Letters to the Editor
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GREAT ARTICLE, GLENN
Glenn, you deserve the highest praise for your consistently superior, well-thought-out, and factually correct analyses of the precarious state of the Constitution. The entire mess that we find ourselves in is due in large part to the incredible apathy of the American people, who have tuned out and turned off. If this were happening 35 years ago, at the time of Watergate, there would be massive street demonstrations and news reporting of such demonstrations. Now, the FISA Amendments of 2008 passes with nary a demonstration (albeit there's a lot of us online who are screaming) and the 4th Circuit continues its trend towards fascism.
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years and years and years
Is it possible to put this genie back in the bottle, Glenn? Can these rulings be counter-acted with legislation?
How can we ensure that this never happens again? Assuming Obama is elected, of course.
Can we un-shit this bed?
(That is meant as an entirely serious question.)
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@farbie
I'm one of those screaming my head off. Click my name link, work in progress.
This stuff makes me physically ill.
Yeah, Greenwald is all over it. I read his posts every day without fail.
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Authoritarianism after 2008
"George Bush will likely leave office with this particular tyrannical power infrequently exercised but nonetheless vigorously asserted, defended, and close to established."
-- Glenn Greenwald
I wish I could believe that, but I don't for a split second think it will be infrequently exercised. As much as I think Barack Obama's ideology is too far to the right for comfort, this abuse of power will hopefully be infrequently exercised if he is the president. But if we get another dysfunctional, nickle-dicked Republican trying to prove his toughness after a lifetime of abject cowardice like George W Bush, then he or she will very likely abuse the authority they’ve been given just like Junior.
As hated as George W Bush and Dick Cheney are today by most Americans, the far right still not only won’t renounce their grotesque, totalitarian actions, they openly support it and want it to be even more severely oppressive and authoritarian.
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Your Obama cannot save you
your Dumocrats cannot save you. Have ANYONE of them even uttered one word about this most core of issues?
Of course not, they all AGREE apparently agree with it.
This country is too far gone. Now it is only a matter of time before people are lined up by the millions and sent to the gas chambers or WORSE.
The whole affair is EVIL and is allowed to thrive as nearly NOBODY is lifting a finger.
300 million supposed freedom loving Americans, a supposedly free media supposedly defending American freedoms, a supposedly robust system of checks and balances, a supposedly strong party supposedly defending average Americans' rights, and this critical issue is relegated to whispers and rumors?!?
IT defies imagination.
This fucking planet is beyond pathetic-- I do not know how I got here but, god help me, I must have pissed somebody off mightily in a prior life.
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@JKP1000
I have no idea whether Obama would abuse the power or not.
That's the trouble, I don't want to have to rely on a benevolent leader who's being given dictatorial power...let alone the same power being handed later to someone who I would scare the crap out of me.
No one should have been handed this power, and it's not getting the attention it deserves other than at places like this.
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JKP1000
I wish I could believe that, but I don't for a split second think it will be infrequently exercised.
All I said that was that George Bush has exercised this particular power -- as applied to U.S. citizens and those legally in the U.S. -- relatively infrequently (in 3 cases). The danger, of course, is that by institutionalizing it, a future President can exercise it a lot more than infrequently.
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I know I was confused yesterday.
On Google news, there were two headlines side by side one describing an important victory for Bush and one describing a terrible setback.
If nothing else, you've nicely clarified what actually happened.
It's also good that you note the difference between what Bush has done with his new-found powers and what could be done in the future.
After all if Al-Marri can commit an act of war with his credit-card accounts, what other activities can fall under the same umbrella?
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"enemy combatants"
In reading though the text excerpts from the decision, I find it depressingly telling that even the courts have now dropped the adjective "unlawful" from the original technical moniker "unlawful enemy combatants" formerly used to distinguish these putative (and legally undeserving) "worst of the worst" from the more mundane military adversaries.
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Yo! Shooter
Suck on this, you despicable piece of human debris.
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Mr. Greenwald,
When will it be an appropriate time to declare that the great experiment in democracy in the USA has failed?
We The People(Congress) no longer seem to be an equal branch of the government, and the judiciary, to a large extent, seems to be stacked with Executive Stooges.
Do you still live in a democracy, or is this now the very definition of a police(military) state?
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Like Caesar it's thumbs up or thumbs down by the president. No evidence need be presented
Our right wing infiltrated Judiciary demonstrates we are virtually powerless to keep our democracy or our constitutional principles in force. It can't just be me who feels such a sense of shame for our country...what the last seven years of republican rule has brought...a lynch mob mentality.
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All
with the express approval of our Democratic leaders. They could not care less about the constitution as long as they get reelected. This congress is a sham. They exist only to codify GWBs crimes. If he shot children for sport, congress would grant him immunity and change the law to make child hunting legal. Our ENTIRE GOVERNMENT is a disgrace. They know it an do not care. Soon, very soon, we will have to ask the UN to intervene and depose GWB from his throne. I feel like I'm in the middle of a bad novel. A criminal with his finger on the button and no one on the planet with the courage to confront him. Disgracful.
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Obama, abuse of powers, Canada
As a Canadian who has met Mahar Arar, the Canadian citizen who rendered, tortured and finally released after a year in a Syrian pit, I can say that we, as one of America's closest allies, are worried about these extraordinary powers of arrest and detention too.
Mahar Arar is a broken man, too terrified to testify before Congress even with assurances that he would not be rendered again. The sad reality is that from a legal standpoint, a Canadian would be safer traveling to Libya or Russia than he or she would be traveling through the US with its 1 million strong "terrorist" watch list.
As for Obama, as with so many other issues of basic freedoms and the rule of law, where is he? Why is he not crying from the rooftops that he will roll back the clock to a time when America was not considered by the vast majority of the world as the leading rogue state? I can be corrected on this, as I may have missed something, but I have heard nothing from the man. Obama is possibly about to become a unitary president with powers exceeding those of a king (prior to the Magna Carta of course). It's utterly terrifying to see that he seems to be okay with that.
I know many people from here in Canada, and around the world, who are now afraid to travel through US controlled territory.
Will he use his powers wisely? Maybe, but if he does not, then what recourse do we have, where are the checks, where is the balance?