Love freedom and democracy? Vote out Obama

Posted by Kromey at 4:49pm Jan 5 '12
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Obama's been one of the worst presidents we could have never hoped for. In the three years he's been in office, he not only has failed to deliver the "change we can believe in" that he promised, but he's continued the legacy of the imperial presidency he berated the Bush/Cheney administration for.

Like the NDAA he just signed into law:

Last week, Obama signed a bill letting him detain U.S. citizens in military custody without convicting them of anything -- not for a month or a year, but potentially forever.

Obama pledges he will never use that power to hold an American. But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the bill originally applied only to non-citizens. Citizens were included, he said, at the request of the White House. [Emphasis mine.]

So, wait, Obama promises he won't use this new authority (and by the way, where's the progressive outrage against Obama for signing this one?), but then why did he insist it be included in the first place? This is the same president who promised to close Gitmo within the first year of his presidency, a promise now more than two years overdue, but it's okay because he "promises" not to indefinitely detain US citizens after asking for that power in the first place!

Ah, but Obama at least follows the law, right? Well...

The targeted killing [of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen,] was justified by a secret legal memo that, The New York Times reported, "provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war."

... It's possible to make a case that he posed a clear threat to American lives and that the missile was the only feasible way to avert it. But Obama, the vaunted champion of openness, saw no need to bother.

Huh. Okay. Getting harder to defend Obama as a champion of freedom and liberty when he flaunts whatever laws become inconvenient for him.

What's that? Awlaki was a terrorist, so he has no legal protections? Well, aside from that being an argument the Bush/Cheney administration used to justify Gitmo and many of their other policies -- an argument denounced by liberals and progressives -- it ceases to hold any water when you continue to look at the legacy Obama's left:

In some ways, though, the president has been perfectly transparent. Note his transparent disregard for both the Constitution and federal law in launching a military attack against Libya.

The Constitution explicitly places the power to authorize war with Congress, not the president. But Obama refused to ask Congress to grant its approval beforehand -- something even George W. Bush did as he prepared to invade Iraq.

Obama also defied the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to get congressional authorization within 60 days or withdraw. His preposterous position was that the law didn't apply because we were not engaged in "hostilities."

Even Bush asked Congress for authority to go to war, yet Obama flaunted the Constitution and federal law when he authorized military strikes into Libya! Oh, but it gets even better on this score:

All this was particularly novel coming from someone who, as a candidate, suggested that emperors are for other countries. "The president," he insisted, "does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Libya, however, had neither attacked us nor posed any discernible threat. President Obama exercised a presidential power that Candidate Obama said he doesn't have. [Emphasis mine.]

I should put that quote in my signature, actually, as it's a damned good one: "The president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Libya was, quite clearly, neither, but the ever-inconsistent Barack Obama is quite happy to ignore his own statements, just like he's quite happy to ignore the Constitution and the law.

Presidents exceeding their authority is only a sin when it's not President Obama, apparently.

And remember all those illegal Bush wiretaps? The ones then-Senator Obama decried as an abuse of power? Yeah, yet again, only when it's someone else doing it:

The candidate also denounced the Bush-Cheney administration for unauthorized surveillance of Americans in the United States. But when an Islamic charity sued after being illegally wiretapped in 2004, Obama's Justice Department took the side of the wiretappers.

It argued in court that the lawsuit should be dismissed because it involved state secrets and refused to turn over evidence that the presiding judge demanded. He ruled that the wiretaps violated federal law and accused the administration of advocating "unfettered executive branch discretion" that invites "governmental abuse and overreaching."

It confounds me that liberals and progressives stand behind a president this inconsistent with his own statements, this unreliable on his own promises, and this opposed to the most basic principles of a free, democratic nation -- especially right on the heels of a president regularly denounced by those same liberals and progressives for abusing his authority.

I simply do not understand how anyone can support freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, and yet also support a man who regularly flaunts all of the above the instant they become the least bit inconvenient to his designs.

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

- Then-Senator Barack Obama, before adding $4 trillion dollars himself in half the time it took Bush to do so. I guess it's only irresponsible and unpatriotic when the other guy does it, eh?