President Obama and the Miranda Rule

Dear Friends,

It seems that President Obama is trying to be more like President George W. Bush than even President George W. Bush was.  Yesterday, Attorney General Holder suggested that we need a broad new exemption from the Miranda Rule to deal with terrorists wherever they are found.  Here is The New York Times article on the subject.  He did this after defending the actions of the FBI and others in connection with the interrogation of Faisal Shahzad who was questioned for three hours before being given the Miranda warning under the public safety exception.  Mr. Holder offered no evidence of any public safety need for a broader exemption, nor did he disclose exactly what he was going to propose.

Today, David Axelrod confirmed that President Obama was open to looking a changing the Miranda Rule.  Here is The New York Times article about Mr. Axelrod's statement. 

So why would President Obama bring this idea up now.  The two most recent domestic terrorist attacks have been very well handled and the alleged perpetrators have been successfully interrogated under the current Miranda rule.  There has been no outcry by FBI or other law enforcement agencies seeking to expand the exemption.  Constitutionally, it does not make any sense to change the rule.

We should all bear in mind that the oath of office taken by the President of the United States and virtually all other Federal officials is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."  The oath does not say to protect the safety of the American people even if it means destroying the Constitution of the United States.  It is, of course, much easier to keep the country safe if we do not care about our freedoms and rights, but that is not the job of the President.

We should all also remember that President Obama has been under a savage attack from the right about not being tough enough on terrorists and not keeping the American people safe.  The illogical, inconsistent right (as opposed to true conservatives who actually believe in the Constitution and individual rights) was certainly not appeased by Mr. Holder's suggestion that the exemption be expanded.  That faction of the right will not be satisfied until the Miranda rule is thrown out entirely.  Rudy Giuliani said, "Well, I would not have given him Miranda warnings after just a couple of hours of questioning. I would have instead declared him an enemy combatant..."  Apparently, Mr. Giuliani has no respect for our Constitution or our individual rights.

Lately, I have been trying to find something positive to write about that President Obama and the Obama Administration have done, but I have not found anything.  Unfortunately, I have not been having trouble finding things that the President has done that let me down.  So please contact the President (here) and let him know that Miranda should be left alone.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

More on President Obama's Support for Wall Street

Dear Friends,

I came across another article about how Congress voted to permit the big banks to remain too big to fail.  I will quote three critical paragraphs from Zach Carter's excellent article (here):

Late last night, the U.S. Senate rejected the single most important element of Wall Street reform by a vote of 33 to 61. The SAFE Banking Act would have forced the break-up of the nation's six largest banks, and dramatically reduced the political clout of America's financial elite. The 61 votes against the measure are votes in favor of Wall Street's stranglehold on our economy. No matter what else is ultimately enacted in the name of Wall Street reform, Congress has decided that it will not confront the single greatest problem in the U.S. economy: Too Big To Fail.
On Wednesday, the Senate also voted down a $50 billion Wall Street tax that would have been used to fund the cost of shutting down a major failing bank. By rejecting both the break-up bill and the bank tax, the Senate has punted on ending too-big-to-fail. For now, it appears that Wall Street has emerged from the Great Financial Crash of 2008 with even greater political might than it wielded during the reign of George W. Bush. In the Citizens United era, both Democrats and Republicans have decided they can only get so tough with corporate America.
Last night, 27 Democrats joined all but three Republicans to vote against breaking up the banks. President Barack Obama opposed both the tax and the break-up measures, and hosted J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for dinner at the White House on Monday. J.P. Morgan is the largest U.S. bank, and spent more money on lobbying in 2009 than any other bank. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has aggressively courted Dimon for campaign cash.

There is a theme in what is going on.  President Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans can all be bought with campaign contributions.  I hope you read the sentence above that President Obama had CEO Dimon of J.P. Morgan for dinner at the White House.  Why doesn't he invite me for dinner?  I should note for those of you who are from Minnesota that Senator Franken voted in favor of breaking up the big banks, but Senator Klobuchar voted to support Wall Street.  Let Senator Franken know that you appreciate what he did (here) and let Senator Klobuchar know that she needs to stand up for us not Wall Street (here).  

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Obama, Salazar and Big Oil

Dear Friends,

How much real hope and change is there in the Obama Administration?  It turns out there is alot more talk than action and sometimes actions that disprove the talk.

The drilling of the well the blew out in the Gulf of Mexico that is causing the current environmental and economic disaster was approved under the Obama Administration without any environmental review.  Department of the Interior Secretary Salazar gave that well and many others a "categorical exclusion" from having to perform the environmental impact statement normally required by the National Environmental Policy Act.  Here is an article from the Washington Post about this issue.  I want to reiterate this approval without environmental review was granted not by President George W. Bush as you might have expected but by the Obama Administration.

The rationale for the exclusion is that big oil said that there was no real possibility of an environmental problem.  President Obama bought this argument hook, line and sinker.  Here is what he said on April 2, 2010,

I want to put out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

You should read the scathing analysis at Firedoglake (here).  That article contains excerpts from an interview on Democracy Now that is a great summary of what President Obama should be doing, but isn't.  Here is part of that interview with Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity:

Well, first off, I think that the President should announce a complete moratorium on all new offshore oil drilling. This three-week time-out is really too little, too late. And it’s very important to do that now because the president, under the urging of Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, has planned to open up new offshore oil drilling in Alaska, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and on the Atlantic coast. And that just needs to end. It’s not safe anywhere, anytime.Secondly, the president should immediately revoke existing oil permits and especially in Alaska. Shell Oil, this July, has- is going to start doing offshore oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea of Alaska. And if you think it’s difficult to clean up oil in the relatively warm, calm Gulf of Mexico, imagine trying to do this with icebergs and sea ice, twenty hours of darkness in the Arctic oceans. It just cannot be done. If this spill had happened in Alaska, its magnitude would have been ten times worse than has happened in the Gulf.
Then, thirdly, the President should start an initiation of an investigation of Ken Salazar and his role in allowing this to happen. Salazar has been a major proponent of the offshore oil drilling industry. He passed legislation as a senator in 2006 to open up the Gulf of Mexico in the first place to offshore oil drilling. He gets campaign contributions by British Petroleum. And then he walks into this agency he is supposed to reform, and instead of reforming it, pushes it to do even more offshore oil drilling. So Ken Salazar is part of the problem here, not the solution. He should not be doing the investigation of MMS. He should be under investigation for helping to cause this crisis.

Of course, no post about President Obama letting me down would be complete without a quick look at the role that money plays.  One of the things that candidate Obama was going to change in Washington was the role of campaign contributions, but ...  here is a story on Politico entitled "Obama biggest recipient of BP cash" which is mirrored by a story on CNN entitled "Obama was top recipient of BP-related dollars in 2008".  Both articles are worth reading.

So what happened to the change we can believe in?  It seems in many cases it is all words and no action.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal