This past summer, after two conservative operatives revealed potentially damaging (and potentially doctored) videos of ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) members allegedly soliciting tax advice to a faux pimp and prostitute, the political universe was thrown into bedlam. Republicans and right-wing extremists, who had long painted the group as a threat to democracy--because it registers poor and minority voters--salivated at the chance to destroy it once and for all. Democrats, with the exception of a rare courageous few, tripped over their own feet running in fear to distance themselves from ACORN. The result was a rushed Congressional vote to strip ACORN of all federal funding. Turns out however, ACORN has lawyers. Those lawyers took Congress to court, and were met with success.
Last Friday a judge ruled in favor of the community organization, issuing an injunction preventing the implementation of the congressional funding ban. Judge Nina Gershon concluded what numerous rational thinking people had brought up at that the time--that the ban amounted to a "bill of attainder" that unfairly singled out ACORN, which is unconstitutional.
So it turns out the Democrats in their timidity and fear of the GOP right-wing noise machine, ran out and violated the Constitution they're supposed to uphold.
Below, Bill Quigley at Common Dreams discusses why ACORN won its suit, for the dim-witted. Timid Congressional Democrats, I'm looking in your direction.
Why ACORN Won
by Bill Quigley
Published on Sunday, December 13, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
On December 11, 2009, a federal judge ruled that Congress had unconstitutionally cut off all federal funds to ACORN. The judge issued an injunction stopping federal authorities from continuing to cut off past, present and future federal funds to the community organization.
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its allies in 75 cities will again have access to millions of federal dollars to counsel people facing foreclosure, seeking IRS tax refunds, and looking for affordable low cost housing. ACORN, which has received about $54 million in government grants since 1994, will be able to apply for new federal programs just like any other organization.
The court ruled that Congress violated the U.S. Constitution by singling out ACORN and its affiliates for severe sweeping restrictions and that such action constitutes illegal punishment or a bill of attainder.
Read full article here.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Why ACORN Won
Monday, December 7, 2009
The New McCarthyism
On December 2, 1954, the U.S. Senate voted to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, bringing to an end four years of political intimidation and character assassination so ferocious that McCarthy’s name is still synonymous with a particularly destructive form of demagoguery....Today, Joseph McCarthy’s ideological heirs in the Republican Party and right-wing media are using the language and tactics of McCarthy to stir fears that the nation is being destroyed by enemies from within.
So begins a report by the People for the American Way titled Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks. The report not only documents the similarities in tactics used by today's demagogues, but those media outlets and elected officials that either aid or remain silent in the face of their extremism, which only serves to poison the political discourse.
You can read the report here. Excerpts below.
Excerpt from report:
McCarthy tactics then and now
From 1953 to 1955, McCarthy held 117 hearings and even more closed-door interrogations, witch hunts for subversives that thrived on guilt by association: someone had worked for a union, dates a communist, been in a book club that read a book by Marx. Author Johnson writes that reviewing the transcripts of those sessions made it clear that McCarthy, in addition to guilt by association and character assassination, was engaged in an “obsessive hunt for homosexuals,” hounded writers, artists, and composers, attacked the reputations of military leaders.
Today’s McCarthyism has many faces and voices, including the household names of right-wing cable television, a plethora of radio hosts, Religious Right leaders, right-wing organizations and the bogus “grassroots” campaigns they generate – and Members of Congress and other Republican Party officials. Together they engage in character assassination and challenge the loyalty and patriotism of their targets.
Fox's Glenn Beck, who reaches millions of Americans with his televised tirades, has become an almost cartoonish McCarthy clone, with his guilt-by-association charts supposedly detailing the communist connections of White House officials.
Dangerous “elites” subverting the national interest
McCarthy inflamed fears that the nation was being destroyed by enemies from within:
The reason we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer – the finest homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government (and the private sector) we can give.
Sound familiar? The attack on sinister Ivy League-educated elites is one of the essential rhetorical tools of far-right pundits and Republican politicians like Sarah Palin. The most surreal example was Ivy-educated, investment banker, millionaire, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney railing against “eastern elites” at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Republican smear campaigns often make use of this “elites vs. real Americans” theme. Here’s Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, speaking to senators about then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
Remember the values of the regular folks who sent you to Washington. Don’t vote for a Supreme Court nominee whose values are closer to those of the intellectual elite than to those of your constituents.
McCarthy routinely accused his opponents of subverting the national interest. Typical was his characterization of Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson as someone “who steadfastly serves the interests of nations other than his own.”
That’s a staple of right-wing rhetoric today.
Read more here.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Torturing Democracy
Excerpt #1 from the award-winning 2008 documentary Torturing Democracy
In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all. During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week -- immediately on the heels of President Obama's address at the National Archives -- former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" a full dozen times. Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism of course has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a "wedge issue," as noted on the front page of Sunday's New York Times.
Bill Moyers and Michael Winsip - Everyone Should See 'Torturing Democracy.
Read full article here.
Read another on the problems the documentary has faced in getting aired here.
See more excerpts from the documentary below...
More on full documentary here.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Loose Change ?
No, that title has nothing to do with debunked conspiracy theories that should have been retired five years ago. Rather it's my description for this bizarre week that has pitted groups like the ACLU against the Obama administration. Change we can believe in has become nuanced, and much more loosely defined. A glance at the blogosphere also indicates those united in support last Nov. 4th are now finding themselves in dispute, as many are forced to react to moves by the new president that don't exactly gibe with the campaign trail. The more extreme of his detractors accuse him of betraying his promises. His more extreme defenders put words like "pragmatic" on lofty pedestals. And many struggle to figure out where they stand on events that certainly require addressing.
More after the fold...
Monday The Obama administration threatened to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how the Bush administration tortured British-Ethiopian resident Binyam Mohamed.
Tuesday Gen. Stanley McChyrstal was promoted to top military official in Afghanistan, even after his known involvement in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era, including the Pat-Tillman cover-up.
Wednesday In a reversal, President Obama indicated he would seek to conceal photos showing widespread detainee torture and abuse--all in the face of recent court rulings in favor of their disclosure.
Friday Backtracking on previous criticism of military tribunals, President Obama released a statement indicating he would keep the system intact with slight modifications in order to try Guantanamo detainees.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Obama's New-Old Police State
Candidate Barack Obama ran on a platform that railed against the unitary executive--especially the Bush administration's attack on civil liberties in the form of such acts as warrantless wiretaps. Now however, it seems President Barack Obama's Department of Justice is not only continuing the Bush adminstration's alarming tactics, but has plans on expanding it even further. Welcome to Barack Obama's new-old police state. When we've collectively finished up the koo-laid and "ooohing" and "awwwing" over Michelle's wardrobe, we might stop to ask ourselves if this is the change for which we campaigned, donated and voted.
More after the fold...
It's been building now for a while. Lost in the mainstream news behind mega-billion dollar bank bailout outrage and significant victories like the closing of Guantanamo, the Obama administration's justice department under Attorney General Eric Holder has been engaging in some questionable legal tactics.
As mcjoan notes over at dailykos:In the past three months, in three separate cases, the Obama DOJ has used the same arguments that the Bush administration Justice Department used to attempt to stop judicial review of extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping.
Mcjoan points out that in the Mohamed v. Jeppesen extraordinary rendition case, the Obama administration used the Bush administration argument of "state secrets" to have the case dismissed. In the Al-Haramain v. Bush, a wiretapping case , Obama's DOJ invoked the Bush administration defense of "state secrets" again, to actually block access to information that could expose warrantless wiretapping. And now, mcjoan points out, the entire legal defense for illegal wireptapping is expanding.Late Friday, the Obama DOJ actually went the Bush administration one argument further, in a third case. In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is "suing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records." The Obama administration filed its first response to the suit Friday, demanding dismissal of the entire suit.
It seems to many that the Obama DOJ, in its arguments, is going out of its way to protect the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), which has been accused of sweeping up masses of American citizens in a wiretapping dragnet. Further, the Obama DOJ argues that only "willful violation" by a government agent on any warrantless wiretapping would create a liability to the US. This effectively means that unless the government voluntarily provides information that it has been spying on you, it is immune from any legal action. The Electronic Frontier Foundation goes as far as to call Obama's illegal spying program "worse than Bush."
Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com examining the Obama DOJ brief concludes something similar:Every defining attribute of Bush's radical secrecy powers -- every one -- is found here, and in exactly the same tone and with the exact same mindset. Thus: how the U.S. government eavesdrops on its citizens is too secret to allow a court to determine its legality. We must just blindly accept the claims from the President's DNI that we will all be endangered if we allow courts to determine the legality of the President's actions. Even confirming or denying already publicly known facts -- such as the involvement of the telecoms and the massive data-mining programs -- would be too damaging to national security. Why? Because the DNI says so. It is not merely specific documents, but entire lawsuits, that must be dismissed in advance as soon as the privilege is asserted because "its very subject matter would inherently risk or require the disclosure of state secrets."
So the presidential candidate who campaigned on protecting civil liberties, is not only refusing to go after the Bush administration's illegal activities but attempting to push the invasion of privacy upon American citizens to new heights? What in the name of COINTELPRO is going on?
For some like Newsweek's Howard Fineman, it is an Obama administration attempting to placate a fickle intelligence community:Obama and his people in the White House do not want to antagonize the intelligence community because they need them to support them in the War on Terror and to get the President's job done in the world right now.
As Fineman puts it, the Obama administration is making this Faustian pact for larger motives--throwin civil liberties under the bus rather than reining in his intelligence community. But that doesn't seem to explain everything, something Fineman himself readily admits, as he points out a more troubling motive, one that many warned cheerleading Republicans during the Bush administration's power grab: no president is going to want to give up or return privileges granted, or seized by, a former president.
Glenn Greenwald warns that these are all basic elements of the unitary executive theory espoused by Bush and Cheney, refashioned for a new administration:What's being asserted here by the Obama DOJ is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it's being claimed with a straight face. It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior.
Mcjoan echoes much the same summary and warning:It's difficult to read the administration's brief in any other way than a reinforcement--even an inflation of--the unitary executive, or to attribute it to Bush holdovers. This is first of the cases in which the DOJ attorneys aren't carrying over arguments from the previous administration--they are initiating this case. And it appears that the promises of last summer and fall when FISAAA was being argued were pretty damned empty.
Of course, for the Obama DOJ, this may be perfect timing. Just as the American populace was reeling from the attacks of September 11th and easily pliable to accept or simply turn a blind eye to an assault on its civil liberties, so might an American citizenry beaten down by a spiraling economy, two wars and (for some) still drunk in euphoria over the Nov 4th victory, lull itself into a type of complacency as its government shifts and changes the Constitution to its liking. This must be what Naomi Klein meant by "shock" and those who would take advantage of it.President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties. But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a "secret" that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again.
--Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Some useful links:
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
http://www.eff.org/
Electronic Privacy Information Center- Wiretapping
http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/
Obama, the ICRC Report and ongoing suppression
It is impossible for Obama to end the dark Bush/Cheney era if he is the prime agent preventing disclosure and accountability.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html
