In honor of Civil Rights Day

As posted last year, and as relevant now as it's ever been, Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail."

The hawk fallacy - how "protecting" America could lead to its downfall

Glenn Greenwald is soon becoming one of my favorite civil libertarians. In today's Salon he does a fantastic job of summing up the malady affecting neoconservatives in our modern era - the stunning hypocrisy of purporting to be the unabashed saviors of democracy and freedom while in fact working against those ends in both domestic and international policy.

Using a Weekly Standard rant on the ACLU's well-known support of due process for U.S. prisoners he poses the question:

Between (a) an organization that works tirelessly for basic due process and Constitutional liberties for everyone and (b) a political movement which demands their rejection, does it really take any effort to see which side is vigorously defending core American principles and which side is waging war on them? And given how due-process-free imprisonment is one of the most potent recruiting tools for Islamic extremists (as reported by David Rohde, Johann Hari, Gen. McChyrstal, and even the Pentagon's own 2004 Task Force) -- to say nothing of the endless aggressive wars cheered on by The Weekly Standard's play-acting warriors -- does it take any effort to see who Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" and stalwart allies truly are?

Hawks on national defense who treat human rights loosely have proven time and time again that protecting the United States from "terrorism" in the name of "freedom" results mainly in the continued application of terror in our name against freedom, human rights and Constitutional government. Every time The United States proves itself willing to resort to illegal and inhumane practices, it weakens our nation and its laws in very real ways and leads to a perpetuation of external terrorism around the globe.

The recent conservative outrage against Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor - an action which does not demean the one bowing but shows respect - seems to remove any question: much of the modern Right sees U.S. courtesy and diplomacy as a weakness, somehow damaging in and of itself, while excusing blatant assaults against liberty under the guise of pragmatism. The pillars of modern hawkishness - illegal, indefinite detention of prisoners without charges, torture and inhumane treatment and frequent, half-justifiable action against foreign nations in these circles is seen as strength, while the rule of law, respect for human rights and diplomacy is seen almost as treason, actions taking to weaken the nation rather than bolster its image and shake the message of anti-American terrorists around the globe.

Rather than see "terrorists" as human beings recruited to a misguided, foolish cause, this type of policy sees them as a force of nature, one that cannot be reasoned with or made to see the benefits of freedom by its actual application. No, by treating insurgents (even ones who have perpetuated terror attacks) as less than human and unworthy of the treatment we give even our worst citizens, we reinforce our image around the globe as the enemy of Islam in the minds of those misguided enough to see this as a holy war. By waging endless wars without end we become what we purport to fight against, and the noble goals of our nation's founding serve no purpose unless they are actually lived up to.

No, a hawkish, violent and arrogant foreign policy appeals mainly to those without the subtlety to appreciate virtue, relish ideals and respect the founding U.S. principles of populism, human rights and liberty. As Greenwald states powerfully in his closing paragraph (which I won't summarize here because this powerful article is powerful reading), the very people who have championed themselves the saviors of America are, through their hubris, leading quite directly both to its moral and physical destruction.

Read the article

Torture, hypocrisy and self-denial

Boingboing links to an awesome Science Daily article on the psychological effects of torture on onlookers:

The rationale behind torture is that pain will make the guilty confess, but a new study by researchers at Harvard University finds that the pain of torture can make even the innocent seem guilty.

Participants in the study met a woman suspected of cheating to win money. The woman was then "tortured" by having her hand immersed in ice water while study participants listened to the session over an intercom. She never confessed to anything, but the more she suffered during the torture, the guiltier she was perceived to be.

The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was conducted by Kurt Gray, graduate student in psychology, and Daniel M. Wegner, professor of psychology, both in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

...

"Our research suggests that torture may not uncover guilt so much as lead to its perception," says Gray. "It is as though people who know of the victim's pain must somehow convince themselves that it was a good idea -- and so come to believe that the person who was tortured deserved it."

Not all torture victims appear guilty, however. When participants in the study only listened to a recording of a previous torture session -- rather than taking part as witnesses of ongoing torture -- they saw the victim who expressed more pain as less guilty. Gray explains the different results as arising from different levels of complicity.

This study is essential, though of course it's merely an offshoot of what people who have any idea of human nature already suspect - people create the reality that is most comfortable to them. We demonize people we need to demonize, as the alternative is to confront ourselves for misbehavior, callous treatment or shortsightedness. The use of strong torture methods in dictatorial, brutal regimes, and even in justifying more recent U.S. mistakes were strongly tied to a belief in the infallible nature of the torturer to presume guilt or innocence.

link

Scott Adams on the healthcare debate

Scott Adams offers a refreshing perspective on the healthcare debate:

A confusopoly - a term I concocted several years ago - is any industry that intentionally makes its products and services too complicated for comparison shopping. The best examples of confusopolies are cell phone carriers and insurance companies. And health insurance companies might be the most confusing confusopoly of all. I suspect that no individual has the knowledge, time, and information necessary to effectively compare two health insurance plans. And in that environment the free market doesn't operate efficiently.

Some people support the so-called Public Option for healthcare, where the government would offer health care in competition with the free market. The idea is that private companies would eventually lower prices to compete with the government's low cost option. That sounds good on paper, but the reality is that the private industry folks would use the uncertainty of the confusopoly to convince people that the government option would somehow end up killing its subscribers, e.g. "Sure, it looks inexpensive until your kidney starts hurting."

I think a better role for government would be shining a light on the existing private healthcare plans in a way that would help consumers choose the most economical option. The government did this successfully with the bank loan industry when it required all loans to have an APR, which is a single number that allows consumers to compare one loan to another. Healthcare can't be boiled down to a single number, but I suspect you could come up with a report card and some sort of average cost per subscriber. That way, consumers could shop wisely, and the free market might work the way it is meant to work.

Adams has proven himself at times remarkably analytical and unconstrained by ideology, and this argument post seems to respect both viewpoints while remaining charmingly aloof.

link

Stewart schools McCaughey on the health care bill (Resulting in her resignation)

The following Jon Stewart interview with an increasingly-hysterical Betsy McCaughey is one of the best treatments of the healthcare debate that I've ever seen. Her alien logic and nervous laughter gets uncomfortable after a few minutes, though Stewart's "fake" news show as usual does a better job of providing context and evenhandedness than any of the major networks. Maybe when this stupid line of argument falls by the wayside we can actually consider the bill on its own terms.

And yes, she did resign her post the next day.

Enjoy:

www.thedailyshow.com

"The FBI has long worried about military tactics seeping into general culture. . ."

Last week, criminals with military training murdered a "wealthy Florida couple known for their charity toward children." Disturbed law enforcement officials are commenting on the pervasiveness of military culture throughout our society. As usual the case is either an isolated incident or a societal critique depending on how you look at it:

Military strategy has become "normalized" in American culture through video games, movies, and the common use of police SWAT teams for even low-level drug raids, says Peter Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University criminologist who studies SWAT tactics.

"For criminals to take the same kind of approach shouldn't surprise anyone," Professor Kraska says. "You would not only see certain police types attracted to it, but ordinary folks – if they're seduced by it in popular video, they might be seduced by it in real life, as well."

Okay, here's the societal critique bit:

Our government trains hundreds of thousands of people in military disciplines, sculpting them to become one of a group at the expense of their individual personalities, to value the priorities and orders of their superiors without question. This may be necessary in the military but it's a fact.

Certain political stripes of our society talk up the benefit of a strong military and enable this system, encouraging us to unconditionally respect those in the military. Even as civilians we are thus brought into the military system through the constant encouragement to equate the wars of politicians with the inherent good of "soldiers," who deserve the type of respect that requires them to fight and die whenever those who command them give the signal. Simultaneously the military often lets discipline fail at the lowest levels, making excuses for those who commit atrocities.

These selfish double standards unconsciously teach us to value military action for its sake alone, ostensibly as the arm of justice or freedom but in practice as another symbol of the authority of our leaders. In essence we have an inherent respect for the military but nothing to do with it. "Our" soldiers are inherently good, while people who feel they are fighting for their freedom elsewhere are considered "insurgents," to be hated and arrested forever. Thus we are taught to value only our own goals and priorities, to demonize others because of their origin and perspective, and that individual inhuman behavior is all right as long as you're a part of a disciplined, cohesive group.

Finally, we release scads of military folk back into normal society, some small percentage of whom will act like monsters, while arresting those who dare to undergo nongovernmental weapons and tactics training in other countries on evidence we refuse to release. Surprised?

While it's tempting to be even more bold in drawing a connection between this individual incident and these larger musings on society (and some of you will feel I have gone quite far indeed), I'm not qualified. But you have to admit that it's tempting to make certain connections.

Military precision of Florida slaying is worrisome, analysts say (Christian Science Monitor)

Absurd TSA disclaimer

In response to recent events (and a few older ones) I began a brief correspondence with a senior regional TSA agent at one of our nation's larger airports in an attempt to get the Administration's side of the story. I'm used both to reading and writing incendiary assaults on government organizations when an infringement on basic freedoms is suspected or agents misbehave in the performance of their duties, yet I realized that the TSA side of the argument was likely a little more sophisticated than the "Security Through Slavery" zealots many of us are used to imagining.

As I'd hoped I found the man's comments good-spirited and even informative, though most of my original concerns as a Bill of Rights/civil liberties nerd remain. But I can't discuss any of what we discussed due to a backward, ridiculous disclaimer at the bottom of each of his e-mail messages:

WARNING: The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. Access to this email by anyone other than the intended addressee is unauthorized. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, retention, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please reply to or forward a copy of this message to the sender and delete the message, any attachments, and any copies thereof from your system.

So the part of his message that reveals him as a man concerned with security while remaining conscious of the problem of preserving individual liberty is "classified," while the ridiculous, restrictive disclaimer that ties my hands is fair game. I can't talk about what we discussed here, reproduce it or even show it to anybody without fearing some possible reprisal, but I can tell you that I can't.

I don't understand - the contents of his e-mail were transparent discussions of TSA policy, with nary a factoid that might jeopardize our nation's security - in fact, they served to humanize his organization significantly in my eyes. But they've decided that they have the authority to restrict each and every message they send, and I've never been one to create undue trouble for myself.

Too bad.

Obama explains the many exciting new ways we will violate human rights from here out

This abcnews article runs through Obama's plan to continue the sort of rationalizations and abuses that lead a President to violate national law and human rights in the name of keeping us "safe." This is nearly the same rationale used by Bush and ought to further disappoint anybody who expected the excesses of the Bush presidency to cease under Obama:

But apparently over-ruling his FBI director, President Obama today said that "where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders; namely, highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety. As we make these decisions, bear in mind the following fact. Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal super-max prisons which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists."

Detainees, he said, fall into five distinct categories. Those include those guilty of US criminal law who could be tried in US federal courts, those "who violate the laws of war and are, therefore, best tried through military commissions," 21 detainees ordered released by the courts, 50 detainees that his administration has judged suitable for transfer to other countries for "detention and rehabilitation."

Lastly, describing the "toughest single issue that we will face," the president described those who face indefinite detention, "people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases, because evidence may be tainted, but who, nonetheless, pose a threat to the security of the United States." [Emphasis added]

Sigh. . .

"Fuhrer's Law": The Bush Memos and Treason

A provocative article deserves a
provocative image, dontchathink?

What a doozy today. In perhaps one of the most significant stories of our lifetime (their words and mine), new details have come to light about the memos written by John Yoo while serving as a legal advisor to President Bush and the Executive Branch. Alternet's Naomi Wolf puts it most simply (and alarmingly):

In early March, more shocking details emerged about George W. Bush legal counsel John Yoo's memos outlining the destruction of the republic.

The memos lay the legal groundwork for the president to send the military to wage war against U.S. citizens; take them from their homes to Navy brigs without trial and keep them forever; close down the First Amendment; and invade whatever country he chooses without regard to any treaty or objection by Congress.

...

The memos are a confession. The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.

John Yoo (a man who, incidentally, is eligible for war crimes trial) was instrumental in helping to consolidate presidential power and rationalize some of the most extreme breaches of justice and U.S. law perpetrated by the Bush administration over the last eight years, among them the justification of torture and limitation of habeus corpus, presidential power to override the fourth amendment through domestic surveillance, and worse. Constitutional scholar Michael Ratner explains:

What Yoo says is that the president's authority as commander in chief in the so-called war on terror is not bound by any law passed by Congress, any treaty, or the protections of free speech, due process and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The First, Fourth and Fifth amendments -- gone.

What this actually means is that the president can order the military to operate in the U.S. and to operate without constitutional restrictions. They -- the military -- can pick you or me up in the U.S. for any reason and without any legal process. They would not have any restrictions on entering your house to search it, or to seize you. They can put you into a brig without any due process or going to court. (That's the Fourth and Fifth amendments.)

The military can disregard the Posse Comitatus law, which restricts the military from acting as police in the the United States. And the president can, in the name of wartime restrictions, limit free speech. There it is in black and white: we are looking at one-person rule without any checks and balances -- a lawless state. Law by fiat.

I won't dignify the allegations of treason made later, mainly because I don't have to - they stand completely by themselves. What was done here was treason, pure and simple - a lawless, irresponsible administration laying the groundwork for the systematic elimination of checks and balances in America. Though the Department of Justice later rejected Yoo's assertions that Congress had no check or balance against the president, history has shown that President Bush proceeded in these areas as if Yoo's memos were valid legal counsel. Ratner puts it best:

"This would be the president making war against the institutions of the United States."

Further Readin':

The memos and summaries on Wikipedia
Salon's Gary Kumiya on the torture memos
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times on interrogations

Obama and the Ring

(click the image to enlarge)

Well, I already wrote about the news involved, but this cartoon by Terrence Nowicki, Jr. makes its point far more quickly and dramatically than any analysis. Hint: Read the writing on the ring.

Prez Blocks AIG Bonuses

Yay.

“All across the country, there are people who work hard and meet their responsibilities every day, without the benefit of government bailouts or multimillion-dollar bonuses,” said Mr. Obama, who called the issue one of “fundamental values.”

Well, "values" unless you're one of those "self interest, cronyism and hedonistic accumulation are inherent positives" free-market-without-freedom types.

Obama Administration ditches "enemy combatant," but keeps everything else

Earlier this week, the Obama Administration released a brief announcing that it would drop the term "enemy combatant" in dealing with terrorist suspects, without otherwise making any substantial changes to the previous (read: Bush) policy regarding "terrorism." The "new" rules?

According to the release, the U.S. can still detain prisoners who have provided "substantial support" to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. An administration who wanted to make more than a token attempt at coming out on the side of civil rights might have bothered to be more specific. The miniscule addition of "substantial" is hardly a dramatic change.

Note that according to principles of due process, people have the right to be informed of the specific charges against them, followed by a speedy trial. Time will tell if these alleged terrorists and terrorist collaborators will receive trials, and not the Queen of Hearts-styled trials ("sentences first!") we've been getting.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon sums up Obama's platform nicely:

Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism.

First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party’s base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it’s the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult.

The new brief makes a token attempt at proving Obama's authority to violate habeas corpus on Constitutional grounds but still falls flat. "Po-TA-to, po-TAH-to. . ." We didn't even hear very much about Bush's violations of due process, and that's when people hated him. Do we really think that that's gonna change?

British advocate for snooping and surveillance snitched by neighbors for illegally pocketing expenses

Love that delicious irony. If anything, this story is a stirring reminder that the "what are you afraid of if you aren't hiding anything?" people we deal with in any discussion of civil liberties may have just as much to lose when Big Bruddah takes over as the rest of us (of course, it's not a perfect example - UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith committed an actual crime).

More generally, the article is a stunning rebuttal to the argument that citizens who have committed no crime should be reported responsibility-free based on the suspicions, fears and paranoias of their neighbors. As the UK Home Office's ad put it:

"How can you tell if they're a normal everyday person or a terrorist? The answer is that you don't have to. If you call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321, the specialist officers you speak to will analyse the information. They'll decide if and how to follow it up. You don't have to be sure. If you suspect it, report it."

If that isn't scary, I'm not sure what is.

Adorable Authors' Guild wages futile war on text-to-speech technology

Few things are more adorably self-righteous or toxic to policy and discourse than a misguided, uninformed organization with the utmost confidence in their cause. In matters of intellectual property, things gets even crazier when artificial concepts of ownership of information get pushed into the real world.

The Roy Blount-led Authors' Guild is no stranger to this sort of thing - in October of last year they sued Google for their revolutionary Book Search feature, a service which allows users to search for keywords within books without having access to the full text. Never mind the benefit of the service or the fact that the full text of the books were still unavailable (meaning that, barring some review, Google most likely qualified under Fair Use law and encouraged users to seek out the books rather than just read them online) - the Guild threw a legal temper tantrum and eventually agreed to a megamillion-dollar payout, a small percentage of which were given to authors. I guess when massive amounts of cash are concerned, it doesn't matter when enforcing copyright law and protecting writers' profits are not the same thing.

Now the Guild is making an adorable stink over an online service that reads e-books aloud through text-to-speech technology, BoingBoing Gadgets reports:

Kindle 2's flagship feature is the reading of text out loud, in the same way as software that's already built into desktop computers and Prof. Stephen Hawking's famous voice box. This has caused a "stir." Paul Aiken, executive director of the Author's Guild, told the Wall Street Journal that you have no right to use this feature. It's a free audiobook, see.

They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

What's the point of fighting a pointless fight just for legal technicalities? Limiting convenient consumer options for absolutely no reason (a computer voice does not duplicate nor replace the role of an audiobook) when people are eager to add free functionality to your product is shortsighted and miserly, less like protecting your rights than spitting in somebody's coffee. Rob Beschizza sums up the concept nicely:

Ideas grow to fill the containers they imply, and the problem with bad ideas is that their containers are leaky and misshapen. Even if you firmly believe in broad copyright laws, intellectual property is a bad idea because it recasts a legal device as its own philosophical justification. This journey from the utilitarian to the exalted creates a sublime monster that can't help but govern not only the duplication of things, but every aspect of their expression and the culture that makes them meaningful.

The alternative is a set of obnoxious, unintuitive loopholes the like of which I found online in this totally real example:



Authors' Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal (BoingBoing)

Obama to continue secret CIA "renditions" - secret abductions and transfers of prisoners

NOTE: READ UPDATE BELOW

Well, I was excited about the closing of Guantanamo Bay and other reforms (I still am, actually, very much), but Obama's recent decision granting approval to the CIA for the continuation of their "extraordinary renditions" program has me thinking he may just be rearranging the deck chairs on our nation's moral Titanic.

Renditions - secret CIA abductions and transfers of government prisoners to "friendly nations" (where they are sometimes tortured) have been understandably controversial. When torture occurs following a rendition, it allows our government to avoid directly participating in the torture process while looking the other way and allowing it to happen. As a commenter said following DailyKos's report that members of Bush's rendition team were heading Obama's intelligence transition team : "We've got someone who can make our torture look better. That's the change we need, right?"

If we really believe in God-given human rights, we will do our best to make certain that people aren't tortured on our watch. The fact that we won't always be the ones doing it is of dubious comfort.

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool (LA Times)

Related links:

The agonizing truth about CIA renditions (Salon)
Americans in opposition to torture
Why torture is ineffective

UPDATE: When writing this post I did not make a distinction between the practice of openly shuttling a prisoner to another country for purposes of law enforcement - also termed a "rendition" - and renditions in which subjects have been secretly shuttled away for long periods or tortured. The term "extraordinary rendition" connotes torture and the Obama Administration has explicitly banned renditions which may result in torture. Of course we are not the only nation on Earth which has stake in prosecuting terrorists, and there may be a variety of reasons that a prosecution in another nation may be more appropriate. Nevertheless, we are responsible to assure that prisoners we transfer or allow to be transferred are treated humanely.

American Muslims and civil rights - Al Arabiya News

More than a year after he was dismissed from his job at a Pennsylvanian nuclear laboratory and had his security access revoked by the Department of Energy for ill-defined reasons of "national security," Dr. Moneim El-Ganayni has returned to his native Egypt and is finally speaking out about the abuses and discrimination he received at the hands of an overzealous government, reports El Arabiya.

Dr. El-Ganayni, a naturalized American citizen, feels that he was dismissed to silence his criticisms of the treatment of Muslims in America. The fact that he was never prosecuted for any crime, as well as the absolute dearth of any real evidence on the part of the DOE, certainly seem to point that way.

An annual report issued by CAIR about the state of Muslim civil rights in the U.S. found that 52 percent of rights violations in 2007 involved legal or immigration cases and hate propaganda. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that 53 percent of Muslim-Americans believe the government “singles out Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.”

Presumably those 53 percent of Muslims were pulled into dark vans immediately after taking the survey and questioned by Minuteman Project volunteers with bad haircuts.

Egypt-US physicist slams US govt discrimination, speaks out from Egypt about civil rights abuses (Al Arabiya)

The Daily Show - Gitmo's World

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Gitmo's World - Death to America

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Beneath this ostensibly silly riff on the closing of Guantanamo Bay is some pretty profound commentary. As Stewart points out, the lack of any guarantee of safety is a price of living in a free society.

UPDATE: Bill O'Reilly on the inauguration speech: "I didn't like the line in the speech [saying] we don't have to compromise our values to protect ourselves. I think sometimes we do." Cute.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: What do you call a "value" that you discard at the earliest possible opportunity?

First-week Obama reforms and miscellaneous tidbits

This needs no introduction. I'll start with the most important:

This week, President Obama signed an execution order closing Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA prisons, and enforcing the Army Field Manual for interrogations, citing the "false choice between our safety and our ideals" offered by the previous administration. European governments commended him for this action, as they've been ferrying our "enemy combatants" over their airspace for years. Obama will, of course, have to address the damage done by imprisoning people without charges, as well as what to do with those about whom a legitimate case could be built. Huge step in the right direction. (Viewers interested in some of the rationale for keeping Gitmo prisoners behind bars may enjoy/get riled up at this little aside.) Thankfully, the CIA promises to withhold the new rules on suspected terrorist detention and interrogation "without exception, carve-out, or loophole."

Large steps were taken to bring back transparency in government and reversing FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) restrictions enacted by John Ashcroft under Dubya, taking the attitude that information should be released on a timely basis by governmental agencies without waiting for a public request, in stark contrast to earlier policies encouraging information to be withheld unless no possible objections could be found.

Obama also blocked some (but not all) of the "last-minute environmental decisions" of Bush, including looser regulations and a removal of the gray wolf form the endangered species list.

Rush Limbaush and Sean Hannity decided to start putting a U.S. President under scrutiny for the first time since 2000. As Limbaugh seems desperate to prove that he's not a racist in his opposition of Obama (something the American people can probably accept), he freely admits that he wants Obama to fail and damage the country with his left-wing policies. SITYS. I guess he was only joking when he criticized Democrats for wishing death on Bush's shortsighted policies; Republican Kool-Aid cares not for race, as long as you're wearing the right hat!

Immigrants Rights Groups voiced their concern that Obama will raise the level of discourse concerning illegal immigration rather than just signing a reform bill. Americans have been notoriously fickle on their views of immigration, even considered in the aggregate: a large Gallup poll found a vast majority of Americans either glowingly supporting or concerned about immigration depending on the questions asked. How can Obama use his "power of words" without patronizing Americans who may not agree with him? (For the record, I support full amnesty for individuals with no record of violent crimes, a permanent streamlining of the immigration process and then tightening the border. I doubt that will be on the table.)

Obama is now held to the job of reforming entitlements (SS and government healthcare, among others), a task about which he's been characteristically vague. I predict it's very unlikely he'll arrive at a satisfactory solution to this problem, one that existed long before Bush. Raising requirements or mandatory contributions will be unpopular, and "universal health care" may turn out to be nothing more than a reshuffling of the numbers. Let's hope I'm wrong and next month's economic summit bears some sort of practical fruit.

Obama still needs to do his part to reverse the lapses of civil liberties in America. I'd like to see something done immediately about NSA-sponsored spying on American citizens and journalists, as well as legal immunity for telecom corporations complicit in illegal wiretaps and unconstitutional surveillance. Bush first insisted that warrants were required for every instance or surveillance. This later turned out to be either a lie, or something Bush wasn't paying attention to during those boring cabinet meetings. Whoops! (For further information on the NSA whistleblower in the above link, I highly recommend his Wikipedia page, which goes into detail on the electronic tracking, sham psychological evaluations and demotions he was forced to undergo as he attempted to reform the system.)

Still, I'll be more interested in what Obama does as he really settles into office. These early decisions are fairly uncontroversial; coming out in opposition to torture, war and corruption is hardly controversial. Will Obama continue his winning streak or will he falter when he runs out of Bush flops to fix? Will his scant few years of experience in the corrupt Washington waterworks turn out to be an asset or a fatal flaw?

Find out next week, in another exciting edition of. . . sorry, I was on autopilot there for awhile.

Even a loaded ABC poll finds Americans in opposition to torture

Despite being phrased in "the most pro-torture manner possible," a new ABC poll finds Americans in favor of the rule of law and in opposition to torture by a wide margin. Glenn Greenwald of Salon illuminates on the poll results:

Q. Obama has said that under his administration the United States will not use torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, no matter what the circumstance. Do you support this position not to use torture, or do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects? (Greenwald's emphasis)

The question, posed in that "ludicrous, 24-clichéd 'ticking time bomb' excuse" found 58% of Americans responding that the U.S. should never torture, no matter the circumstances.

A majority of Americans also favors the closing of Guantanamo Bay, and a slim majority even favors investigation into the legality of Bush administration policies regarding the treatment of detainees, asking that they be tried in U.S. courts.

Greenwald's analysis flies in the face of both the "conservative America" thesis of Republican talking heads, as well as their concept of the "liberal media":

What's most remarkable about the fact that a majority of Americans favor investigations is that one has to struggle to find even a single politician of national significance or a prominent media figure who argue that position. The notion that Bush officials shouldn't be criminally investigated is about as close to a lockstep consensus among political and media elites as it gets, and yet, still, a majority of Americans favor such investigations.

...

Our political elites endlessly deny these facts -- and insist that Americans don't care about the rule of law and Constitutional values -- because that's how they excuse their own violations and their refusal to hold themselves accountable: "We can't investigate Bush because the public wouldn't tolerate it; we can't abide by Constitutional norms because we'll lose elections if we appear soft on terror." But those claims are false. There may (or may not be) reasonable grounds for arguing against constitutional protections and imposing consequences on those who violate them, but the fact that public opinion won't permit such actions is quite clearly not one of those grounds.

New poll on torture and investigations negates Beltway conventional wisdom (Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com)

Obama to continue support for telecom immunity

Obama created a small controversy last year when he reversed his position on telecom immunity, effectively endorsing the illegal, warrantless wiretapping undertaken by the Bush administration and granting continued legal immunity to the corporations who went along with it.

Well, the new administration of President-or-President-Elect-depending-on-when-you-read-this Obama is unlikely to change its position, the Wired Blog reports, as his choice for attorney general Eric Holder indicates.

"The duty of the Justice Department is to defend statutes that have been passed by Congress," he says, absurdly. "Unless there are compelling reasons, I don't think we would reverse course." Does "unconstitutional and Orwellian" count as "compelling"?

Obama to Defend Telco Spy Immunity (Wired)