Targeted Killing and President Obama

Dear Friends,

The fourth topic addressed in the American Civil Liberties Union report entitled "Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration" (here) is targeted killing.  I have to say that while all of the topics in the ACLU report make me cringe, the idea of targeted killing by my government is probably the scariest.  Here is the first paragraph of the section on targeted killing from the ACLU report:

Of all of the national security policies introduced by the Obama administration, none raises human rights concerns as grave as those raised by the so-called “targeted killing” program. According to news reports, President Obama has authorized a program that contemplates the killing of suspected terrorists—including U.S. citizens —located far away from zones of actual armed conflict. If accurately described, this program violates international law and, at least insofar as it affects U.S. citizens, it is also unconstitutional.

I first wrote about President Obama's assassination program on April 7th.  Here is that post.

Worse than President Bush

Dear Friends,
I have in the past chastised President Obama for continuing some of President George W. Bush's policies and/or defending them in legal actions that are ongoing.  President Obama has now gone beyond what President Bush did with respect to ignoring the Constitution, and we must make him reverse this policy.  Please write him here.  

The New York Times this morning reported that President Obama has authorized the killing of an American citizen.  (here)

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Anwar al-Awlaki has not been convicted of any crime or provided with anything that approaches due process.  I do not claim to be a Constitutional scholar, but I have studied Constitutional law, and there is no reasonable argument that can be made that the President of the United States has the power to order the targeted killing of an American citizen because the President of the United States thinks that the targeted individual has committed a crime or is a terrorist.  Even if Anwar al-Awlaki is in fact a terrorist and even if he has committed a crime, the President of the United States does not have the right to kill him.  The accused is entitled to a fair trial with due process and the courts decide the penalty if the person is found guilty.  If Anwar al-Awlaki is on a battlefield, he may be killed as a participant in a battle in accordance with International law.  If Anwar al-Awlaki is in hiding in Yemen, it would be a violation of US law, International law, the US Constitution and probably the laws of Yemen.

But beyond the illegality and unconstitutionality of ordering the killing of an American not on an active battlefield who has not had any of his Constitutional rights observed, it is just plain wrong.  We will never be safer, and we will never win a war against terrorists by acting like terrorists ourselves.  This type of targeted killing is antithetical to everything that America should stand for.  In taking his oath of office the President pledges to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. President Obama is failing to uphold his oath of office.

On May 19th, I wrote again about targeted killing (here).  In that post, I quoted an article in The New York Times (here) as follows:

To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.
“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”

The illegality, immorality and stupidity of my government assassinating its citizens because the President of the United States says we should is so obvious that there is nothing more that I can say, except please contact President Obama (here) and let him know that we will not stand for assassinating people just because he thinks we should.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Net Neutrality, Verizon and Google

Dear Friends,

Net neutrality is a rather arcane subject to most people. But when Google and Verizon and Fox News determine which sites you can access at fast speed and which sites you can access at slow speeds and which content is readily available and which is hidden behind slow speed access, then the people will understand why net neutrality is so important.  Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and Congress are failing to maintain net neutrality while the big corporations are agreeing how to control the internet.  My first post on net neutrality was on April 11 (here).  I followed that post up with a post entitled "Caving on Net Neutrality" on May 4th (here).  Unfortunately, as usual, President Obama did not act on my advice.

Subsequently, neither the FCC nor Congress has acted to protect the internet from control by the big corporations.  Senator Franken (D-MN) one of my senators and a great senator at that has called net neutrality the biggest First Amendment issue of our time.  He is right, and he is not exaggerating.  Here is a link to Al Franken's speech and the opportunity to sign his petition supporting net neutrality.  Please follow the link, listen to the speech and sign the petition.  In addition, please contact President Obama (here) to force him to take action to protect net neutrality. 

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Indefinite Detention and President Obama

Dear Friends,

The third topic addressed in the American Civil Liberties Union report entitled "Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration" (here) is detention.

The report starts out in its usual manner pointing out the hope that we all had in candidate Obama and then in President Obama.  Candidate Obama railed against the Bush Administration policy of detaining people indefinitely without charging them or bring them to trial.  President Obama in his first days in office ordered the closing of Guantanamo within a year and established a panel to review the cases of all the detainees.  The Obama Administration has released some detainees and has moved at least one to the criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, President Obama has moved away from the position that he took as candidate Obama and from the direction that he seemed headed at the beginning of his term of office.   In May, 2009, President Obama acknowledged publicly that he supported indefinite detentions for some detainees.  Here is the Washington Post article on the subject.

Subsequently, the Washington Post reported (here)

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

The Obama Administration has also continued to fight to keep detainees indefinitely even when there is little or no evidence to support the detention.  The ACLU report highlights the case of Hassan al-Odaini who was 17 years old when he was arrested.  He was imprisoned for eight years.  The Obama Administration fought his release, but a federal district court ordered Mr. Hassan released.  The ACLU report reads:

The federal court’s decision, which emphatically ordered Mr. Odaini’s release, revealed that the government itself had repeatedly concluded that he was not a threat, but had instead simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Pakistani officials arrested him during a surprise raid of a classmate’s home. While the Obama administration complied with the court’s order and released Mr. Odaini, the case wholly refutes the claim that the administration would indefinitely detain only those “who pose a clear danger to the American people.” It also suggests that the Guantánamo review task force, which completed its work months ago, has not resulted in the release of all innocent prisoners still held at Guantánamo Bay.

The problems of indefinite detentions are not limited to Guantanamo.  The Obama Administration extends the indefinite detention authority to the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and makes this claim of authority not just for people detained in Afghanistan but anybody else that the U.S. detains and then transports to Bagram. As the ACLU report states:

While the Obama administration has improved the military screening procedures in place at Bagram, those procedures still fall far short of basic due process standards. In response to habeas corpus petitions filed by prisoners who had been captured outside of Afghanistan and transferred by the Bush administration to military detention at Bagram Air Base, the government argued that the courts lacked jurisdiction even to hear the prisoners’ challenges, let alone decide their merits, because the prisoners were being detained in a war zone. This was disingenuous bootstrapping: the prisoners had been captured outside the war zone and transferred into it; the government thereafter relied on their presence in the war zone as a basis for avoiding any judicial scrutiny.

The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the administration, effectively giving the government carte blanche to operate the prison at Bagram without any judicial oversight. Armed with this decision, Obama administration officials have reportedly begun debating whether to use the Bagram prison as a place to send individuals captured anywhere in the world for imprisonment and interrogation without charge or trial.

 The Obama Administration is trying to set up a Guantanamo-like prison in Thomson, Illinois.  By doing so, the Obama Administration would be enshrining the indefinite detention policy in the United States system of justice.   As the ACLU report concludes on this topic,

we fear that if a precedent is established that terrorism suspects can be held without trial within the United States, this administration and future administrations will be tempted to bypass routinely the constitutional restraints of the criminal justice system in favor of indefinite military detention. This is a danger that far exceeds the disappointment of seeing the Guantánamo prison stay open past the one-year deadline. To be sure, Guantánamo should be closed, but not at the cost of enshrining the principle of indefinite detention in a global war without end.

While this concern may at first glance to seem unfounded, there are a couple of recent occurrences that you should keep in mind.  First, you will recall the number of politicians and pundits that claimed that the the underpants bomber and Times Square bomber should be treated as terrorists and not as  criminals under our criminal justice system.  President Obama has resisted these claims, but the pressure is on.  The claim that the President has the ability to direct people to the criminal justice system or to a extra-judicial system of indefinite detentions is a very scary thought.

Second, as we approach the confirmation of Elena Kagan, it is important to note that she supports the claim that the President has the right to indefinitely detain people outside of the criminal justice system.  Here is a paragraph from an article in The New York Times (here):

During her confirmation hearing for solicitor general, Ms. Kagan agreed with a questioner that someone suspected of helping to finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in a physical battle zone.

As you will see in later posts about the ACLU report, Ms. Kagan has argued for and taken some very problematic positions.  Having her on the Supreme Court and President Obama in the White House does not bode well for the Constitution.

Thank you for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Torture, Accountability and President Obama

Dear Friends,

The second topic addressed in the American Civil Liberties Union report entitled "Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration" (here) is torture and accountability.

This section of the ACLU report begins by praising President Obama for his immediate and unambiguous rejection of torture and the torture policies of the Bush Administration and for his subsequent release of the torture memos.  As the report says, "The decision to dismantle the Bush administration’s torture program was a crucial one, not just for the United States but for the world. President Obama deserves credit for the decision, and for his vigorous defense of it."

The problem is that President Obama refuses to hold anybody accountable for the well known and well documented abuses that were authorized by the Bush Administration.  President Obama talks about the need to look forward and not backward.  This section of the ACLU report concludes with the following paragraph:

In fact the choice between “looking forward” and “looking back” is a false one. While it’s crucial that the Obama administration adopt new policies for the future, we cannot ignore the abuses of the past. And while President Obama has disavowed torture, a strong democracy rests not on the goodwill of its leaders but on the impartial enforcement of the laws. Sanctioning impunity for government officials who authorized torture sends a problematic message to the world, invites abuses by future administrations, and further undermines the rule of law that is the basis of any democracy.

As John Cheng says in his article entitled "A Few Not-So-Good Men" in the most recent issue of the Wilder Voice (here):

The U.S. has not, to date, embarked on any path of self-examination and soul-searching commensurate with the crimes of the Bush administration. Any process of legal—and moral—accountability must be painful; it must have casualties, so to speak. The United States, the counterargument from bipartisan quarters goes, ought to be spared gut-wrenching flashbacks to Bush-era abuses. This is a path of false comfort that cannot mask deviations from the rule of law, which are ongoing realities rather than unpleasant memories to be wished away.

While President Obama is not guilty of authorizing torture, by refusing to hold those who did authorize torture accountable, he is in fact guilty of concealing crimes.  As Mr. Cheng states in his article

Since taking office, the Obama administration has operated on a pretense of innocence: It assumes no responsibility for its predecessor’s actions and seeks never to repeat them. While this claim is technically true and uncontroversial in and of itself, it is extremely problematic. By continuing to employ torturers in America’s military-intelligence complex, and by its access to a wealth of information documenting torture, the Obama administration is intimately linked with the legacy of the Bush years, even as it chooses to repudiate their worst elements. Does the Obama administration now have a perverse incentive to do everything in its power to prevent independent investigations of human rights violations? After all, isn’t the current Justice Department now complicit in concealing details about those violations—especially in specific cases such as the so-called Guantanamo “suicides” in which the level of abuse possibly extends to homicide?

The Guantanamo "suicides" that Mr. Cheng refers to are the deaths of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani while being detained at Guantanamo.  The Navy's report of their deaths that determined them to be suicides is full of absurd statements and more intelligent reporting indicates that the men were undoubtedly tortured to death while in United States custody.  If you want more details, you can read Mr. Cheng's article as well as Scott Horton's article in Harper's Magazine (here).

It is bad enough when a murder is not solved and no one is held accountable.  It is unforgivable for the government of the United States to cover up murders of people while they were in United States custody.  It is not only the people who actually killed these people that should be held accountable, the people who authorized the torture that lead to these killings need also to be held accountable.
 
Unfortunately, just as President Obama has become more secretive during his short term in office, he has also adopted many of the Bush Administration techniques for ensuring that those responsible for the torture and abuse that was carried out in our names are not held accountable by others.  As the ACLU report says:

The truth is that the Obama administration has gradually become an obstacle to accountability for torture. It is not simply that, as discussed above, the administration has fought to keep secret some of the documents that would allow the public to better understand how the torture program was conceived, developed, and implemented.  It has also sought to extinguish lawsuits brought by torture survivors—denying them recognition as victims, compensation for their injuries, and even the opportunity to present their cases.

The ACLU report cites the case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a suit brought by five survivors of the CIA's rendition program.  The Obama Administration adopted the Bush Administration position that the case cannot be litigated because state secrets would be disclosed.  When a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, the Obama Administration asked for a rehearing by the full court. 

In addition to its use of the state secrets doctrine, the ACLU report cites examples of other extreme positions that the Obama Administration has taken to keep litigation from proceeding:

the Obama administration argued, remarkably, that the government defendants were immune from suit because, at the time that the abuse occurred, established law did not clearly prohibit torture and religious discrimination at Guantánamo.

the administration argued that the Constitution provided no cause of action to an innocent man who had been identified by the United States as a terrorist, rendered to Syria for torture, and not released until ten months later when it was determined that he was not a terrorist after all. 

the administration also argued to the courts that affording Arar a judicial remedy “would offend the separation of powers and inhibit this country’s foreign policy,” and impermissibly involve the courts in assessing “the motives and sincerity” of the officials who authorized Arar’s rendition. 

What happened to the candidate that was to bring hope and change to Washington when he got be President?  While we cannot hold the criminals in the Bush Administration accountable, we can hold President Obama accountable.  Demand that he break from these Bush era policies.  Let your voice be heard.  Write President Obama here.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Minnesota DFL Governor Race

Dear Friends,

The Minnesota primary which will decide among other things the DFL (for those of you not from Minnesota, we democrats in Minnesota are members of the Democratic Farmer Labor party) candidate for governor is August 10th.  I have been adamant that I would not monetarily support any DFLer against another DFLer.  We need to preserve our resources to be sure that the DFL candidate becomes the next Minnesota governor.  In the interest of full disclosure, I was a delegate for RT Rybak, but ultimately he lost the DFL endorsement to Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

On Saturday night I had dinner with some friends, all of whom are liberal, and we could not reach a consensus on who we should vote for in the primary.  There are three DFL candidates (in alphabetical order): Mark Dayton (here), Matt Entenza (here) and Margaret Anderson Kelliher (here).  The Republican candidate is Tom Emmer (here), and Tom Horner is the likely Independence Party candidate (here).

On Sunday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published the results of their most recent poll about the Minnesota governor's race (here).  Here is the chart of the overall results: 

Dayton	Emmer	Horner	Undecided	Other
40%	30%	13%	17%	1%

Kelliher	Emmer	Horner	Undecided	Other
38%	29%	13%	18%	1%

Entenza	Emmer	Horner	Undecided	Other
36%	31%	15%	17%	1%

Based on the results of this poll, it appears that both Dayton and Kelliher are more likely to beat Emmer than Entenza is.  The poll also broke down the support for each candidate based on the respondent's party affiliation.  Here is that chart:

                                             Dayton      Kelliher      Entenza      Emmer     Horner

Party identification
Republican	7%	6%	6%	72%	9%
Democratic	81%	85%	79%	4%	3%
Independent	29%	26%	25%	20%	30%

In this chart, I found it interesting that Dayton did better among Independents than all of the candidates except for the Independence candidate and in that case there was no statistical difference.  I believe that is a big plus for Dayton in the general election.

On Sunday night, the three DFL candidates held their last debate before the primary.  As I was watching the debate, several things became clear to me.  There are no significant differences in the actually policies of the three candidates.  Mark Dayton is truly passionate about his positions.  He has spent his entire adult life in public service and wants to finish his career being governor.  He is also the only one of the three candidates with experience in the executive branch of government.  In his final statement, Mark said that while we may have differences now, on August 11th we will all be united behind the DFL candidate.  I agree with that sentiment 100%.  I will enthusiastically support whichever candidate wins the DFL primary.  As for the primary election, I have decided that I will vote for Mark Dayton.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Transparency and President Obama

Dear Friends,

The first topic addressed in the American Civil Liberties Union report entitled "Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration" (here) is transparency. 

As the report points out, President Obama started off his term in office with great pronouncements about the new transparency that he would bring to government.  Almost immediately upon taking office he issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (here).  The memorandum while long on platitudes was devoid of any substance.  Nevertheless, it did set forth the ideal -

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

That memorandum was followed by a Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act (here).   This memorandum was intended to set the tone for the Obama Administration's responses to information requests under the Freedom of Information Act.  The beginning of the memorandum was an incredible breath of fresh air after the Bush Administration policy of do not release unless you are forced to.

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government.  The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

The ACLU report points out that President Obama seemed initially to embrace the wonderful sentiments of these memoranda when he did things like release the torture memos and the report on the CIA interrogations.  Unfortunately, as the report highlights, "The administration’s commitment to transparency,
however, has been inconsistent, and it has waned over time."

An audit of the Freedom of Information Act results under President Obama by the National Security Archive released in March 2010 (here) found the following:

• Ancient requests--as old as 18 years--still persist in the FOIA system.

• A minority of agencies have responded to the Obama and Holder Memos with concrete changes in their FOIA practices.

• Only four out of 28 agencies reporting--including Holder's own Justice Department--show releases up and denials down under the FOIA.

The ACLU report highlights a number of cases where the Obama Administration has chosen secrecy over transparency.  As you may recall, it reversed its decision to release the photographs of the abuse at Abu Ghraib.  In addition, the ACLU report notes that the Obama Administration supported legislation that

invested the Secretary of Defense with sweeping authority to withhold any visual images depicting the government’s “treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” by U.S. forces—no matter how egregious the conduct depicted or how compelling the public’s interest in disclosure. As the ACLU noted at the time, the legislation essentially gave the greatest protection from disclosure to records depicting the worst forms of government misconduct.

The ACLU report then lists some of the other examples:

it has fought to keep secret a directive in which President Bush authorized the CIA to establish secret prisons overseas; the Combatant Status Review Transcripts in which former CIA prisoners describe the abuse they suffered in the CIA’s secret prisons; records relating to the CIA’s destruction of videotapes that depicted some prisoners being waterboarded; and cables containing communications between the CIA’s secret prisons and officials at CIA headquarters. It has argued that the CIA’s authority to withhold information concerning “intelligence sources and methods” extends even to methods that are illegal. The administration has also fought to withhold information about prisoners held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Obama administration has released less information about prisoners held at Bagram Air Base than the Bush administration released about prisoners held at Guantánamo.

The ACLU report section on transparency also highlights the difference between candidate Obama's position with respect to whistleblowers and President Obama's actions.  In June, 2010 The New York Times published an article by Scott Shane (here) that contained the following paragraph:

The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks. 

The reference to Mr. Drake is to Thomas Drake whose leak led to the discovery of the warrantless wiretapping program initiated by President George W. Bush.  The ACLU report also highlights Bradley Manning who allegedly leaked the video of a US helicopter killing two Reuters news staff and several other civilians in Iraq. I discussed the case of James Risen in a post in May here.  The Obama Administration has re-issued subpoenas to try to force the disclosure of Mr. Risen's sources for a book about the CIA.  Even the Bush Administration let the subpoenas it had issued lapse rather than pursue Mr. Risen.

The conclusion is clear.  President Obama's actions do not live up to his words or certainly the expectations that I had for candidate Obama when I supported him.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal