I guess the number on the left won’t go up again as long as the classified info leaked is favorable for Obama.
“As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects. … In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in 1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review. Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.”
Jon Stewart Rips Obama on Continuing Bush Era War Powers
All of these policies are troubling, but most troubling to me is that Obama has made no effort to explain his reversal on all of these policies. He may very well have important, serious reasons for abandoning his core convictions from the 2008 campaign, but if he does, we are entitled to hear him. Being President requires that one be accountable to the American people. President Obama’s failure to make this accounting is the biggest blight upon his administration.
As a libertarian, I put a greater premium on civil liberties than most Americans. But I also understand the incredible pressure placed on a President responsible for the safety and well-being of a nation, and I recognize that there are situations where even I would crumble under the weight of such responsibility. Even the President’s harshest critics might find some sympathy for our President … if only he would explain himself.
He went into office and the military scared the crap out of him. That’s all I got.
Did nobody offer this theory?:
Thank you, Charles Pierce:
Damn it, I’m tired of this. In 1962, I hid under my desk at school for 10 straight days in October while the United States and the Soviet Union decided whether or not to lob nuclear missiles at my young ass. And why? Because a year or so earlier, a bunch of expatriate Cubans and some CIA cowboys launched an invasion of the island. Which prompted Nikita Khrushchev to take the genuinely insane step of installing nuclear missiles in Cuba to forestall any future enterprises of that sort. Which led to my being under my desk, mumbling Hail Mary’s at 78 r.p.m.
For going on 60 years now, the foreign policy of my country — and a good bit of its domestic politics as well — has been held hostage by a band of noisy irreconcilables in South Florida. The embargo is a joke to the rest of the world, the Helms-Burton Act a modern farce, ignored by such radical Marxist nations as Canada, Mexico, and Germany. The success of the exile community in Florida is a remarkable story, but, Lord knows, it’s not without its darker side. With the inexcusable aid of several U.S. presidents, and according to documents gathered by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, that community has harbored outright terrorists, including the men allegedly behind the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 78 passengers (including the Cuban national fencing team). By way of comparison, many Irish-Americans who conspired to arm the IRA during the Troubles wound up in prison. Here, though, President George H.W. Bush went out of his way to pardon one of the men alleged to have helped arrange the bombing of the airliner. The rules always have been different, because of the investment — covert and otherwise — that the U.S. has made in destabilizing Castro, and the centrality of Florida to just about every presidential election of the past 40 years.
Operatives from Miami were hip-deep in the Iran-Contra mess. The Cuban community in Miami went mad over the Elian Gonzalez affair, and the outrage over that controversy was central to some of the hooliganism surrounding the recount in Miami-Dade County in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. The first generation of émigrés are strong and they are politically active, and nobody ever says no to them, and it’s past time for them to get over themselves, a feeling that more than one survey has noted is shared by the grandchildren — and now great-grandchildren — of the original émigrés. This country doesn’t owe them or their tender feelings anything anymore.
My god, we’re doing business in Vietnam. The butchers of Tiananmen Square are the country’s primary landlords. We’d be building electronics factories all over North Korea if that country’s leaders weren’t all completely nuts. The émigrés who came from Cuba in the wake of the revolution can be proud of what they built, but they had it a lot easier than did, say, the Hmong people of Southeast Asia, whom the United States sold out at the end of the Vietnam War, breaking all kinds of promises about repatriation and leaving them to be slaughtered until, finally, we allowed some of them to come over here and farm chickens in Arkansas on the cheap for corporate agribusiness. And yet we can’t come to grips with a sensible policy for one small island in the Caribbean because a bunch of old men in Florida are carrying a grudge against one old man who refuses against all odds to die?
“More Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses or drug-related probation and parole violations than for property crimes. And although America spends five times more jailing drug dealers than it did 30 years ago, the prices of cocaine and heroin are up to 90 percent lower than 30 years ago. … In “Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know,” policy analysts Mark Kleiman, Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken argue that imprisoning low-ranking, street-corner dealers is pointless: A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence.”
“Chicago, however, is disconnected from the rest of the state. In the 13 years that I lived there, I don’t think I even once described myself as living in “Illinois.” At the risk of overgeneralizing from personal experience, I suspect that most Chicagoans think the same way. To a Chicagoan, Illinois is the name of the jurisdiction to which you pay your state taxes and the funny word that appears in the top left-hand corner of your drivers’ license. But you live, eat, breathe and work in Chicago or one of its suburbs”
Glenn Greenwald tells Sam Seder (podcast here) why “the two most significant and most disturbing words in Holder’s speech was the phase ‘at least.’”
In the Salon article, he mentions the sentiments of Charles P. Pierce at Esquire:
Attorney General Eric Holder’s appearance at Northwestern on Monday, during which he explained the exact circumstances under which the president can order the killing of just about anyone the president wants to kill, was not promising. The criteria for when a president can unilaterally decide to kill somebody is completely full of holes, regardless of what the government’s pet lawyers say. And this…
“This is an indicator of our times,” Holder said, “not a departure from our laws and our values.”
…is a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo. This policy is a vast departure from our laws and an interplanetary probe away from our values. The president should not have this power because the Constitution, which was written by smarter people than, say, Benjamin Wittes, knew full and goddamn well why the president shouldn’t have this power. If you give the president the power to kill without due process, or without demonstrable probable cause, he inevitably will do so. And, as a lot of us asked during the Bush years, if you give this power to President George Bush, will you also give it to President Hillary Clinton and, if you give this power to President Barack Obama, will you also give it to President Rick Santorum?
“But shouldn’t Catholic bishops be dealing with child sex abuse? Why do they have any credibility left after covering-up widespread child abuse scandals that continue to this day? … These are the questions I keep asking myself as I see and hear these men speak with such authority on birth control on every major US media outlet. If only these men cared as much about the children whose innocence has been shattered by paedophilia and the adults who are struggling to come to terms with the abuse they endured as children. … Catholic bishops in the US want every single act of sexual intercourse to lead to the conception and birth of a child, but once that child is born, they are on their own, especially if their priest abuses them. ”
Sometime next month, newly-elected Guatemalan President Otto Perez plans to propose legalization of drugs, including the decriminalization of drug transportation, to other Central American leaders.
It took Perez just one month in office to shift to calling for drug legalization. The retired general ran for the presidency on a platform of hard-line action against drug smuggling, but it seems like the sheer force of the drug trade has changed his mind; 95 percent of all cocaine sales to the United States go through Mexico, the most prominent and bloody face of the drug war, but 60 percent of them begin in central America.
It sure is a good thing the GOP kept this guy out of the debates so we don’t have to debate issues like this.
Against it before he was for it?:
No one is going to put words in Clint Eastwood’s mouth. The man is independent, tough, and has earned the right to speak for himself on issues like the bailout. So, here’s what he told the Los Angeles Times just three months ago:
“We shouldn’t be bailing out the banks and car companies. If a CEO can’t figure out how to make his company profitable, then he shouldn’t be the CEO.”
Now flash forward to yesterday’s Super Bowl ad when he said this:
“The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.”
“Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities… . The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”
Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison operator in America, statement to stockholders, 2005.
In other words: ending the Drug War and eliminating federal mandatory minimum sentences is bad for business. Adam Gopnik notes that CCA “spends millions lobbying legislators.” presumably, inter alia, to keep harsh sentencing laws on the books.
(via letterstomycountry)
Private prison industry? What private prison industry?
