“Official stance”? Can you substantiate this claim, please?
Simple question, calling for a precise, factual, measurable answer:
How are YOU less free now than you were on September 10, 2001?
Seriously, tell me what rights you had on September 10, 2001 that have since been taken away.
Do you honestly believe this, or are you just fiddling with the definition of “serious” and “threat”?
The only issue I see with that is making sure that the appointment of the judiciary is depoliticized as much as possible. Right now, appointments are mostly political. Judges can do what they want once they’re there, but politicians always do their damndest to get their guys in.
I have not. For all I know, there are people listening in on my phone calls. The fact that my phone calls are boring means that I would not know. Provisions of the Patriot Act allowed for greatly enhanced surveillance, with reduced checks and balances. If I was watched, I wouldn’t know; I’m pretty darn boring. That being said, the fact that I could have been watched. And the whole thing sets a pretty bad precedent overall.
Really, the time to get upset isn’t when it’s already screwing with you; it’s when you realize the law has the potential for screwage.
Prior to September 11, the government would have had a much more difficult time legally recording my phone calls or conversations. Also, I was allowed to meet my wife (at the time, my girlfriend) at the gate when her plane landed. Since 2001, the government has imprisoned people without charges or access to a lawyer, and in at least 1 case they did so to an American citizen.
But my phone calls probably aren’t being recorded, I got married to my wife so now we hardly ever take airplane trips apart from each other, and I (probably) won’t be imprisoned without charges or a trial. All of that stuff is happening to “other” people, so I guess I’m still free!
At present there is little way to ascertain exactly what information was gathered by whom, and no specific plans for what is to be done with it. I imagine I value my privacy considerably more than others. Curiously, as a liberal, many would accuse me of favoring increased government action …
And I consider it horrific that a US citizen would be held indefinitely while denied a trial or access to counsel. I do not know that I can imagine any “threat” that would justify that.
And I consider myself less free to express what might be considered inappropriate speech by the nearest automatic-weapon wielding LEO. Yeah, speech is another one of my biggies.
Angel of the Lord might actually be psychic, because he/she summed up what I was saying pretty well.
I’m not saying airport security measures made Bush a bad guy. I think Iraq made Bush a bad guy; can’t blame him for trying to keep crazy people off the planes.
However, I can certainly blame the Republican Party for screaming 9/11 from every rooftop and making a negligible risk into the focal point of American foreign policy. I can certainly blame the American people for buying the schtick.
sigh.
There seems to be two layers to this thread.
First: *The idea of a growing security state, torture, and in general the idea of American hegemony is widely accepted among the US populace, neener, neener. *
That’s objectively true and has been true for most of the history of the US. I wouldn’t trumpet this news to anyone I was trying to impress with the moral foundation of my countrymen but yeah, this is totally right.
*
Second: Everyone here who supports Obama and bashed Bush is a hypocrite*
This is also true and can almost apply to almost any two presidents.
There were two slices of Bush opposition. Well, actually three, but the Republicans were only against him in the same strategical sense as Dems are against in your face torture or brutal terror tactics (Reps: “He makes us look bad and makes it harder to get into office,” Dems: “It’s not good to torture openly because it makes our Terror War less effective in the information age, particularly in our satellite states”).
The biggest slice of Bush opposition were Dems. The other, much smaller slice were…well, I don’t know what you call us. Cynics, whacky liberals, I dunno. We morbidly chuckle at Obama and his followers though and probably will for any US admin as long as there is a US. So I guess we’re morally pure or whatever the criticism is supposed to be, but the OP is also right that we are in the extreme fringe. We’re anti-sacrifice Mayans. We emphatically do not share the guiding principles of our nation.
EDIT: 9-11 and other emergencies are useful for every country in the world when they want to crack down. China and Russia loved 9-11.
The idea in the OP is predicated on the assumption that the populace wants this to happen. I have no reason to think that they really care. They might want the troops brought home or whatever, but whether suspected terrorists are getting proper trials or being held in detention for another five years isn’t really going to be a deciding factor in who they vote for in the next election.
It seems more likely that if the new administration is carrying on what the old administration did that there’s a good reason. What information was secret to the presidential candidates ceases being secret once in he’s in office. That information might make it seem that cruel or unnecessary behaviors were in fact fully justified and even dangerous to end.
I don’t know… that just seems like a pretty amorphorous starting point.
Perhaps one of our resident Obama supporters can make a case Obama having rolled back certain measures put in place during the Bush administration. I honestly haven’t been following that closely.
The Colbert Report touched on this issue a few nights ago, and I thought it was one of those rare insights that comes along every now and then in The Colbert Report and the Daily Show that is more profound that first glance would suggest:
(quoted from memory, probably paraphrased)
This quote was in response to the rumors that racial profiling could become SOP in airport security, and by “ideals”, he meant the American ideals of liberty and innocence until proven guilty. Quite frankly, I agree. I can’t imagine that even if we strip-searched every dark-skinned person, every person with the name Ahmed, we would make the skies completely safe. Even supposing that we could accomplish that (a big if), it wouldn’t be long before terrorists pursue other, much more unguarded avenues.
No, its just that the “majority” is fringe. They are a radicalized, psycopathic, sycophantic, war, mob.
There is no war on terrorism. It is a lie. The war is the war of conquest and greed.
Or, it’s just that Obama is scum like Bush was scum.
I agree. As a nation, America has become borderline fascist; disdainful of the rights and freedoms it loves to pretend to champion. Brutal, aggressive, predatory, corrupt.
It seems to me that the most egregious violations of civil rights were already rolled back by the courts during the Bush administration, so I am not sure how much is left for the Obama adminstration to do. Certainly, few governments in history have willingly relinquished powers acquired by their predecessors–a point made repeatedly prior to the most recent presidential elections.
Are prisoners still being brought to Guantanamo?
Has the waterboarding stopped?
President Obama said that we would not torture any prisoners and that he is moving toward closing Guantanamo. There seems to be evidence of that.
I don’t think that all of Obama’s supporters have objected specifically to more careful screening by country of origin --especially if we were engaged in military conflicts within those countries.
The only people that I know personally who actually were on the “no fly list” were a man and woman from North Carolina. They are both white, American born, and in their sixties. They attend the Episcopal Church. He graduated from an Ivy League College and she is all of 5 feet tall and about 100 pounds. They are retired. They don’'t fit anyone’s idea of “likely to be profiled.” He’s just impatient and impulsive.
The author quoted in the OP says that all of the following are politically entrenched. (I am astounded that he makes such a claim!):
indefinite detention without charges,
trials by military commission,
the use of military force against suspected terrorists in foreign countries,
secrecy privileges that undermine litigation against government officials responsible for terrorism policies,
profiling on the basis of nationality
It’s not airline policies that concern me the most anyway. It’s the right to have private letters, emails, bank accounts, phone calls, and a home.
I also don’t want to worry that if I criticize the President without holding my mouth just the right way, someone might decide to question me. Bush’s people were nuts! Too many malicious people. Comb-suckers. That has certainly changed.
There is actually probably more truth to this then you are willing to give credit too. I would think with out even having to google for numbers that you are 1,000 times more likely to be killed by some random act of violence then an act of “terror”.
Did a google search for the lulz and here is the first hit.
“The Eyewash Station has some interesting stats:
You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack
You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
You are six times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack
You are eight times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack
You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane
You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack
You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack
You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack
You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack
You are nine times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack
You are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist”
It is important to distinguish between terror-related civil liberties incursions and other civil liberties problems. Bush was criticized for a whole range of civil liberties problems in the context of immigration enforcement, voting rights, etc., in addition to the post-9/11 measures.
Since we seem to be talking about only the terror-related policies, let’s start by composing a fair list of those policies. Here’s what I see as the top ten war on terror-related civil liberties incursions of the Bush Administration (and to be clear, I’m not making a list of policies with which I disagree, but instead those policies that received significant criticism from the civil liberties community):
-
Claiming the inherent power to detain prisoners indefinitely. (Obama has rejected this power in court filings)
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Torture by US government. (Obama’s first official act was to end this)
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Rendition to torture. (Obama claims to have ended rendition to torture, but not renditions generally)
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Section 218 of the Patriot Act and Warrantless surveillance. (Obama supported renewal but with revisions, but it is not yet clear what will happen in Congress)
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Improper use of signing statements. (Obama has stopped issuing them, but reserved the power to not enforce clearly unconstitutional laws)
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Improper use of state secrets defense. (Obama has now required that assertion of the defense be authorized by the AG)
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Unnecessary Secrecy. (Obama has substatially revised the internal FOIA rules, effectively swapping the presumption from redaction to openness)
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Other provisions of Patriot Act (e.g. roving wiretaps) (See above)
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“Total Information Awareness” (Don’t know on this one, actually)
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Military tribunals as originally proposed (SCOTUS solved that one, and it is unclear to what extent Obama will use tribunals at all)
I think that’s a fair list of the most serious complaints from the likes of the ACLU. Obama has repealed at least some of those policies, and taken steps ranging from superficial to significant to roll back the others. I just don’t see how you can look at that picture and say that nothing has changed, or that Obama is just implementing all of Bush’s policies.
(And someone might want to tell Posner that Obama does not control the decisions of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Indeed, the administration’s position in that case was for more limited executive powers than the court upheld.)
Thanks for making the list. Good to see it all at once. I had a question on one, though.
Could you provide a link to the filing where he “rejected” #1*. I only thought Obama never asserted (was silent) that he was relying on inherent Prez power to detain, and instead just argued he had authority from the AUMF. I didn’t think he ever explicitly stated that because there is no Prez power to detain, I must get the authority from Congressional approval. I haven’t been following this stuff as closely as I used to, so I could be wrong here. It would be a welcome surprise.
*I was able to find a detainees brief saying the President rejected it, but never the Gov actually saying it; so I can’t be sure if the detainee took the Gov’s silence and interpreted that as rejection, or if the Gov actually rejected it.