{"id":9368,"date":"2012-01-05T10:58:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T17:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=9368"},"modified":"2012-01-05T10:58:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T17:58:33","slug":"obama-signs-a-law-with-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2012\/01\/05\/obama-signs-a-law-with-regrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama signs a law “with regrets”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occupy Iowa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

They were a press-conscious bunch. Everybody was tired of hearing stories about how unfocused they were. Yet there they were, arguing that the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message was about money in politics, no, the National Defense Authorization Act and global American hegemony, no, both!\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009dThere\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no discipline!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d progressive Iowa radio host and fellow occupier Ed Fallon pleaded with them. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We need discipline! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see it there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/div>\n
The NDAA thing is critical. \u00c2\u00a0Maybe. \u00c2\u00a0Maybe not. \u00c2\u00a0It broadens the point somewhat against the central message, I would think — though a concern just about everyone seriously involved in whatever the “movement” is would hold. \u00c2\u00a0Isn’t there an anti-war movement that should be hammering about this one, or has that merged in with “Occupy”?<\/div>\n
More central to the “message”:\u00c2\u00a0The Occupy New Hampshire protesters are afloating about right now, hitting Mitt Romney on “Corporate Personhood” comments<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0Shame there’s no Democratic Primary to run across to the other part of the “Two Party duopoly”…<\/div>\n
\n

What the NDAA means<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision hardly provoked applause from the NDAA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s critics. The\u00c2\u00a0ACLU statedthat it was a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jonathan Turley has called Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to sign the NDAA into law\u00c2\u00a0America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mayan moment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe dooming moment \u00e2\u20ac\u0153when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

On the other hand, two legal scholars with strong civil-liberties credentials and close ties to the administration, Marty Lederman and Steven Vladeck, authored a\u00c2\u00a0serious review\u00c2\u00a0of the NDAA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most controversial terms and found them to be a mixed bag, but far from a civil-liberties apocalypse. The measure can fairly be called the\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gitmo Forever\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Act\u00c2\u00a0because it contains a series of provisions designed to frustrate Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pledge to close the detention operations at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo. On the other hand, as the result of effective lobbying by the White House and civil libertarians, the worst of the provisions concerning what the military calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153detention operations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were reshaped into provisions that are either relatively harmless or sound statements of law.<\/em><\/p>\n

Surely both of these views can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be right?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fantastic. \u00c2\u00a0One of those signing statements we’ve always been concerned about.<\/p>\n

Your nausea at Obama comes in here.:<\/p>\n

The question therefore becomes not what Barack Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Justice Department would do with the NDAA, but what a Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney Justice Department would do. And on that score, Turley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concerns, though melodramatic, are far from unrealistic.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>And with that I note the protesters I saw hitting Obama on NDAA. \u00c2\u00a0I suppose this would happen with or without “Occupy”, a loose figleaf of a movement to cover “it all”. \u00c2\u00a0I had to stop to catch what they were hitting at, and then people walked past and I heard this comment:
\n“Oh. \u00c2\u00a0I thought they were protesting Whole Foods”.
\nHm. \u00c2\u00a0Might as well throw that into the mix as well. \u00c2\u00a0It’s all connected, or something, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occupy Iowa: They were a press-conscious bunch. Everybody was tired of hearing stories about how unfocused they were. Yet there they were, arguing that the day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message was about money in politics, no, the National Defense Authorization Act and global American hegemony, no, both!\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009dThere\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no discipline!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d progressive Iowa radio host and fellow occupier Ed Fallon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9368"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9444,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9368\/revisions\/9444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}