quote:

On Tuesday the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing about the legal treatment of terrorism suspects. The New York Times account emphasizes that Obama administration officials faced resistance from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans on the committee to the idea that people accused of ties to terrorism have a constitutional right to (some sort of) due process. Yet in an exchange with Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson said the president reserves the right to ignore the outcome of that process

...

So the Obama administration is all for due process, as long as it produces the correct result. Obama already has said that Guantanamo detainees who cannot be successfully tried by military commissions or civilian courts can still be imprisoned indefinitely if they are considered too dangerous to release. Now Johnson is saying that even those who are prosecuted can be kept imprisoned regardless of the verdict. The only point of prosecuting them, it seems, is to create an impression of due process while continuing the Bush detention policies that Obama condemned during the campaign.

At this hearing and elsewhere, Obama administration officials have expressed a preference for trying terrorism suspects, especially those arrested in the United States, in civilian courts. But in their view that decision is completely at the president's discretion, so in practice the new policy may be indistinguishable from the old policy, under which the Bush administration sometimes kept terrorism suspects in military custody and sometimes in civilian custody, sometimes prosecuted them in military tribunals and sometimes in civilian courts. Also like Bush, Obama is claiming the authority to continue imprisoning defendants who have been acquitted.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Where are all the angry posters, and threads about this on CM?

Why the deafening silence?

Where's kittinsol? Owner59? DomKen? Farglebargle, and all the rest of the crowd ....?

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Where's kittinsol? Owner59? DomKen? Farglebargle, and all the rest of the crowd ....?

Firm

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arpig

Well I for one would feel cheated if I had voted for Obama.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
What were people expecting? That one man can change the course of recent history? I'd suggest that anyone who believed that to be the case is cheating themselves.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Loki45

What Obama's detractors fail to realize is that his supporters already understood this.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY



Is this the "change" you voted for?

Indefinite Detention With or Without Trial

Jacob Sullum | July 9, 2009, 12:28pm

quote:

On Tuesday the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing about the legal treatment of terrorism suspects. The New York Times account emphasizes that Obama administration officials faced resistance from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans on the committee to the idea that people accused of ties to terrorism have a constitutional right to (some sort of) due process. Yet in an exchange with Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson said the president reserves the right to ignore the outcome of that process

...

So the Obama administration is all for due process, as long as it produces the correct result. Obama already has said that Guantanamo detainees who cannot be successfully tried by military commissions or civilian courts can still be imprisoned indefinitely if they are considered too dangerous to release. Now Johnson is saying that even those who are prosecuted can be kept imprisoned regardless of the verdict. The only point of prosecuting them, it seems, is to create an impression of due process while continuing the Bush detention policies that Obama condemned during the campaign.

At this hearing and elsewhere, Obama administration officials have expressed a preference for trying terrorism suspects, especially those arrested in the United States, in civilian courts. But in their view that decision is completely at the president's discretion, so in practice the new policy may be indistinguishable from the old policy, under which the Bush administration sometimes kept terrorism suspects in military custody and sometimes in civilian custody, sometimes prosecuted them in military tribunals and sometimes in civilian courts. Also like Bush, Obama is claiming the authority to continue imprisoning defendants who have been acquitted.

Where are all the angry protests? Where are all the angry denunciations about the loss of "civil liberties" and "destroying the Constitution" and Obamahilter (or is that Hitlobama? )

Where are all the angry posters, and threads about this on CM?

Why the deafening silence?

Where's kittinsol? Owner59? DomKen? Farglebargle, and all the rest of the crowd ....?

Firm

quote:

ORIGINAL: thishereboi

They are off somewhere making hockey mom jokes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: housesub4you

So you're pissed that he has not changed the programs you supported?  So if he ended them, then you would be pissed that he ended them huh.

quote:

ORIGINAL: NihilusZero

Yes, Obama seems content to continue the "epic fail" processes already put into place. There are already plenty of people with growing discontent over his ignorance or apathy towards clear civil liberties issues.

Care to trot out what seems surely to be the rest of your false dichotomy now?

quote:

ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy
your self delusion is actually quite entertaining

quote:

What were people expecting? That one man can change the course of recent history? I'd suggest that anyone who believed that to be the case is cheating themselves.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Loki45

quote:

ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy
your self delusion is actually quite entertaining

Actually, yours is. But not nearly as your whining over the fact that your guy didn't win. 

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arpig
To be honest, I wasn't. But I didn't vote for Obama, I didn't particularly pay a lot of attention to what he said or didn't say in the campaign, but he did promise change, and to close down Gitmo. Now I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that when he said that, the vast majority of people took it to mean that he would be releasing the detainees who were not guilty of a crime, rather than that he would simply close the Gitmo camp and redistribute the detainees to other facilities. That is the basis for saying that I would feel cheated, as far as I am concerned, he lied. He said he'd shut it down, and he knew damn well when he said it that his audience didn't take that to mean that he would close the facility only. I suspect that what he is doing now is what he always planned to do, and that he phrased his pledge in such a way that he can shut down that particular facility and redistribute the detainees and claim that he fulfilled his promise to "close Gitmo". America was taken.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arpig

quote:

What were people expecting? That one man can change the course of recent history? I'd suggest that anyone who believed that to be the case is cheating themselves.

To be honest, I wasn't. But I didn't vote for Obama, I didn't particularly pay a lot of attention to what he said or didn't say in the campaign, but he did promise change, and to close down Gitmo. Now I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that when he said that, the vast majority of people took it to mean that he would be releasing the detainees who were not guilty of a crime, rather than that he would simply close the Gitmo camp and redistribute the detainees to other facilities. That is the basis for saying that I would feel cheated, as far as I am concerned, he lied. He said he'd shut it down, and he knew damn well when he said it that his audience didn't take that to mean that he would close the facility only. I suspect that what he is doing now is what he always planned to do, and that he phrased his pledge in such a way that he can shut down that particular facility and redistribute the detainees and claim that he fulfilled his promise to "close Gitmo". America was taken.