and cock-punch him. He then gets up and does it again. I don't know if he is a born optimist, a fool, or has a partial brain deficit. [2] Personally, I'd like to see a little more Harry Truman from Obama.

Part of the problem is that Obama, when it comes to dealing with Congress, is acting like the only responsible adult in the room. The Republicans have been behaving like spoiled children who, if they don't get everything they want, will quit the game and go home. Or, more sinisterly, they've been acting like terrorists, who have been more than willing to throw this country into default and depression if they don't get their way. So maybe he is doing the best he can, but I would still have rather seen more fight out of him.

I don't like that Obama has been playing more from the old DLC playbook than anything else. Yes, he ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." [3] He got the Ledbetter Pay Act passed. While the Affordable Care Act is pretty damn sucky and is more a gift to those rapacious bastards in the health insurance industry than anything else, he still got something through.

But the stimulus was too little and was effectively hamstrung by Republicans who didn't want to be seen as being totally obstructionist on boosting the economy, but they didn't want to do anything that might lead to a solid recovery. That's because the Republicans, in full-blown "Party First" mode, would rather see many more millions of workers out of jobs if that would win them an election.

I want to see him fight for us. I want to see him make the Republicans pay a dear price for being economic kidnappers.

I'm not holding my breath.

But may G-d help us if he loses to that team of the Corporate Robot and the Wisconsin Fibber that the GOP put on their ticket.
_______________________________________
[1] As for Republicans, they talk a great game about freedom, but you'll note that they are really vigorous at slashing freedom and liberty in almost all areas (excepting the Second Amendment). All you have to do is mutter phrases like "terrorism" and "homeland security" and those weak-brained fools, along with Democrats like "Traitor Joe" Lieberman, would let the NSA put cameras in their homes.
[2] I'd say "retarded," but the last time I did that, I got all sorts of nasty emails.
[3] Contrary to conservative predictions, the armed forces have not crumbled.

(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)

We still need to hold President Obama accountable on civil liberties

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm a proud Democrat and enthusiastic supporter of President Obama, but that doesn't mean I can't and won't be critical of president and party when they fall short of the progressive liberal principles I hold dear.

Indeed, I have been strongly critical of President Obama on a variety of matters over the past several years, not the least of which has been his disappointing record on civil liberties. Here, for example, is what I wrote in September of last year:

While I would argue that he has done a lot of good thus far in office, this remains the major blot on his record.

Actually, I'd call it a disgrace.

It may be that there have been political rationales behind these policies, including refusing to prosecute the war criminals of his predecessor's administration. Perhaps Obama and his advisors thought he needed to look tough so as to shake off the perception of inexperience and intellectual arrogance (as if Cheney wasn't an arrogant prick). Perhaps they calculated that any sign of weakness, or even perceived weakness, on national security would leave him vulnerable to Republican attacks and weaken his re-election chances.

Whatever.

The point is that these decisions were made and, ultimately, Obama must be held accountable for them -- and for driving a wedge between his presidency and his liberal-progressive base, the millions of people who bought into his promise of change we can believe in and expected if not revolutionary change at least something other than the brutality of the Bush-Cheney years.

In so many ways, in most ways, Obama has been a positive force for change -- think of health-care reform, marriage equality, the "DREAM" and dignity of undocumented Americans, and the country's improved international standing after eight years of Bush-Cheney warmongering. And while he has, to be fair, been an improvement of sorts on civil liberties, the simple fact is that he has kept a great deal of the Bush-Cheney national security state in place, and that continues to tarnish his presidency.

I concluded, "[o]ne can only hope that a second-term Obama would face greater and more sustained pressure to expand individual rights after this period of 9/11-inspired authoritarianism."

One can continue to hope, but the pressure will indeed have to come from outside. As Adam Serwer writes at Mother Jones:

In 2008, Democrats were eager to draw a contrast with what they then portrayed as Republican excesses in the fight against Al Qaeda. Since then, the Obama administration has in many cases continued the national security policies of its predecessor—and the Democratic Party's 2012 platform highlights this reversal, abandoning much of the substance and all of the bombast of the 2008 platform...

The distance between the 2008 and 2012 platform shows just how hard it has been, and starkly illustrates the extent to which the Democratic Party has given up on its 2008 promises to roll back the national security state that emerged and expanded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The platform does state that "practices must always be in line with our Constitution, preserve our people's privacy and civil liberties, and withstand the checks and balances that have served us so well," and, yes, the president did "[ban] torture without exception in his first week in office." That's hardly insignificant, but it's also not nearly enough -- as Serwer notes, there's still the Patriot Act, there's still Guantanamo Bay, there's still indefinite detention, and there's still racial profiling, on all of which the platform is silent.

Don't get me wrong. The choice in November remains crystal clear. And for all that Obama has done, or not done, in the area of civil liberties, there's no doubt that Romney would be far, far worse -- and that the Republicans are far, far worse than the Democrats.

And right now, just two months out, we have to focus on that choice, to make the distinction between the two options as clear as possible to voters. It's not about the lesser of two evils, it's about hope and opportunity on one side and privilege and brutality on the other -- and, yes, it's about accepting but not necessarily approving certain imperfections on the side we support.

To be sure, we need to remain critical. Party and president are important, but so too is principle -- and civil liberties are still under assault. And on this front the platform is hugely disappointing.

A win in November would mean four more years to hold President Obama accountable and to demand that our principles, core American values, trump the Bush-Cheney authoritarianism that remains. That's still our best hope for meaningful change.

By far.

It was worth it

By Carl 

...I think.

As you no doubt have heard by now, the US foiled a new and improved underwear bombing scheme dreamed up by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (apparently, al Qaeda has a franchise operation). 

Jingoistic heel-clicking aside, the counter-terror operation involved human intelligence and a double agent:

It's a stunning revelation in the foiled plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner: The triggerman chosen by al Qaeda was actually a double agent who was working for the CIA and Saudi intelligence services.

He delivered the explosive device to U.S. intelligence officials and provided information on the whereabouts of Fahd al Quso, the senior commander of al Qaeda's wing in Yemen, who was killed in a drone strike last weekend. It's an intelligence victory, but it came with a cost.

U.S. intelligence officials faced a difficult decision. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was looking for a suicide bomber. The target: an American jetliner. The only way for intelligence officials to ensure they controlled the plot was to have their own agent volunteer to be the bomber and then hand the bomb to the CIA. The tradeoff: They would lose a source penetrated deep inside the organization - but they would save lives.

There is a balance that needs to be struck when battling terrorism. Indeed, there are several balances to be struck, from the balance of individual freedoms versus the safety of the citizenry to trading a deep cover source to save lives. 

Long-time readers of my writings know that I am foursquare against violating individual rights for gaining temporary security and safety. Terrorism is a transient war, at worst, while at its best it becomes almost a thing of parody. 

This is not to disrespect the families and co-workers of those who have died in any terror attack anywhere, but apart from a few bombs lobbed at ships and Hummers and one or two lucky strikes on American soil, Al Qaeda has hardly made a dent in our collective -- and I stress, collective -- day-to-day lives.

You want to understand what real terror is like, talk to anyone who lived in Belfast during the Troubles. 

Wars against concepts like drugs, or poverty ,or terror are wars that cannot be won in a traditional sense, but the nomenclature of "war" helps keep the public supporting it. A war against poverty will not eliminate poverty but it can help those who need a hand, and so long as we don't morph "poverty" into "the poor," as the Republicans have, then we might actually have a working society. 

Similarly, a war against terrorism is never going to end terrorism. Even if we wipe out al Qaeda's operative abilities, there will be other terrorists around, and it won't take long for terrorism to spread once more. 

A war against terrorism justifies any number of atrocities, but just focus on the fact that under the Bush Doctrine, we've announced to the world that we will march into any nation if we feel they are harboring some nebulous terror group that might have a grudge against us and be willing to act on it. 

We've long had the ability to do just that, but until 2001, we've felt it important to respect the sovereignty of most nations, even if we have broken with that vow on occasion, even publicly.

The war on Iraq and, to a lesser extent have demonstrated even that important restraint can be violated willy-nilly now. 

Parallel to this new wrinkle in America's posture is a willingness to look inward and harass and even kill American citizens whom we feel might bear us ill will and act upon it. The more we learn that disrespecting civil rights and individual sovereignty abroad bears few repercussions, the more likely we will turn those guns domestically. 

After all, look at what two reasonable men have done since 2001. Now imagine someone far more ideological sitting in the White House. It has happened -- John Adams -- and it will happen again. If you think there isn't a possible outcome where a staunch anti-family autonomy President doesn't sit with a Congress willing to do his dirty work, then you have to re-read American history.

Had the underwear bombing been successful, I have no doubt there would have been increased security measures put in place in US airports, from doubling the number of body scanners and pat-downs at airports to who knows what. We would have lost even more civil freedom in the illusion of safety. 

So is sacrificing a deep cover's friends, allies, and possibly family, is sacrificing a fount of intelligence gathering, worth that price, a little more freedom?

Oh. Hell. Yeah. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Is Obama a disaster for civil liberties?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Jonathan Turley thinks so:

Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

Though I remain, for the most part, a supporter of the president, I cannot disagree. While I would argue that he has done a lot of good thus far in office, this remains the major blot on his record.

Actually, I'd call it a disgrace.

It may be that there have been political rationales behind these policies, including refusing to prosecute the war criminals of his predecessor's administration. Perhaps Obama and his advisors thought he needed to look tough so as to shake off the perception of inexperience and intellectual arrogance (as if Cheney wasn't an arrogant prick). Perhaps they calculated that any sign of weakness, or even perceived weakness, on national security would leave him vulnerable to Republican attacks and weaken his re-election chances.

Whatever.

The point is that these decisions were made and, ultimately, Obama must be held accountable for them -- and for driving a wedge between his presidency and his liberal-progressive base, the millions of people who bought into his promise of change we can believe in and expected if not revolutionary change at least something other than the brutality of the Bush-Cheney years. As Turley notes:

A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that "the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals' rights and freedoms." Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not "soft" on terror. He assumed that, yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day, they would not dare stay home.

Is Obama better than the alternative? Yes, of course:

Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama's policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama's policies have become secondary to his persona.

Realism is certainly part of it. Generally, there has been a willingness to forgive Obama his transgressions simply because Republican opposition and obstruction have been so intense. Besides, however important civil liberties may be (and I'm with Turley and Glenn Greenwald on this), other priorities took over, mostly economic. The fight was about stimulating the economy out of the abyss (the worst crisis since the Great Depression), about rescuing Wall Street (and credit markets generally) from implosion, about saving the auto industry, about health-care reform, about raising the debt ceiling and preventing the country from going into default, about fending off the surging Tea Party and the Republicans' right-wing assault on everything from Social Security to disaster relief. Disappointing as it may be, civil liberties have taken a back seat during Obama's first term.

That's not an excuse, just an explanation. Maybe Obama doesn't actually want to change anything. Maybe he was motivated not so much by political calculation as by personal preference. Yes, maybe his views on civil liberties are actually closer to Bush's (and Cheney's) than to progressives'. One can only hope that a second-term Obama would face greater and more sustained pressure to expand individual rights after this period of 9/11-inspired authoritarianism. 

With the reality of 2012 already upon us, the choice is clear. But that doesn't mean Obama should be let off the hook.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Rand Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Tea Party Republican Rand Paul is a libertarian, and on occasion admirably so (like when he opposes the Patriot Act), but it seems that his enthusiasm for liberty is disturbingly selective and comes with an unhealthy dose of typical Republican police-state authoritarianism. As he told Sean Hannity last Friday:

I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

That's right, this libertarian, this oh-so-courageous defender of freedom, thinks that you should be put in jail if you attend a political event he doesn't approve of, an event at which "radical" things are said.

Now, despite his claim, he was probably thinking primarily of Islamic "radical political speeches," but whether Islamic or not, define radical.

Does it just mean "promoting the violent overthrow of our government"? But, then, where would the line be drawn? And who would draw it? And don't you think "radical" would come to mean so much more?

And what about the pesky little thing known as the First Amendment?

This would be the thin end of the wedge straight to a slippery slope.

But perhaps this should come as no surprise, As Think Progress notes, Paul actually isn't as much of an advocate of civil liberties as his reputation might suggest:

[A]side from his admirable stance on the Patriot Act, Paul's record shows he's hardly the paragon of civil liberties he claims to be, but rather is "indistinguishable from the rest of the GOP on national security issues," The American Prospect's Adam Serwer noted last year. He's said he will "always fight" to keep GITMO open; has said "[f]oreign terrorists do not deserve the protections of our Constitution"; and has never taken a strong public stance against torture, staying silent most recently after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

"I believe that America can successfully protect itself against potential terrorists without sacrificing civil liberties," his website says. Apparently speech is not a civil liberty.

I guess his libertarianism is a matter of partisan and ideological convenience to him. He is when he is and isn't when he isn't. And when he isn't, as here, he's downright un-American.

**********

The good thing is, if there is any good here, he might just put himself in jail.

Yes, he attended an event at which a radical right-wing militia advocated extreme and treasonous violence -- and yet claims he didn't hear a thing! How convenient.
 

The creeping police state of Orwellian America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sometimes liberty isn't snatched away through the revolutionary actions of a Pol Pot. Sometimes it just erodes away. I've described Hugo Chavez's use of slice-by-slice "salami tactics" in Venezuela, and it's an appropriate analogy:

In the first episode of the great Yes, Prime Minister, "The Grand Design," new PM Jim Hacker meets with the government's chief scientific advisor to discuss defence policy. The advisor, a hawkish Austrian, argues that the Soviet Union would use "salami tactics" to take over Europe, that is, a "slice-by-slice" plan with no one slice so grave as to compel the West (or the U.K., in this case) to respond militarily. (The 16 YPM episodes originally aired on the BBC from 1986-88.) At each slice/stage of the scenario, he presses Hacker -- What would it take for him to act? An incursion into West Berlin? Or would the Soviets have to go so far as to take over the Reform Club, one of London's old political establishments? Would he ever respond with nuclear weapons? Probably not.

My point here is not to make a case for military action against Venezuela, but it is clear that Hugo Chavez is using salami tactics in his drive to establish so-called "Bolivarean" socialism -- that is, his own national-socialist autocratic rule -- in that country. I wrote about this last week: "Sometimes revolution can be achieved without sudden, dramatic bloodletting." There are a number of different prongs to Chavez's continuing revolution, a number of slices. They may be examined individually, but they are best understood as variations of the same, as components of a single overarching plan. The nationalization of industry, the seizure of private property, repression of dissent and opposition, control of the media, one-party rule, rule by decree, and, soon, the removal of constitutional impediments to the permanent and perpetual rule of the leader himself.

The pattern is clear. One slice, then another, and another, and another, with no one slice so grave as to compel anyone to act...

This is happening in America now, too, is it not? Yes, there are many who are standing up for freedom and civil liberties, but what success are they having? Freedom has been opposed for a long time by corporatist elements -- including what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex -- but the speed with which government and its private-sector and media allies apply slice upon slice has grown markedly since 9/11 and the supposed emergence of the Islamist-jihadist terrorist threat as the justification for the Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, racial/ethnic/religious profiling, anti-Muslim bigotry, the TSA's intrusive airport pat-downs, and so on. Read 1984. What's happening in the U.S. may not be so blatantly obvious, but do you see what's going on? If not, wake the fuck up.

I'm a committed civil libertarian on this. I understand the need for some degree of security, but beyond what's absolutely essential (like what we were used to at airports, for example), we shouldn't budge an inch. Because it's a slippery slope. If you aren't vigilant in defence of your freedom, you'll wake up one day to find it gone.

**********

At Reason, which espouses a libertarianism I generally reject, Radley Balko addresses one of the latest and most revealing slices:

Janet Napolitano said last month that we should expect to soon see tighter restrictions at bus, train, and marine transportation centers, too. Here's a report about TSA, Border Patrol, and local police setting up a checkpoint at a Greyhound station in Tampa. Note how quickly preventing a possible terrorist attack expands to include catching illegal immigrants, and preventing drug and what sounds like "cash smuggling." (It's hard to tell from the audio.) Note also the complete and utter reverence the local news report bestows on these government agencies, who after all are merely "teaming up to keep your family safe."

A liberal blogger wrote to me in an email this week that libertarians who call the TSA pat-downs a violation of their civil liberties do a disservice to actual violations of civil liberties. It's not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to take mass transportation in this country will have to first submit to a government checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about any excess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in his possession the government deems suspicious. If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won't happen overnight. It'll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.

If you care about your freedom, and about being free in America, don't stand for this.

Don't touch my junk!

By Capt. Fogg 

I remember once, long ago, arriving at O'Hare airport well after midnight with a pair of hungry, thirsty, overtired and near hysterical pre-schoolers following a full day of airport delays and stormy air travel that began in Jamaica. The agony of enduring hours of waiting and seemingly microscopic baggage inspection is impossible to forget as was the large Orwellian banner demanding "PATIENCE - A DRUG FREE AMERICA COMES FIRST." From my point of view, it sure as hell didn't justify the trauma and I don't have to add that it wasn't and still isn't 'drug-free;' but those were the good old days. They didn't strip search my five-year old.

Yes, sure, a majority of Americans are willing to put up with the ritual humiliations that now accompany air travel; those same people that don't worry much about driving their luxury trucks at 100 while talking on the phone -- at night -- in the rain. Odds are they haven't had to experience more than being asked to remove a belt or their shoes or having been chastised by someone in a too-tight polyester uniform and rubber gloves about which size Zip-Loc they put their shampoo and toothpaste in or even having 'terrorist tool' nail clippers confiscated. Of course many of us still haven't been through the full-body cameras and the rude, abrupt, "up against the wall" attitudes of TSA tyrants. Many have been and many are now fed up with what's being mocked as Security Theater. Fed up is a euphemism here of course but in this week of peak air travel, some of us will undergo an attitude adjustment and begin to use more direct words.

Some will elect to deprive some unseen gnome of viewing their nakedness, or that of their spouses and children and choose a "manual" search. It may be more 'manual' then they expected. ABC News producer Carolyn Durand claims that:

The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around. It was basically worse than going to the gynecologist.

The Raw Story reports that women have had to remove prosthetic breasts for "inspection." One man had a urostomy bag ruptured by TSA's claws and had to board an airplane while soaked with public humiliation and urine. Keep in mind, that no probable cause is involved here since profiling would be insulting. Keep in mind that you probably can't get there by Amtrak and driving to grandma's house may be more dangerous than flying.

Of course, to me, the government's power to stick their fingers in your hooha is far more offensive than its power to prevent the bus company from making some of my friends sit in the back seats and expel them from the Woolworths lunch counter, but then I'm not a Tea Party "Patriot," I don't support Rand Paul's discomfort with anything infringing on absolute property rights, and I'm not an oil company either. Neither am I like the troll who used Raw Story's comment section to rave about supporting the "Terrorist State of Israel." I'm just sick of arguable ends being used to sanctify extreme and offensive methods. I'm tired of losing my freedom to other people's fear and my country to the neurotic and fearful mob.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Quote of the Day: Anthony Romero of the ACLU on Obama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Romero's had it, and rightly so:

I'm not disgusted at President Obama personally. It's President Obama's policies on civil liberties and national security issues I'm disgusted by. It's not a personal attack.

What specifically?

It's 18 months and, if not now, when?... Guantanamo is still not closed. Military commissions are still a mess. The administration still uses state secrets to shield themselves from litigation. There's no prosecution for criminal acts of the Bush administration. Surveillance powers put in place under the Patriot Act have been renewed. If there has been change in the civil liberties context, I frankly don't see it.

Many of us don't see it, and Romero of all people is in a good position to know what's going on, and what hasn't changed since Obama took office.

Fear and Trembling in the Court

By Capt. Fogg

OK, so now I'm worried. I was willing to make some excuses for Obama's new support of offshore drilling; blaming it on previous administrations' infiltration of oil men into the department of energy and the drowning of environmental regulations, but if what I'm hearing about Elena Kagan is even partly true, I'm worried that we're going to have a more dangerous court, more friendly toward unfettered Presidential powers and willing to cut a wider swath through the law to root out nebulous, ever shifting devils and their agents -- making any accusation, any suspicion a de facto conviction without representation, without trial, without appeal: in some cases without anyone even knowing about it.

"Battlefield Law", said she to Lindsay Graham last year, should be applied to anyone we have a feeling is financing Al Qaeda and one's rights should not be read to anyone that might be construed to be a "terrorist" despite the lack of any real definition of what a terrorist might be. Vague definitions and accusations of shadowy connections leading to indefinite detentions without due process? Why have a court at all if we're no longer a civilized nation but a band of warriors on a worldwide battlefield?

Attorney General Eric Holder said on ABC's This Week Sunday, that even US citizens don't need to be read their rights if they're suspected of being involved in terrorism. Suspected is the key word here and in a time when everyone seems to be suspected every time they board an airplane, it's a scary word.

“I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public safety exception." Chopping a piece out of the Bill of Rights is “one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress to do – to come up with a proposal that is both Constitutional, but that is also relevant to our time and the threat that we now face.”

I think it's worth mentioning that the most recent attempts at terrorist acts were hardly impeded by the reading of rights as the terrified terrorists , one of whose gonads had just been blow off, spilled their guts as fast as they could get the words out and when we're happy to torture people so thoroughly their testimony becomes invalid, what's going to change if we tell them they have any rights at all -- which, practically speaking, they don't. I'm afraid we don't either. It's certainly harder not to cry when reading about our forefathers' noble ideals about all mankind being endowed with inalienable rights when we're told that's just too risky these days.
It's always been risky and taking that risk has been one of our valid claims to greatness.

The last thing I expected or wanted from the President in the way of restocking the Court was another battlefield lawyer, supporting the degradation of our most basic American traditions and laws from gutless cowardice. We have more to fear from fear of terrorism, it seems, than from terrorism itself. At a time when the very concept of a government is so frightening to so many, I would have expected a selection with a more obvious commitment to taking the risk of Liberty and willing to face saboteurs without sabotaging our own freedom.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Drop that Chalupa, Pedro

By Capt. Fogg

When those cold war movies I grew up on wanted to let you know the scene was not in the land of the free, we were furnished with Angst ridden scenes where the protagonist was asked for his papers by someone in a leather trench coat on some dark street corner. Maybe his accent was showing, the cut of his clothes -- maybe it was just routine, but we were all grateful that back here, in "freedom" we could go about our business without worry and the government was on our side.

The strangest thing about Arizona's new knee jerk immigration law is that Arizona is the spiritual home of small-government libertarianism and the feeling that Government is a necessary evil; perhaps more evil than necessary. They don't want the government telling them when and where or if they can keep and bear and conceal weapons, what they can eat, smoke or drink or what they can do on their property. They don't trust public education or public radio and they sure as hell don't want to pay for them. I suspect they'd raise holy hell if the police were to stop them at random looking for contraband or illegal weapons or even a drivers license, yet they're apparently quite happy to demand that anyone "suspicious" in that state must keep proof of citizenship on their person at all times, display such proof to any cop that feels like demanding it, or face serious consequences. Of course, if you're white, you're probably all right, so never mind.

To any unbiased observer this alone would more than hint of a police state and unconstitutional government interference in private life.

Sure, if the Arizona police were perfect human beings there would be little concern, but they're far from that. Still, those self-styled Libertarians seem quite happy to give unprecedented and perhaps unconstitutional power to Law enforcement to stop people and demand papers. It's pretty hard to maintain the pose of strict constitutional limits on government when the power reserved for the judicial branch is given to a cop on the beat. The various issues surrounding protecting citizens from government powers of search and seizure were a cornerstone of our rebellion against British rule -- as I shouldn't have to remind anyone.

Dare I speculate that the Libertarian label might, for a great many people, sometimes be only the phony ID that authoritarianism carries?

Evidently fear of aliens overrides high principle and what Arizona really wants is a government that cuts a swath through the law to root out what they want rooted out -- and the Constitution be damned. What they want is a government that lays it's fingers heavily on people they don't like and lays completely off anything that stands between them and whatever they please. Sorry cowboy; when you add in the racist element, this situational Libertarianism is too much like Fascism to make it worth trying to find a difference.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

After all these years - warrantless wiretapping ruled illegal

By Carol Gee

In some ways, this is another of my celebratory posts.  My regular readers know that I just passed my fifth year of writing my political blog, S/SW.  That I celebrated a few days ago.  Today I am so very thankful that a federal judge has again ruled against the government's domestic spying lawlessness and claims of state secrets, declaring that Bush illegally wiretapped two Americans, as reported by David Kravets of Wired Threat Level (3/31/10). The government had listened in on telephone conversations of two lawyers who represented a Saudi charity that is now out of business. The only reason the lawyers found out about the surveillance, says Kravets, was because the case's . . . 

allegations were initially based on a classified document the government accidentally mailed to the former Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation lawyers. The document was later declared a state secret and removed from the long-running lawsuit weighing whether a sitting U.S. president may create a spying program to eavesdrop on Americans’ electronic communications without warrants.

The news almost restores my faith that my nation's core constitutional values still matter under law.  Blogger "emptywheel" (3/31/10) put Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in simple terms.  (See original document: Judge Vaughn Walker's Decision/ al Haramain order (3/31/10) - 45 page pdf. Includes a good executive summary at the beginning. Hat tip to Firedoglake). To quote Marcy Wheeler:

Walker is basically saying, “Well, government, if you won’t give us any evidence to prove you legally wiretapped al-Haramain, and given all the evidence they’ve presented proving they were wiretapped, then they win!”
Here’s his argument. The government had a way to defend against al-Haramain’s case directly, in camera, but they refused to avail themselves of it.
. . . As I said: the government refused to engage on the merits, al-Haramain made a sufficient prima facie case, so the government has basically conceded the case.

In other ways this post harbors a ton of regrets.   I regret that my area of specialization brought us almost nothing but heartbreak for all the years I have been covering the subject.  My reading and writing passion has been coverage of the erosion of civil liberties and flouting of the rule of law, following the tragic 9/11/01 attacks on the USA.  (See "Previous S/SW posts" below). Bolstered by excess secrecy, hubris, paranoia and trauma reaction, the Bush and, yes, the Obama administrations have trampled our civil liberties in the name of national security.  For almost 10 years civil libertarians had reason for despair.  Yesterday's court case decision, however, was a bright spot for all of us who have long known that the government ran an illegal program and got away with it.

Of course it is not over 'till it's over.  We do not know yet whether the Obama Justice Department will appeal the case or not.  Marcy Wheeler thinks not, because "I think Walker has crafted his ruling to give the government a big incentive not to appeal the case."  She cites two additional parts of the ruling favorable to the government.  One, that the judge refused to rule on the merits of the case and, two, that he dismissed the part of the suit that named FBI Director Robert Mueller a defendant.  Wheeler is ". . . betting that the government will be willing to accept the ruling that it illegally wiretapped al-Haramain in exchange for the ability to leave details of how and what it did secret, leaving the claim of State Secrets largely intact." 

I recommend Glenn Greenwald's very fine piece at Salon today, "The criminal NSA eavesdropping program." It is in his usually fierce constitutional advocate's style, pulling no punches about the larger current implications of Judge Walker's courageous decision.  He discusses how the ruling reinforces that facts that Bush administration officials broke criminal law, that three federal judges now have said the eavesdropping was illegal and that the Walker "opinion was actually a scathing repudiation of the Obama DOJ," who had taken "the imperial and hubristic position [in the suit] that the court had no right whatsoever to rule on the legality of the program," the state secrets argument.  Greenwald effectively lays out some of the pro/con reaction of the media to the ruling in his closing paragraphs, as well as the history of the discovery and revelation of the program by the New York Times.*

My conclusion is an ambivalent one.  I am extremely glad the ruling came down as strongly as it did, and that the Obama administration has not yet said whether the ruling would be appealed.  I am extremely sad that there is no clear trend in the Obama administration towards upholding the rule of law here. We have no proof whatsoever that standard civil liberties protections have been restored.  And we have little hope that anyone will ever be held accountable for breaking criminal law.  It does not have to be this way.  The question of civil liberties protection vs. national security never should have been allowed to become a zero sum game.

*New York Times articles reveal existence of warrantless wiretapping program:

• Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau - December 16, 2005 Note this quote: 
  
  

  The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

• Spying on Ordinary Americans - editorial: January 18, 2006

Previous S/SW posts on this subject:

• Warrantless wiretapping still out of control, defensive in court - April 18, 2009
• What's happening with FISA? - March 15, 2009
• National Intelligence Review - February 15, 2009
• Conflating torture, detention, warrantless surveillance and civil liberties - October 26, 2008
• FISA bill signing post mortem - July 12, 2008
• When does the rule of law not apply?! - July 7, 2008
• FISA revision revisited - June 10, 2008
• The state of "the surveillance state" - April 15, 2008
• "Like an ubiquitous spook" - Part III - September 10, 2007
• Domestic Intelligence or Domestic Spying? - September 22, 2006
• National Security Drama in the Senate - March 14, 2006
• Civil liberties have staying power in the long run - December 31, 2005
• How do Americans view domestic spying? - December 27, 2005
• NSA Surveillance of Americans: NYT - December 18, 2005
• Patriot Act may be extended - December 9, 2005

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Under my skin

By Capt. Fogg

It's strange to find myself on the same side of any fence with the Book of Revelation literalists, a group for which my loathing is nearly boundless. Nonetheless, the disturbingly Orwellian prospect of having RFID devices implanted in people so that their employers can track their movements scares hell out of them as much as it does me.

A Radio Frequency Identification Device is small enough to be placed under the skin with a hypodermic needle, and it's a great thing for keeping tabs on cattle or identifying lost dogs. They can also contain data, medical or otherwise, that can be read by a scanner. Most humans object to being forced to having one inserted, however, particularly as a substitute for a key or ID badge.

Civil libertarians -- indeed, any kind of libertarians -- tend to be militantly opposed to allowing this to be done to people, but it's of course for reasons of privacy and the protection thereof, not because they give credit to what may be the looniest book to worm it's way into the Christian canon. There are many such people in places like Virginia, and it seems to be they who are behind a bill designed to prevent such implants. Why? Because John of Patmos, almost 2000 years ago, had RFID capsules in mind when he talked about the Mark of the Beast.

He didn't, and the Beast is most likely Nero, but even if the enemy of my enemy is not really my friend, these things are the mark of some kind of beast, corporate or governmental, and I'm as much against it as they are.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

What to do, what to do... about Guantanamo?

By Carol Gee

Closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will be one of the most difficult challenges of the Obama administration. His own staff has been divided on how to do it. FBI Director Robert Mueller worries about detainees in U.S. prisons. Michele Flournoy, number three at the Pentagon, maintains that the U.S. must set the right example before our allies will accept detainees for repatriation. Rendition has been another matter, entirely, in the past when the Bush administration implemented the practice of rendering U.S. prisoners overseas to other countries where they were interrogated under torture.

How other law abiding countries handle suspected violent extremists offers a contrasting picture of how it is managed by the United States. The legal fallout over this has sent cases to court (in particular the Jeppesen/ACLU case). The Obama DOJ has asked a federal appeals court to block the case, claiming "state secrets" necessitate throwing out the case, taking up the claim of the previous administration. On June 22, federal judge Richard Leon ordered Abd al Rahim Abdul Rassak, a Syrian held by the U.S. for years, released because he was a victim of torture by al-Qaida. He "emphatically rejected the government's claims against Rassak. . . adding that U.S. officials are taking a position that defies common sense."

How will the U.S. continue to handle violent extremists? Earlier this month Glenn Greenwald analyzed the current practices of many countries, contrasting them with the administration's probable call for indefinite detention by the U.S. He concluded that, "numerous other countries are, with their actions, adhering to the values and principles which we, with words, righteously claim to embody." Now the White House has drafted an executive order reasserting presidential authority to incarcerate suspects indefinitely, bypassing Congress, according to The Washington Post's Peter Finn and ProPublica's Dafna Linzer. To quote the lead:

Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January 2010 deadline.

Is Bush precedent Obama precedent? Zachary Roth at TPM Muckraker had this chilling conclusion to the news of the draft memo: "If the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that executive abuses, left to continue unchecked for many years, have a tendency to congeal into precedent." It need not be that way. The Constitution has been a powerful bulwark with plenty of capacity to sustain the rule of law, particularly with a president whose specialty has been Constitutional law.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Middle East in recent weeks -

By Carol Gee

The Middle East is one of the subjects I regularly visit. Today the focus is on torture, the economic side of national security, help for Pakistan and Iraq, DoD contractors, and it ends with some assorted items about detainees.

Red Cross report -- "The CIA interrogation program was 'inhuman';" a headline made the headlines recently. The Red Cross reported on active participation of medical officers, who in some cases, participated in torture. The author wondered whether the release of the report (against the wishes of the Red Cross) will add to the pressure to investigate further. From TPMMuckraker I quote,

The journalist Mark Danner has obtained the entire report on torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which he published excerpts from last month. The report has been posted on the website of the New York Review of Books. Danner's new writeup of it is here.

Global Financial Crisis -- The "Pentagon prepares for economic warfare," an article by Eamon Javers in Thursday's Politico.com, discussed a two-day war game last month that looked at how hostile countries might try to cripple the U.S. economy. What could China do to harm us economically, for example? And how we should think about integrating any economic conflict with "kinetic" conflict. To quote further:

. . . instead of military brass plotting America’s defense, it was hedge-fund managers, professors and executives from at least one investment bank, UBS – all invited by the Pentagon to play out global scenarios that could shift the balance of power between the world’s leading economies.

. . . In the end, there was sobering news for the United States – the savviest economic warrior proved to be China, a growing economic power that strengthened its position the most over the course of the war-game.

Pakistan is problematic -- President Obama ruled out U.S. troop raids into Pakistan at the end of last month, according to Yahoo! News, saying that "he will consult with Pakistan's leaders before pursuing terrorist hideouts in that country." On CBS the President emphasized that Pakistan is a sovereign government. CQ Politics predicts "trouble ahead for the Pakistan aid Obama wants," if Oklahoma's Senator Tom Coburn renews his objections to the Kerry-Lugar bill that will be the vehicle for the increased aid appropriation. The WaPo reported recently that "Congress Moves to Set Terms for Pakistan Aid." Terms include benchmarks.

Iraq Refugees -- The Iraq Refugee problem persists, according to an April 1 article in ProPublica. "Only a fraction of Itaq refugees have begun returning home," the story says. To quote:

The number of Iraqis living outside of their homes remains in dispute; the U.N. places the figure at 4.7 million. How quickly they return is viewed by many as a bellwether of Iraqi stability, with implications for regional security and U.S. military efforts.

. . . Last month, the Obama administration announced additional funds to support displaced and conflict-affected Iraqis in Iraq, Jordan and Syria in the current budget year, bringing the U.S. commitment so far this year to roughly $150 million; in 2008 the U.S. contributed $400 million. Al-Tikriti said the U.S. has been criticized for failing to invest more robustly. "Much of the international community feels that this is primarily a U.S. crisis and the U.S. should be primarily responsible for dealing with it."

DOD Contractors -- As we know, spending for contract work surged markedly during the Bush administration. However we learned through ProPublica that, to quote:

Pentagon inspectors sent 76 percent fewer contracting fraud and corruption cases to prosecutors than those under President Clinton did, reports the Center for Public Integrity. A Pentagon spokesman blamed the drop partly on laws passed in the 1990s that require contractors to disclose less information, and IG reports have cited staffing shortages.

ProPublica's Alexandra Andrews also revealed this little blurb,

In 2005, four Blackwater guards in Iraq fired more than 70 shots at a car without justification, according to State Department investigators, and left the driver in unknown condition, reports USA Today. But in what the paper calls "another example of lax State Department oversight," documents show that the top security official at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq refused to punish them because he didn't want morale among contractors to suffer.

About Detainees --

• A National Geographic television documentary, "Explorer: Inside Guantanamo," premiered April 5. CQ-Politics'Jeff Stein reported on "the full treatment of the issues" by the documentary.


• Given the release of Legal Counsel memos by the DOJ, the ACLU called a couple of weeks ago for the administration to "release photos of other Abu Ghraibs." The ACLU points out that there are still-secret and mostly unknown pictures of U.S. personnel abusing detainees at overseas black sites other than Abu Ghraib. A FOIA lawsuit by ACLU is making its way through the courts.


• The legacy of Abu Ghraib remains. On March 10 a suicide blast killed at least 32 people at the Abu Ghraib marketplace in western Baghdad.


• Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) is detaining the nomination of Christopher Hill to be the next ambassador to Iraq. The question will come up again following the spring recess of Congress.


• And finally, undersecretary of defense policy during the Bush administration, Douglas Feith told the New York Times that he is "shocked, simply shocked by possible torture charges" brought against him in Spain, according to TPMMuckraker (3/31/09).

The Middle East is a subject of fascination for me at this blog. Unfortunately I did not find much good news in recent days as I surveyed the blogosphere. National security will take a tremendous amount of our time and treasure as the Obama administration continues to face most everything head on. It will not be easy.

Reference: "You Can't Put Out Fire With Flames," by guest poster Amjad Atallah, is an important analysis of President Obama's major speech in Turkey when he was recently abroad. It comes from the April 6 Washington Note.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

No one is above the law

By Carol Gee

The day they took office the Obama administration had a legal problem. In fact they had several, left behind by their predecessors. These problems did not grow out of the rule of law, but outside of the rule of law. All of the current shocking news about the Bush administration is the result of revelations of law breaking. The Geneva Conventions were ignored, Americans were spied upon without a court order, and prisoners were kept in custody for years without charges being filed. And they were tortured. All kinds of government materials were classified that were embarrassing but not secret, and Congress was not kept legally informed for its oversight purposes. The U.S. military was prepared to act against its own countrymen. Our personal phone calls, e-mails, medical and financial records were surveilled by mass means, illegally and without privacy protection.

Rather early on President Obama and Attorney General Holder reaffirmed that no one is above the law. For that reason, the Obama lawyers must not give undue weight to the Bush lawyers' extra-legal opinions and the positions of his Office of Legal Counsel should not be assumed to have legal standing.

Claiming state secrets, over classification of materials, threats to national security, warrantless wiretapping, can never trump the rule of law coming solidly out of the Constitution. This is where the three co-equal branches of government come in. Here are some simple examples:

Duly sworn judges have the right to rule on evidence. They have security clearances, in effect. Duly elected members of the legislature have the right to practice oversight of the executive branch's execution of the laws passed by Congress. They also have security clearances in effect. Disagreements go to court to be adjudicated. Neither the executive branch nor the courts make laws. Courts interpret the laws. Legislators ratify U.S. treaties into international law. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable search or seizure, and limits what the military can do within the U.S. Bill of Rights civil liberties cannot be permanently abridged by mere executive fiat.

Lawyers in the current administration who come out with legal arguments in adherence to a number of Bush positions are on shaky ground. Protecting executive power prerogatives is not a good enough argument when those Executive powers are clearly not legal. This means that today's lawyers and courts must look to the experts and go further back to find precedents that are on solid ground. The Justice Department's move to try a detainee on formal legal charges is the kind of legal decision making that is a step in the right direction.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

National Security Opinion Roundup

By Carol Gee

Retired General James Jones is President Obama's pick to head the National Security Agency. In my opinion it was a brilliant choice of a brilliant man for a crucial position. Policy making, coordination, advice will be the stuff of his days in the West Wing. With what issues has he been dealing in recent weeks?

Secrecy -- "How long will the secret Bush counterterrorism memos stay secret?," was written by Chisun Lee at ProPublica. At the (2/25/09) confirmation hearing for Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the nominee evaded flatly saying that the memos would be released. Senator Diane Feinstein was not satisfied with her answer, echoing the opinion of many civil libertarians. Before being nominated Johnsen has called the Bush OLC's secrecy a "terrible abuse of power."

Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, told us, "I would have liked to hear a clearer commitment" to releasing the memos and to the public value of doing so. But, he said, "ultimately what matters is not what Ms. Johnsen says but what she does, and when she does it. We're hopeful that over the next few weeks we'll start to see some of these memos released."

Guantanamo Bay -- Anthony Romero, who heads the ACLU, urged President Obama to let human rights groups examine conditions at Guantanamo Bay. Romero recently said it is not enough that the Pentagon has just issued a report concluding that the prison complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Conventions. Here is the action link Romero recommends: Ask President Obama to let human rights groups independently examine conditions at Guantánamo Bay.

Detention policy -- "The Obama administration position on detention policy: what he said," according to Christopher Weaver's article at ProPublica (2/23/09), is essentially the same as the old policy. To quote:

But the orders didn't address the broader questions of detention policy that have left the four Bagram prisoners behind bars for years, without due process. The men are basically the same type of prisoners that stirred up fervor over Gitmo. Unlike most of the 600 inmates at Bagram, who were detained in combat on the battlefield, these four were captured outside of Afghanistan or any other war zone, and they've been in custody for years. One detainee, according to his lawyers, was captured on a business trip in Bangkok.

Observers weren't surprised that the Obama administration hasn't developed a sweeping new policy on combating terrorism in the brief period allotted by the court. Jack Balkin, a Yale law professor, told the New York Times, "It may take some time before we see exactly what is going on -- whether this is just a transitory policy or whether this is really their policy."

Central Intelligence Agency -- Old scandals and new beginnings:

1. "Disgraced senior CIA official heads to prison still claiming he is a patriot," by Marcus Stern, (2/27/09) at ProPublica. Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who held very senior positions at the agency, has been sentenced to over three years in federal prison for defrauding the government. It stemmed from the bribery scandal that involved Randy "Duke" Cunningham a few years ago. Foggo claimed he plead guilty in order to spare the government the cost of a trial where national security secrets might have been revealed.


2. "Biden says Bush gave Al Qaeda a recruiting tool," Scott Shane reports at the International Herald Tribune (2/20/09). Speaking to the employees of the CIA after swearing in its new director, Leon Panetta, Vice President Biden's words implied criticism of the organization's record under the previous administration. To quote:
   
   

   Biden said the new president's actions "reverse the policies that in my view and the view of many in this agency caused America to fall short of its founding principles and which gave Al Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool."
   
   Such remarks . . . did not appear to dampen the enthusiastic reception from CIA employees. Panetta, 70, a former California congressman and White House chief of staff who has never before worked for an intelligence agency, also made glancing references to the recent history of the CIA, which was blamed for mistaken assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs in the months before the Iraq war.

The Democratic Left/Progressive/Civil liberties wing of our party is sometimes of the opinion that President Obama has given us several disappointments on the Constitutional vs. national security front. At this point I believe that he is feeling his way, trying to avoid making mistakes that he feels might jeopardize his presidential prerogatives or risk national security. It is my hope that some of these decisions will be softened or reversed as time passes and he gains confidence. In order for that to happen, however, he must be kept aware that we expect better things, better support for the place of the Bill of Rights in the decision mix.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)