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"Congress granted the president the authority to arrest and hold individuals accused of terrorism without due process under the NDAA, but Mr. Obama said in an a

by spodek 13y ago

"Congress granted the president the authority to arrest and hold individuals accused of terrorism without due process under the NDAA, but Mr. Obama said in an accompanying signing statement that he will not abuse these privileges to keep American citizens imprisoned indefinitely" If you want to influence someone, it helps to understand their motivations. I can't conceive of what Obama has in mind with pursuing this law against resistance. Is it not obvious to everyone the unwanted side-effects of this kind of power? Is it not obvious how much this flies in the face of the intent of the people who wrote the Constitution. Or more relevantly the Declaration of Independence? Obama is a lawyer! He's intelligent. What can he be thinking? Did he forget the purpose and spirit of the Bill of Rights as he and advisors schemed to get around its letters? Those revolutionaries would have all been labeled terrorists today. With the King in England, any colonist would have been an enemy combatant, stripped of rights, jailed or worse arbitrarily, and who knows what else. Whether the United States has become what we rebelled against is not the question. If nothing changes, it's only a matter of time. This country has gotten rid of slavery and overcome major hurdles of sexual and racial inequality. Let's hope we have what it takes to overcome this centralization of power and unaccountability. And that we act on it.

xradionut 13y ago
The United States has become empire. We have the trappings of a democratic republic, but it's obvious that the law of the land is broken for those in power. No one should be surprised by this, it's evolution in action and the writing's been on the wall for years.
Systemic33 13y ago
US is really the Roman Empire of our time. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
- madaxe 13y ago
  The empire never ended.
  - cpursley 13y ago
    Interesting. Please explain.
    - jbooth 13y ago
      After the administration was split (a few different ways were tried, settling on eastern/western halfs), the western half declined, failed to stop incursions from the Germanic tribes and eventually Rome was sacked a couple times. The eastern half thrived, and even reconquered Rome and Spain, under Justinian. This was a continuation of the exact same government, no fall from power, just a loss of some territory. They lost Rome back fairly quickly and were controlling various parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on and off until they entered terminal decline after 12-1300 or so, and Constantinople finally fell to the Turks, with the last Emperor dying in the battle in 1452.
      - mitchty 13y ago
        Whats somewhat sad about the western half of the empire is that the final 100-150 years were just riddled with things that were entirely avoidable and other stupidity like the treatment of the Gauls. But they had a much harder time dealing with the huge influx of displaced Germanic tribes due to the (Mongols iirc?). The western half of the empire started down the road to things like castles and other behavior like large estates that directly fed into the middle ages. Diocletian and his division of things into dioceses also helped, but I think once they started down the path of dual Augustus/Caesar rule it was bound to fail due to the inevitable clashes of personality. That said its a great story. A good overview of things is in the "History of Rome" podcast. http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ Its long, but not as bad as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That book, the horrors.
- cmdkeen 13y ago
  What's worrying is that it always strikes me as the Roman Empire in the last days of the Republic. Vast sums being spent to buy elections, a powerful few getting very rich off wars and the government grinding to a halt, unable to deal with the problems facing the nation. Just before Caesar came along and get into a fight with the Senate. Congress' approval ratings are so low it really wouldn't take much for a powerful populist movement to challenge the constitutional makeup.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    "Congress' approval ratings are so low it really wouldn't take much for a powerful populist movement to challenge the constitutional makeup" You might want to check folks approval ratings of their own congressperson. The overall rating is horrid, but the "mine" is generally quite good.
  - diydsp 13y ago
    The other scary thing is how the Roman Empire ended... IIUC (and that's a capital I, btw), a group of Visigoths penetrated the capital, killed a bunch of powerful rulers and left... the rest of the country couldn't handle itself and it led to the Dark Ages for centuries... The scary thing is how close the events of 9/11/2001 are to those very circumstances... ...Although a part of me fantasizes about the freedom which existed in Dark Ages....
jvm 13y ago
> Those revolutionaries would have all been labeled terrorists today. This is one of the huge ironies about contemporary conservatives. They practically worship the founding fathers like gods, but they would have hated many of them if they met them today, as many were godless radical liberals. The most extreme example of this for me was when D'Souza and other republicans accused Barack Obama of being anti-colonialist [1], specifically in the context of British occupation, and they meant that in a bad way(!) Surely if nothing else, our country was founded on the principle of opposition to British colonialism. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705485.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...
- bobo1357 13y ago
  Which founding fathers were godless?
  - smackay 13y ago
    Thomas Paine's deism was rather too godless for a lot of people's tastes, including Theodore Roosevelt. http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Thomas_Paine http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Thomas_Paine
  - lukifer 13y ago
    More specifically, many were deists, which was culturally equivalent to atheism at the time. Jefferson even published a version of the New Testament with all mention of God or the supernatural removed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
- jbooth 13y ago
  Not to mention that they've yelled tyranny! at every minor administrative tweak, regulatory change or appointment for the last 6 years... And then, when something like this comes up, that actually does threaten our rights, crickets? Not only crickets but cooperation from the least cooperative congress possibly in history? What the fuck, guys?
brown9-2 13y ago
Did the executive branch ask for this authority explicitly, or did Congress decide in it's own to grant it?
brown9-2 13y ago
Did the executive branch ask for this authority explicitly, or did Congress decide in it's own to grant it?
maw 13y ago
If you want to influence someone, it helps to understand their motivations. I can't conceive of what Obama has in mind with pursuing this law against resistance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNS4t5UCBfI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNS4t5UCBfI. That's what.
tootie 13y ago
The appeals court opinion stated in no uncertain terms that the reason they ruled the way they did is that the plaintiffs had no standing since the statute unequivocally excludes American citizens or anyone captured on American soil. The AUMF basically just extends POW-type status to non-state actors (Al Qaeda and Taliban in particular) which makes perfect sense to me.
mkramlich 13y ago
> "CONGRESS GRANTED the president the authority I'm repeatedly amused at how the first words of that sentence seem to be ignored by everybody who goes on to demonize Obama. (I made them bold for emphasis.) You almost never hear criticism or blame of Congress over this.
- anExcitedBeast 13y ago
  There's also only one person who could single-handedly stop this from becoming law. And that one person, that one single point of failure who doesn't have a hive mind to hide behind, is Obama. But to your point, congress certainly warrants equal rebuke.
adventured 13y ago
It is obvious. However, what you refer to as unwanted side-effects, are the entire point. Those side-effects, aren't side-effects, they're the goal. Obama is aggressively pursuing these powers, just as Bush did before him. It's not ignorance at work, or misplaced faith in the system; everybody at the top of the food chain understands exactly what this means. You want to know what he's thinking? He's thinking the same thing every despot in history has thought. If this were 20 or 30 years into the future, with the way things are going, Obama would be a truly frightening monster. The next three or four presidents that come after Obama, are the ones to be afraid of; they'll start off right out of the gate with the kind of power the founding fathers would have understood to be the domain of kings and tyrants.
roc 13y ago
> "I can't conceive of what Obama has in mind with pursuing this law against resistance." I think, logically, we're down to only a few options: 1. "he's lying": His stated opinions/positions don't reflect his beliefs at all. 2. "he's powerless": despite being President, he has no practical control over what is pursued, so his speeches and signing statements are essentially a plea for people and historians to not blame him for that which he cannot control. 3. "he's corrupt": Power has corrupted his ideals, and he truly believes he can fairly wield dangerous powers such as the drone kill list and suspension of citizenship/rights, despite their risks, and that having these tools available to him today is more necessary/important than denying them for fear of future abuse. And none of those possibilities are particularly encouraging.
mcantelon 13y ago
Obama's pretty obviously not steering the ship. He's a salesman for whoever is. As for motivation, since 9/11 the course has been set to gradually implement a robust domestic counter-insurgence apparatus. So either the state anticipates otherwise unmanageable instability in the face of climate change, de-inustrialization, etc. or undemocratic changes are planned that could invite domestic insurrection. The US is reportedly making plans for war with China (http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparations-for-war-with-china/ http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparation...), so that could be an effort requiring unprecedented austerity/authoritarianism.
- kunai 13y ago
  AFAIK this has been happening since way before 9/11, now it's just picked up more pace. If you remember (I don't because I wasn't alive then) during Truman's presidency and up until around the 1990s, the U.S. consistently, without failure, used Communism as a scapegoat for instilling fear into the masses and making an international statement. It was only oh-so-convenient that Communist regimes tended to be oppressive -- Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev -- why not lead the public to believe ALL Communist regimes are that way? Let's prevent freedom of thought, and lead the public to believe that while we actually feel threatened by the idea of communal sharing and the concept of Marxism, which we feel is harmful to the kickbacks that we receive from corporations to do what we want, Communism is actually just another word for an oppressive regime, and not a political concept derived by a highly intelligent German philosopher that has enormous benefits worldwide. So, here's the plan: we invade 'Nam. If they're the first communist regime that actually works, the public will know we've been lying to them. Shit, that didn't work. Okay, so there's this pretty harmless socialist dude running for office in Chile, let's call him a communist and make an example out of him. All right, let's get OUR candidate out, and-- HOLY SHIT, HE'S WON! We have succeeded. Even though Pinochet is an oppressive dictator and a mockery of democracy, let's keep him there anyway, because HE'S NOT COMMUNIST! Thank the lord. Thank, the, lord. Because he isn't communist, the public will never know that Chile is now oppressed! So, reestablishing my point once again -- this has been going on long before 9/11, it's just that 9/11 has supercharged the process by giving the U.S. government a boost in doing so. There's a difference, though -- now we actually KNOW that the U.S. government is corrupt. It's no longer "you're with us or with the communists" or "you're with us or with the terrorists." What matters is how hard we push these people. The only way to do that is to educate. Mainstream media is a waste of time, and while Al Jazeera tends to be far more accurate and unbiased in its reporting, I don't know how well Americans will take to watching an Arabic-sponsored channel. More high-profile names like Soledad O'Brien, and it should be enough.

by spodek 13y ago

xradionut 13y ago

The United States has become empire. We have the trappings of a democratic republic, but it's obvious that the law of the land is broken for those in power. No one should be surprised by this, it's evolution in action and the writing's been on the wall for years.

Systemic33 13y ago

US is really the Roman Empire of our time. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

madaxe 13y ago
The empire never ended.
- cpursley 13y ago
  Interesting. Please explain.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    After the administration was split (a few different ways were tried, settling on eastern/western halfs), the western half declined, failed to stop incursions from the Germanic tribes and eventually Rome was sacked a couple times. The eastern half thrived, and even reconquered Rome and Spain, under Justinian. This was a continuation of the exact same government, no fall from power, just a loss of some territory. They lost Rome back fairly quickly and were controlling various parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on and off until they entered terminal decline after 12-1300 or so, and Constantinople finally fell to the Turks, with the last Emperor dying in the battle in 1452.
    - mitchty 13y ago
      Whats somewhat sad about the western half of the empire is that the final 100-150 years were just riddled with things that were entirely avoidable and other stupidity like the treatment of the Gauls. But they had a much harder time dealing with the huge influx of displaced Germanic tribes due to the (Mongols iirc?). The western half of the empire started down the road to things like castles and other behavior like large estates that directly fed into the middle ages. Diocletian and his division of things into dioceses also helped, but I think once they started down the path of dual Augustus/Caesar rule it was bound to fail due to the inevitable clashes of personality. That said its a great story. A good overview of things is in the "History of Rome" podcast. http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ Its long, but not as bad as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That book, the horrors.
cmdkeen 13y ago
What's worrying is that it always strikes me as the Roman Empire in the last days of the Republic. Vast sums being spent to buy elections, a powerful few getting very rich off wars and the government grinding to a halt, unable to deal with the problems facing the nation. Just before Caesar came along and get into a fight with the Senate. Congress' approval ratings are so low it really wouldn't take much for a powerful populist movement to challenge the constitutional makeup.
- protomyth 13y ago
  "Congress' approval ratings are so low it really wouldn't take much for a powerful populist movement to challenge the constitutional makeup" You might want to check folks approval ratings of their own congressperson. The overall rating is horrid, but the "mine" is generally quite good.
- diydsp 13y ago
  The other scary thing is how the Roman Empire ended... IIUC (and that's a capital I, btw), a group of Visigoths penetrated the capital, killed a bunch of powerful rulers and left... the rest of the country couldn't handle itself and it led to the Dark Ages for centuries... The scary thing is how close the events of 9/11/2001 are to those very circumstances... ...Although a part of me fantasizes about the freedom which existed in Dark Ages....

jvm 13y ago

> Those revolutionaries would have all been labeled terrorists today. This is one of the huge ironies about contemporary conservatives. They practically worship the founding fathers like gods, but they would have hated many of them if they met them today, as many were godless radical liberals. The most extreme example of this for me was when D'Souza and other republicans accused Barack Obama of being anti-colonialist [1], specifically in the context of British occupation, and they meant that in a bad way(!) Surely if nothing else, our country was founded on the principle of opposition to British colonialism. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705485.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...

bobo1357 13y ago
Which founding fathers were godless?
- smackay 13y ago
  Thomas Paine's deism was rather too godless for a lot of people's tastes, including Theodore Roosevelt. http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Thomas_Paine http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Thomas_Paine
- lukifer 13y ago
  More specifically, many were deists, which was culturally equivalent to atheism at the time. Jefferson even published a version of the New Testament with all mention of God or the supernatural removed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
jbooth 13y ago
Not to mention that they've yelled tyranny! at every minor administrative tweak, regulatory change or appointment for the last 6 years... And then, when something like this comes up, that actually does threaten our rights, crickets? Not only crickets but cooperation from the least cooperative congress possibly in history? What the fuck, guys?

brown9-2 13y ago

Did the executive branch ask for this authority explicitly, or did Congress decide in it's own to grant it?

brown9-2 13y ago

Did the executive branch ask for this authority explicitly, or did Congress decide in it's own to grant it?

maw 13y ago

If you want to influence someone, it helps to understand their motivations. I can't conceive of what Obama has in mind with pursuing this law against resistance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNS4t5UCBfI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNS4t5UCBfI. That's what.

tootie 13y ago

The appeals court opinion stated in no uncertain terms that the reason they ruled the way they did is that the plaintiffs had no standing since the statute unequivocally excludes American citizens or anyone captured on American soil. The AUMF basically just extends POW-type status to non-state actors (Al Qaeda and Taliban in particular) which makes perfect sense to me.

mkramlich 13y ago

> "CONGRESS GRANTED the president the authority I'm repeatedly amused at how the first words of that sentence seem to be ignored by everybody who goes on to demonize Obama. (I made them bold for emphasis.) You almost never hear criticism or blame of Congress over this.

anExcitedBeast 13y ago
There's also only one person who could single-handedly stop this from becoming law. And that one person, that one single point of failure who doesn't have a hive mind to hide behind, is Obama. But to your point, congress certainly warrants equal rebuke.

adventured 13y ago

It is obvious. However, what you refer to as unwanted side-effects, are the entire point. Those side-effects, aren't side-effects, they're the goal. Obama is aggressively pursuing these powers, just as Bush did before him. It's not ignorance at work, or misplaced faith in the system; everybody at the top of the food chain understands exactly what this means. You want to know what he's thinking? He's thinking the same thing every despot in history has thought. If this were 20 or 30 years into the future, with the way things are going, Obama would be a truly frightening monster. The next three or four presidents that come after Obama, are the ones to be afraid of; they'll start off right out of the gate with the kind of power the founding fathers would have understood to be the domain of kings and tyrants.

roc 13y ago

> "I can't conceive of what Obama has in mind with pursuing this law against resistance." I think, logically, we're down to only a few options: 1. "he's lying": His stated opinions/positions don't reflect his beliefs at all. 2. "he's powerless": despite being President, he has no practical control over what is pursued, so his speeches and signing statements are essentially a plea for people and historians to not blame him for that which he cannot control. 3. "he's corrupt": Power has corrupted his ideals, and he truly believes he can fairly wield dangerous powers such as the drone kill list and suspension of citizenship/rights, despite their risks, and that having these tools available to him today is more necessary/important than denying them for fear of future abuse. And none of those possibilities are particularly encouraging.

mcantelon 13y ago

Obama's pretty obviously not steering the ship. He's a salesman for whoever is. As for motivation, since 9/11 the course has been set to gradually implement a robust domestic counter-insurgence apparatus. So either the state anticipates otherwise unmanageable instability in the face of climate change, de-inustrialization, etc. or undemocratic changes are planned that could invite domestic insurrection. The US is reportedly making plans for war with China (http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparations-for-war-with-china/ http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparation...), so that could be an effort requiring unprecedented austerity/authoritarianism.

kunai 13y ago
AFAIK this has been happening since way before 9/11, now it's just picked up more pace. If you remember (I don't because I wasn't alive then) during Truman's presidency and up until around the 1990s, the U.S. consistently, without failure, used Communism as a scapegoat for instilling fear into the masses and making an international statement. It was only oh-so-convenient that Communist regimes tended to be oppressive -- Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev -- why not lead the public to believe ALL Communist regimes are that way? Let's prevent freedom of thought, and lead the public to believe that while we actually feel threatened by the idea of communal sharing and the concept of Marxism, which we feel is harmful to the kickbacks that we receive from corporations to do what we want, Communism is actually just another word for an oppressive regime, and not a political concept derived by a highly intelligent German philosopher that has enormous benefits worldwide. So, here's the plan: we invade 'Nam. If they're the first communist regime that actually works, the public will know we've been lying to them. Shit, that didn't work. Okay, so there's this pretty harmless socialist dude running for office in Chile, let's call him a communist and make an example out of him. All right, let's get OUR candidate out, and-- HOLY SHIT, HE'S WON! We have succeeded. Even though Pinochet is an oppressive dictator and a mockery of democracy, let's keep him there anyway, because HE'S NOT COMMUNIST! Thank the lord. Thank, the, lord. Because he isn't communist, the public will never know that Chile is now oppressed! So, reestablishing my point once again -- this has been going on long before 9/11, it's just that 9/11 has supercharged the process by giving the U.S. government a boost in doing so. There's a difference, though -- now we actually KNOW that the U.S. government is corrupt. It's no longer "you're with us or with the communists" or "you're with us or with the terrorists." What matters is how hard we push these people. The only way to do that is to educate. Mainstream media is a waste of time, and while Al Jazeera tends to be far more accurate and unbiased in its reporting, I don't know how well Americans will take to watching an Arabic-sponsored channel. More high-profile names like Soledad O'Brien, and it should be enough.