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Around The Sphere
The Moderate Voice —
... first 100 days in office is getting a lot of attention..and raising some eyebrows. Crooks and Liar’s Nichole Bell finds his declarations indicating he’ll do some stay the course (at least initially) heartbreaking. Don Surber says Obama won’t close Gitmo because he “is an intelligent man who realizes that George Walker Bush was absolutely, positively, unassailably correct.”
Is The Problem That Obama Is Too Centrist? Writes Salon’s Glenn Greenwald:
The central tenets of the Beltway ...
Will Obama Provide Clintonism Redux?
TalkLeft —
A familiar question for readers of this blog rears its head again today as Glenn Greenwald revisits the issue, inspired by David Ignatius trotting out the same old Beltway "post-partisan" "unity" tripe. Glenn writes: Whatever else one might want to say about this "centrist" approach, the absolute last thing one can say about it is that there's anything "new" or "remarkable" about it. The notion that Democrats must spurn their left-wing base and move to the "non-ideological" center is the most conventional of conventional Beltway wisdom ...
Windows on the world
The Sideshow —
Glenn Greenwald returns to the subject of the media's meme about Obama's allegedly "new" centrism and his ABC interview today: "The central tenets of the Beltway religion -- particularly when a Democrat is in the White House -- have long been "centrism" and "bipartisanship." The only good Democrats are the ones who scorn their "left-wing" base while embracing Republicans. In Beltway lingo, that's what "pragmatism" and good "post-partisanship" mean: a Democrat whose primary goal is to prove he's not one of those leftists. The Washington Post's David Ignatius ...
On Closing Gitmo: What Glenn Greenwald Won’t Talk About
PoliGazette —
... Responding to reports that Obama is dealing with the practical problems of translating campaign promises into real-world policy-making, far-left purist Glenn Greenwald has another in his long series of screedsabout torture and Guantanemo Bay up today. But within the usual nest of multiple updates is a highly revealing line that gives dead away the problem with Greenwald’s intellectually dishonest approach to this issue: ...
Here are the people who pay the price
Corrente —
Via Glenn, this. Bill Moyers:
We are in a terrible bind — Israel, the Palestinians, the United States. Each greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression. Is it possible to turn this mindless tragedy toward peace? For starters, read Aaron David Miller's article in the current "Newsweek". Get his book, "The Much Too Promised Land". And pay no attention to those Washington pundits cheering the fighting in Gaza as they did the bloodletting in Iraq. Killing is cheap and war is a sport in a city where ...
A Constitutional Lawyer in the White House
Suburban Guerrilla —
... Glenn Greenwald on Obama’s plan to build a “new process” to convict those Guantanamo detainees kept on the basis of evidence obtained by torture: ...
The Rude Pundit — ... And you can’t close Gitmo as fast as you wanted to? Jesus, could we just stop buying into the right’s political paradigm. You try the prisoners under the evidence that's allowed in court. Let the chips fall where they may. Sorry - if we fucked it up, then we fucked it up. That shouldn't change our fundamental beliefs about justice. No, instead, Democrats have to talk like Republicans because that's what "bipartisan" means. ...
Do Democrats Need 51 Or 60 Or 80 Votes To Get Something Passed? They Just Managed A Big One Yesterday With Only 66 Votes
DownWithTyranny! —
... In 2006 we worked hard to make sure there would be at least 50 Democratic senators and we sorta/kinda managed... if you include Joe Lieberman as a Democrat (not to mention Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln). But then it turned out Democrats don't need 50 votes, or even 51, but 60 votes. In 2008 we worked extra hard and managed 59. Too close for comfort, Obama now says he really needs 80 votes to get anything big done. Does it even matter that George Voinovich (R-OH) is ...
Maybe, Going Forward, We Should Just Let Bernie Madoff Off?
Firedoglake —
... But it is disconcerting that, as Glenn Greenwald observes, Obama indicated yesterday that he is looking for a way to set up a system outside the courts where evidence obtained by torture can be used against Guantanamo detainees. Glenn discusses Obama's interview with George Stephanopolous: ...
Oh Goody, A Constitutional Lawyer in the White House!
Crooks and Liars —
... Glenn Greenwald on Obama's plan to build a "new process" to convict those Guantanamo detainees kept on the basis of evidence obtained by torture: ...
Jane Hamsher: Maybe, Going Forward, We Should Just Let Bernie Madoff Off?
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com —
... But it is disconcerting that, as Glenn Greenwald observes, Obama indicated yesterday he is looking for a way to set up a system outside the courts where evidence obtained by torture can be used against Guantanamo detainees. ...
The Clinton Index
Brilliant at Breakfast —
... As Glenn Greenwald stated recently, Democrats in this generation have made it almost a religious mantra to capitulate and appease a rabid right wing base that is plainly not interested in cooperating, even when real American jobs and homes are at stake, and brand it as compromise, "reaching across the aisle" and bipartisanship. Unfortunately, the "compromise" that still doesn't seem to get shit done involves leaving behind a continually disillusioned liberal voter bloc that cannot be reasonably expected to keep voting back into incumbency Democratic politicians that ...
Hullabaloo — ... based on evidence without compromising civil liberties. There is simply no need to invent anything new. To the extent that "evidence" against detainees has been tainted because it was extracted through torture, that probably should have been considered before the torturing. Evidence obtained by torture is inadmissable in every civilized court in the world, and it would simply be unconstitutional to create a system that allowed it, not to mention distasteful. Glenn Greenwald has much more. ...
Obama Backs Sunshine For Secret Legal Memos
TPM Election Central —
... I know I wasn't the only one troubled by the president-elect's interview with ABC News yesterday, when he was asked about adopting a uniform, torture-free military interrogation standard and replied (emphasis mine): "...And if our top army commanders feel comfortable with interrogation techniques that are squarely within the boundaries of rule of law..." ...
Closing Guantanamo: Part 2
Obsidian Wings —
... to construct a new system is when events reveal the need for one. That is not the case here. We have not suddenly discovered that there is some gap in our existing system of justice that only a new, alternative system will fill. Rather, there are people we want to detain and might not be able to detain under the existing system, in large part because those clever people in the Bush administration decided to torture them. Jameel Jaffer and Ben Wizner in Salon (h/t Glenn Greenwald), discussing an argument by Benjamin Wittes: ...
Hopeful Change Down Guantanamo Way
Hit & Run —
... After a Sunday ABC News appearance made Obama critics pissed that he seemed to be equivocating on a swift end to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, now it's leaked that he will at least ...
Weekend Opinionator: Closing Gitmo, Opening a Can of Worms
Opinionator —
... necessarily hold political water — as the latest Gallup poll makes all to clear. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, never one to let any potential Obama backsliding pass without sounding the alarm, was surely horrified by Taylor and Thomas’s suggestion that “the new crowd would do well to listen to Jack Goldsmith, formerly a Bush Justice Department official.” As he wrote about Obama’s appearance on the Jan. 11 “This Week”: Obama’s interview today with George Stephanopoulos provides the most compelling — and most alarming — evidence yet that all of the “centrist” and “post-partisan” ...
