"Why ACLU's Head Honcho is 'Disgusted' With Obama" (Mother Jones)

[jody]

Why ACLU's Head Honcho is "Disgusted" With Obama

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, is "disgusted" with President Obama," he told a conference of progressive activists on Wednesday. Politico's Josh Gerstein has a short piece on the quote, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. The ACLU has been the central bulwark against the relentless weakening of civil liberties protections since 9/11. Civil liberties activists fervently hoped that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, would be different. I talk to people in this community often, and there is definitely a sense of despair now. Think about some of the things Obama has done (or not done) that affect civil liberties:

1. He hasn't closed Guantanamo.
2. More important, he hasn't ended the indefinite detention without trial that makes Guantanamo so controversial.
3. He's still using military commissions instead of the federal court system, and has backed away from plans to try the 9/11 suspects in New York.
4. He seems to believe he can order the "targeted killing" of American citizens, without trial or other due process.
5. His Justice Department has mounted a wide-ranging investigation of the Guantanamo defense bar. That investigation is reportedly led by Patrick Fitzgerald, the US attorney that some civil liberties activists wanted to investigate the Bush administration's torture and detention policies.
6. He hasn't authorized a full, independent investigation of torture, let alone a criminal probe of the people who supposedly authorized it.
7. He has embraced the use of the state secrets privilege in order to shield the government from inconvenient lawsuits.
8. He has launched an all-out war on national security whistleblowers and leakers.
9. He's pursued the right to detain anyone indefinitely, without formal review, in Afghanistan—even if they weren't captured there.
10. He's reauthorized controversial Patriot Act wiretapping provisions.
11. He pushed for and signed a new law allowing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to block the release of photos of detainee abuse.

[mix]

1. k&r nt

[pscot]

2. Not what we were led to hope for

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[bvar22]

3. The ACLU...LOL

THAT Right Wing hate spewing, Anti-Obama organization!
:eyes:
I'm stunned that any DUer would even link to anything pushed by the ACLU.
And Mother Jones is just as bad, another Right Wing Hate rag.
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(I'm alerting on this OP because it is clearly Anti-Democratic Party, and the rules say we must all support the Democratic Party!!!!)

[KansasVoter]

23. Are you serious? The ACLU is bad? Or are you kidding??

[dflprincess]

24. I knew Bvar22 when he lived in Minnesota

Yes, he is kidding. I guess he probably should have used the sarcasm icon instead of the eye roll.

[polichick]

4. It is hard to get your head around it all. You have to wonder if it was a true con job, or...

...if he changed after getting elected.

[Amonester]

8. He told us to vote for change, and he changed.

So, in a twisted way, it's like he did honor that promise. :cry:

[PurityOfEssence]

10. It was a true con job

Look, he was supremely cagey about being on both sides of every issue he couldn't duck outright, and he was quite obvious in his corporatist voting patterns. The vast sweep of emotional support was for the chirpy mantra of change, yet his politics are specifically the hide-bound, ward-heeling, favor-currying maneuvering of old. This should be rather obvious, and it's not a huge shock to many of us: the record was rather clear.

Perhaps the Guantanamo issue is a bit too much in the fore here, since it may be that the realities of the office make it a bit more difficult to close it quickly, but the general pattern is quite obvious: an enjoyment of the imperial executive powers and a willingness to "play" the dewy-eyed peaceniks and other progressives. Repeatedly, we're told to trust him and believe that the enabling of the traditional power blocs is merely a super-genius display of strategy to outflank the big meanies and then turn to reveal himself as a sterling populist shining knight. I puke. The very call is for us to trust that he's lying to "them", while telling us the truth, when the accumulated record of his lengthy legislative career is more with "them" than with us. The whole chess-playing metaphor is one of acolytes' swooning delusion, and it's sickening.

Yeah, it's better than the alternative, but that's missing the point. This was a chance. This was a mandate. When Republicans eked out a feeble technical "win" with the theft of 2000, they stomped in with drastic changes more befitting a landslide; after Obama's very handy win, he compromises away virtually everything in the process of passing things like a flaccid recovery plan, an anemic health-bill and a servile economic reform package. One is left to wonder how they'd behave if they had a hostile Congress.

It's like religion: accepting hype with no proof is always a dangerous thing, and systematized belief is generally little less than cynical power-wielding for the benefit of the few.

[SeattleGirl]

11. Whaa Whaa Blah Blah Blah

Obama coulda woulda shoulda

Really!

He coulda woulda shoulda!

If he could, would, should,

Then you wouldn't have to be so pissed, right?

After all, anything and everything bad that has happened since the beginning of time is.....

is.....

is....

OBAMA'S FAULT!!!!!!

Tell ya what.

YOU be President!

YOU walk into the Oval Office.

YOU tell me how easy all of this will be.

YOU tell me how easy it is.

When you do,

then maybe,

just maybe,

I might take your points under consideration.

Maybe.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

21. well at least you are living up to your screenname

Because you are definitely childish.

[PurityOfEssence]

22. More crappy common-man, have a beer, give him a chance shutdown barking

I didn't stand up and say I wanted a horrendously difficult office, so my lax attitude toward life doesn't mean squat. The vitriolic defense of worshiping this man regardless of performance is as tiresome as it is consistent.

HE OWES US. The constantly sniveled rejoinder that we owe him everything and should shut up and go back to our pathetic, passive hoping is an outrage to the very concept of pluralism.

It's a tough job. He's to be held to greater standards of comportment, decency, effort, and PERFORMANCE than the rest of us. That's the deal. That was the obvious deal from the beginning.

He's been anointed with praise and laurels he has simply never won, and those who savage anyone who dares to pipe up with a little reality are out of line. His extreme partisans have bought the whole package deal that he's a peacemaker, an environmentalist, a champion of the little guy, a secularist and all the rest of it, but like religion, there's no evidence. There's actually plenty of evidence to the contrary, in fact, and what comes off as obvious is that he's a good campaigner and a good legislative tactician. None of that means that he's a good leader or someone with any real substantive beliefs. We're demanded to worship his style, while constantly quashed when we bring up the obvious truths of his lack of substance.

Lowering the conversation to a critique of any critic's willingness to go through the rigors of being President is a silly endeavor; he took the job, and that's that.

[dflprincess]

25. "Presidenting" in hard work

really, it's hard work. Where have we heard that before?

[polichick]

12. I lean toward thinking it was a con too (though I wish it were different)...

"after Obama's very handy win, he compromises away virtually everything in the process of passing things like a flaccid recovery plan, an anemic health-bill and a servile economic reform package"

Yes, pretty hard to ignore that - though there are still plenty of head-in-the-sand believers.

imo Obama talks one game and plays another - and counts on people not noticing or being confused enough to stay in line. Religion is a good analogy.

[okieinpain]

18. after he got elected, and someone informed him that if there is

successful attack on this country by someone claiming to be a terrorist, his admin is over so he's probably thinking better safe then sorry. but what do i know.

[QC]

5. They never really loved him!

:cry:

[Wilms]

6. .

[Go2Peace]

7. Interesting.

I still can't get over that the ACLU thought that corporate speech was being limited.

[shotten99]

9. He's going to just love the GOP Congress next year, then.

This is something the Republicans do well. They don't start attacking their own side in situations like this.
There are plenty of things to be concerned about, but I'd rather prevent the Retugs from coming back into the majority.

[uponit7771]

13. ...and the ACLU has done what to get more progressives in congress to push Obama?

[Hawkowl]

16. EXECUTIVE BRANCH. HELLO?

Those eleven points listed in the OP are policies that could be reversed with an Executive Order! He doesn't need a single goddamned Senator to do it!

This stupid, equivocal straw man argument that po lil Obama's hands are tied and can't do anything because he needs 60 spineless Senators is just flat out wrong. Wrong, weak, immoral and stupid!

[IndianaGreen]

14. I am an ACLU member and that is not exactly what Romero said

Romero disagrees vehemently with some of Obama's policies and he is disappointed about others, but he specifically said in another story I read, that he was not "disgusted with Obama." In fact, Romero is quite happy that he is dealing with Obama and not with Bush/Cheney.

[Jakes Progress]

17. Everyone knows the ACLU is a bunch of progressive teapartyers.

Under the bus.

[boomerbust]

19. 12. And He kicked

Some Hillary ass.

[boppers]

20. How many "leakers" have been killed?

"8. He has launched an all-out war on national security whistleblowers and leakers."

So, how many are dead? What buildings have been leveled?

Perhaps this is over-heated rhetoric, rather than actual thoughtful analysis.