Last month, while still under Democratic control, Congress included the detainee transfer restrictions — which would make it harder for the administration to achieve its goal of closing the prison at the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — in a major defense bill it sent to Mr. Obama. He could act on the measure by the end of the week.
One provision bars the military from using its funds to transfer detainees to the United States, making it harder to prosecute them in federal court. Another prohibits the transfer of detainees to any other country unless the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, certifies that the country has met a strict set of security conditions.
Good work! Let’s lose the rule of law. We should be able to go to other people’s countries, round up any brown man or child who looks suspicious, and bring them over to this hemisphere in slave ships to live in shackles.
But what about a signing statement?
If Mr. Obama were to issue such a statement, it could represent a more aggressive use of unilateral executive powers than what he exerted in his first two years in office.
Is a one-time abuse of power acceptable, to bring an end to worse abuses of power? No. Because that could spell the end of abusing power, and abusing power is fun. [NYT]
{ 28 comments }
Do the repubes just love Gitmo so much because it's a hot stick in Obama's eye?
Or do they just love executive power so much that they'll give up their own?
Do they know or care that no has ever or will ever escape from the Marion or Florence supermax dungeons?
Do they think crazed jehadi hijackers and crotch-bombers are scarier than any enemy or criminal that ever existed before?
Do they think the Constitutional guarantee of a jury trial is just a conditional privilege? Tim McVeigh got a trial, and he was a US Army-trained bomber of stuff, who looks like any young man you see on the street in Wichita or Dayton.
Batman could escape from the supermax prisons.
So could the count of monte cristo.
Also Sean Connery in
that one movieall of them, actually.This reminds me of something… hmmm. Oh yeah, the Declaration of Independence. Charging King George…
We've become the thing we used to hate.
It's only a crime if other people do it.
Or, IOKIYAR.
Not exactly sure which pisses me off more. The fact that Obama hasn't said, fuck it, closed Gitmo and moved the prisoners to the U.S. to face trial. Or the fact that the Republiklans seem to delight in the fact that he hasn't done it, and rubs it in everyone's face every chance they get.
I would say Obama's use of executive powers has been questionable, at best, so far.
Ahhh, but you forget the awesome power of ACQUIESCENCE!
Well we can't try any of the detainees here, because that may reveal more about how they were tortured; um I mean because they've terrorists who will blow up the city they're being tried in somehow, magic I guess.
Slow & steady wins the race.
(This administration isn't 11th dimension chess; it's the tortoise & the hair-brained (Boehner, et. al., being the latter.)
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know." (D. Rummsveldt)
Yeah, like that, only with Executive Powers…
Whether Obama does or does not abuse his executive powers, the wingnuts will accuse him of doing so anyway, so I say go all out, Mr President, and ship Boneheader and Co. off to Gitmo for a two – year long inquisition…I mean investigation…
Barry should just go ahead and issue a more concise signing statement telling the Republicans to go fuck themselves.
Since signing statements have no actual legal power (despite the alleged unitary executive that Dubya made up) and President Obama doesn't want to veto a military appropriation, it seems like the only reasonable thing to do would be to move everyone from Gitmo to the states now before Congress changes the law. Then again, there's no crime so awful as audaciousness in the interest of basic human rights — but fuck it, you can't make a reasonable society omelette without breaking some fascist eggs once in a while.
I'm still not clear on why the Rethugs want to leave everybody in Gitmo. I mean, surely they'll get a fair trial in some place like, say, Oklahoma, right?
Thumbing their noses at the Castros? Having all those religious zealots in an officially atheist nation-state must be a bummer.
(Also: how much dirt does the Cuban intelligence service have on us, over the use of Guantanamo, since 2001? & if Lincoln Diaz Balart thinks he's going to rumba down to La Habana & become president, after the fall of communism, he's mistaken. He'll be damaged goods.)
Tangential but I really, really want to see Diaz-Balart rumba in down there – right before he sprints back. Nobody is going to want his stupid ass trying to run things in Cuba.
Please, the Republicans just want to keep Gitmo going so they have an excuse to go down to Cuba and fondle Elián González while buying cheap cigars.
Elian's 16 now. He's prolly too old for most Republicans.
This is a job for Baltazar Garzón-man!
Would it not be wonderful if Congress spent a fraction of the time they spend on this figuring out why about one in four Americans under the age of 30 are involved in the legal process (awaiting trial, incarcerated or on probation or parole) and why we have to throw so many people's lives away in our 3rd worldish legal system.
Suppose they could take a look at that? Naah, it garners no votes – let 'em suffer (in many cases unjustly), while "terrorism" is big business and high profile even though it seldom occurs.
I have read that 100 times the number of people who die from "terrorism", die of snake bite each year.
He tries and he tries and he tries and he tries but Obama
can't gitmo satisfaction
hmmmm, nah. Sorry. Maybe with ♪♫♫♫♪
Rule of law?
Antonin Scalia has your rule of law right here.
abuse of power is fun, absolutely!
Why doesn't O. just send the entire Congress to Gtmo for life? He'd get the applause of a hell of a lot of Americans. It's not as if we were not a lightly-disguised autocracy already.
Comments on this entry are closed.