Attorney General Says Wiretap Lawsuit Must Be Thrown Out 493
Mr Pink Eyes writes with news about comments from US Attorney General Eric Holder, who said a San Francisco lawsuit over warrantless wiretapping should be thrown out, since going forward would compromise "ongoing intelligence activities." From the AP report:
"In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate. Holder's effort to stop the lawsuit marks the first time the administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege under a new policy it launched last month designed to make such a legal argument more difficult. ... Holder said US District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, was given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court can 'conduct its own independent assessment of our claim.'"
Remove the words from title: (Score:4, Insightful)
says wiretab lawsuit
Change. (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they just say it - they're going to do what they want, and it doesn't matter what anyone outside the "secret" circle thinks.
meet the new boss (Score:1, Insightful)
It's official... (Score:5, Insightful)
...we no longer have a democracy.
I'm probably not even going to bother voting anymore. These days, I can only choose between Kodos and Kang. It doesn't matter which side you pick, both of them suck.
Sometimes, I don't even know why we the people even bother voting these days. Three cheers for exercising our rights and all, but expecting things to get better when all we have to pick from are scumbags is like trying to lose weight in a restaurant that has nothing on the menu but deep-fried food.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight - the case is against warrant-less wiretapping, and since the case would expose on-going warrant-less wiretapping investigations, it should be thrown out? That's about the worst circular argument I've ever heard. Why don't they just say it - they're going to do what they want, and it doesn't matter what anyone outside the "secret" circle thinks.
Precisely, man. I want ongoing operations to be compromised. Ruined, even. Because they are illegal, immoral and wrong. If the government insists that it can break the law with impunity, how do they expect to govern? How do they expect to get juries to convict anyone, if nothing is really illegal as long as you want it bad enough.
I am really dispointed. (Score:5, Insightful)
The quote "since going forward would compromise "ongoing intelligence activities." makes me think the Obama administration is still doing this.
I don't care if it is easier. We need to respect our constitution, even if it makes our security agencies do a little more work.
Power is so hard to give up. Once people have it, it corrupts them.
Sad day in American history.
Knee-jerk (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the previous administration had an effect on us, but it appears to me that the current administration is actually handling this the right way. It may not be transparent to *us*, but matters of national security aren't supposed to be.
They provided the judge with the specifics, and let him decide. If the Bush White House had done that, rather than declare themselves above the law, we wouldn't be so jaded about executive privilege today.
This isn't as bad as it seems, and it's actually a huge step in the right direction.
Meet the new boss... (Score:5, Insightful)
...same as the old boss. But this is not just a bit of education for Obama supporters, it is a valuable lesson for Bush II supporters as well. The extraordinary powers to further your agenda that you grant to your glorious leaders today are certain to be abused to further the agendas of their successors tomorrow.
Re:It's official... (Score:2, Insightful)
...we no longer have a democracy.
I'm probably not even going to bother voting anymore. These days, I can only choose between Kodos and Kang. It doesn't matter which side you pick, both of them suck.
Sometimes, I don't even know why we the people even bother voting these days. Three cheers for exercising our rights and all, but expecting things to get better when all we have to pick from are scumbags is like trying to lose weight in a restaurant that has nothing on the menu but deep-fried food.
I got my new state's driver's license, and specifically checked "No" for the "Do you want to register to vote". More that I just don't want to put down roots here, but still a bit because of political pissed-offness. I also declined to be an organ donor, so to anyone who says "Don't vote, can't complain", I can reply: "No liver transplant for you, punk!"
Republicans are just out-and-out evil corporate scum with their armies of undead idiot-fundamentalist zombies desperate to protect themselves from any benefit of living in a civilized society, and the Democrats, when they're not going along with them are pissing their pants to avoid keeping their promises. Pussies.
Re:It's official... (Score:5, Insightful)
So vote for the Pirate Party for instance, which opposes all this nonsense.
It probably won't win, but it will at least show people's concerns, which may get results.
Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:5, Insightful)
...at tyrant's head (General Attorney Eric). Pull trigger. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation....."
Warrantless searches are illegal, and if the courts won't protect the Constitution against domestic enemies, then We the People will do it instead.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The more things change, the more the same they are. You expected any different once he had taken the oath?
Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a Republican in upstate New York who's probably going to lose because she's not "conservative" enough. She's pro-gun - good thing in my government conservative book because it's a Constitutional (Second Amendment) issue and the other things have no business being regulated by the Government. But the rabid anti-abortionists and bigoted anti-gay people don't mind having their civil rights and freedoms taken away (except the guns!) as long as the "fags" and those "baby killers" are controlled. Oh, and they're also the ones who think invading a country for oil is defending our country. What I mean is that politicians have to pander to those people to get elected and those people are ones who are controlling that side of the government.
Now, the other side..the people who actually think Socialism can work even though it has never before and big Government can solve our problems, have their own rabid beliefs.
There's no room for moderates or rational people in American Politics.
Re:I am really dispointed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible, in theory, for all the current wiretaps to be completely legal, but be compromised by information that would have to be made public to have a court trial over past (possibly illegal) wiretaps.
Not that I necessarily think the current ones are all legal, though.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government insists that it can break the law with impunity, how do they expect to govern?
By keeping the public distracted with arguments over what talk radio hosts are saying. No, really, who cares what Rush Limbaugh has to say, unless he is raising valid points against you? It's all about keeping the sheep preoccupied until they're in the gates and can't back out from the slaughterhouse.
Re:Change. (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the egg. It looks like they have secret taps on their phones.
Change? What change? (Score:2, Insightful)
For all of the howling the Obamessiah's followers made during the campaign about how evil Bush's policies were, he's sure continuing a lot of them that he originally pledged to do away with. Of course, nobody would DARE admit that maybe, just maybe, Bush was right...
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not surprised. Republicans and Democrats are just two halves of the same tyranny. They both desire power to control the people, and damn the constitution, and damn the requirements for searches.
Next time you walk into a voting booth, and elect a congresscritter, choose one that is neither R or D. We need a Congress that has no clear majority, due to the presence of third parties. Just imagine how much healthier our Republic would be if, instead of 60% democrats and 40% republicans, the ratio was 40% democrats, 30% republicans, 20% libertarians, and 10% socialists. No party could dominate.
Well what is happening in New York is giving me (Score:5, Insightful)
hope. Granted it is only on the Republican side. Where grass roots Conservatives told their party elders to take a hike.
Still, it is hard to claim much freedom of choice when there are only two parties who can always get on the ballot, two parties who have done much to prevent other parties from having a chance. Where they could not do it by law they did by influence over media outlets.
In Obama's defense, promises made on the trail tend to fall by the wayside because reality sucks. The naivete of the Administration, let alone their voters, was astonishing. I think they both bought the hype. The problem of course is the world is harsh and all your "we love you love me" crap has no affect on the world stage.
Throw in a good dose of the Washington establishment (sorry - but his Chief of Staff was a dead give away the only change was the party who sat in the house) and how did anyone here honestly expect things to change? Then again I seem to recall a large number here who buy into Michael Moore's crap so no matter education or intelligence level snake oil sells.
Re:Knee-jerk (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the previous administration had an effect on us, but it appears to me that the current administration is actually handling this the right way. It may not be transparent to *us*, but matters of national security aren't supposed to be..
Gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. I paid for it. National security, whatever that is, needs to be above-board. I have no sympathy with the fear-mongers who hyperbolically exaggerate risk just to justify their actions. Put it in perspective for once, and quit arguing that there are big-bad-scaries out there who can only be fought by lawless thugs who will just do the right thing, trust us.
Define hypocrisy (Score:1, Insightful)
"In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently." Talk about some weak-foo.
We said that was horrible and despicable, but we've since decided that it is ok, but we came to the decision differently than those previous horrible/despicable people who did it, so it is ok when we do it.
For those who may be unaware:
hypocrisy (h-pkr-s)
n. pl. hypocrisies
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
Either it is ok and you were wrong about Bush, or it is NOT ok and you are a lying hypocrit. Choose 1 please.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is obviously me being an optimist.. but let's hope they're putting up that argument just so it can be officially destroyed.
the realist in my recognizes now (as i did before i voted for him) that the president isn't perfect, and that sometimes information you learn after you say something changes your opinion - even if that change is for (what everyone else sees) the worse.
world peace (Score:1, Insightful)
wire tapes ensure we keep world peace. they prevent the bad guys from plotting to do bad things over the phone. We know we are tapping the right people because we say so. How dare you give opponents of such peace keeping policies.
Now drink this Cool Aid
Re:Change? What change? (Score:1, Insightful)
I want to get this clear up front. Yes I supported Bush. But on this issue I did not. Is it *REALLY* that onerous to follow some rules? Everyone *thinks* what they are doing is a 'one off' or 'special' 99.9% of the time it isnt.
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:5, Insightful)
...at tyrant's head (General Attorney Eric). Pull trigger. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation....."
Warrantless searches are illegal, and if the courts won't protect the Constitution against domestic enemies, then We the People will do it instead.
For once, I agree with you. Maybe this is twice now.. If Holder doesn't feel he should be constrained by the rule of law, then I don't see how he could argue he should be protected by it either. It's simple hermeneutics, you just can't interpret the law to protect you and not others (unless you're power crazed or insane).
Re:Knee-jerk (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>It may not be transparent to *us*, but matters of national security aren't supposed to be.
You're right that spying needs to be secret, but you're wrong when you say these warrantless searches should be allowed to continue. It's illegal. The government is a criminal and guilty of breaking the law, just as surely as microsoft was found to be an illegal monopoly. We punished microsoft, and now we must punish the United States leadership.
No man; no organization is above the law, or the will of the people, the ultimate source of all authority.
Re:Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not the "invading for oil", that gets me as that is actually a reasonable posture. It's the "we are nice guys and are invading to help them" while we are invading for oil, other resources or staging points for attacking other countries, that gets me. If we want to be bastards we should be honest about it.
Re:I am really dispointed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even that, but it's entirely possible that making available who had an illegal wiretap might either expose persons who need to be known not to be in on "ongoing intelligence activities" or that acknowledgment that X had an illegal wiretap placed might be harmful if X is still under suspicion of something but is not aware of said suspicion.
Personally, I think someone with proper clearance ought to go through the data and clear whichever taps are not part of an ongoing intelligence activity and those and only those should be used for purposes of the legal actions. If there are no such taps remaining, then set a date by which some percentage of said taps will no longer be part of an ongoing intelligence activity and go from there.
Re:Change? What change? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Bush wasn't right. He used the US Constitution as toilet paper, and Cheney was worse.
But anyone who thought Obama was going to revoke anything Bush had done was only kidding themselves. Its always easier to just keep a bad power that your predecessor gained for the office...Obama figures the Bush administration already absorbed the damage and the heat, so why should he get rid of a nifty new super power?
Once we started down this slippery slope, there's no way to go back up.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The law is not a matter of opinion. The law is clear. Warrantless wiretaps are illegal, and anyone who endorses them is a criminal. First it was Bush who was the criminal, now AG Holder, and if Obama supports his AG then he too will be a criminal. The law is the law.
Re:It's official... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then vote Constitution Party instead. They don't support warrantless searches of any kind.
Also there's more offices than just the president. A third party will probably never win the top office, but I beat we could win enough seats in Congress so that neither the Rs or Ds would have a majority. The duopoly will have been broken.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently
Meet the new Boss. Same as the old Boss.
Re:I am really dispointed. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're wrong.
It's not "We need to respect our constitution, even if it makes our security agencies do a little more work.".
It's "We need to respect our constitution, even if some of us die".
By not addressing their arguments head on, you give the bad guys strength. This is a matter of principle; you don't need to hide from their safety claims.
I don't actually believe that these methods save lives in the long run. I think that these people underestimate the real, physical risks of making enemies and losing the moral high ground. But I could be wrong. It's possible that there is some increase in safety.... small, compared to the risk of say driving a car, but real nonetheless. The point is that this stuff is wrong even if it does make people safer.
Fuck the cowards. There are some things you don't do.
Re:Change? What change? (Score:1, Insightful)
Two different presidents from two different parties handling things in the same wrong way doesn't make it right. Bush was wrong on wiretaps, and Obama is wrong on wiretaps. But at least we had a chance with Obama, unlike McCain
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:1, Insightful)
I suspect that's probably what happened.
I suspect that Obama gives, and has always given, safety from terrorists more weight than freedom from wiretapping. He just wasn't convinced that the wiretapping was really delivering the safety.
So now he is.
But he's still wrong. Not about the safety. He's a smart guy, he now has all the information possible, and I suspect he's pretty close to right about the safety... at least in the short term, and at least within the bounds of the things he, as a member of the American political class, values and allows himself to value.
What he's wrong about is whether it's acceptable to spy on people without a warrant to get that safety.
The American political class, including Obama, has a very timid sense of morality. But I don't think his sense of morality has changed since he took office.
Re:I am really dispointed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Repeat after me:
No warrant; no search.
No warrant; no wiretaps.
No warrant; no entrance into private homes.
That may piss you pro-big-government tyrants off, but that's what the Supreme Law of the land says and it will continue to say that until you can convince people to amend the Constitution and strike-out that law. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLpSY8d3gRc [youtube.com] - "ACLU, Flex Your Rights, and ACORN volunteers go door-to-door in Southeast DC educating residents about their 4th Amendment right to refuse warrantless police searches."
Re:Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, the other side..the people who actually think Socialism can work even though it has never before and big Government can solve our problems, have their own rabid beliefs.
Umm, just FYI, as a Canadian who is perfectly happy living in a nation that most Americans would consider virtually communist, I have to disagree rather strongly with this. And I'm sure your average European would agree with me.
Socialism, hybridized with a liberal democracy and a free (but regulated) market *does* work, and works every single day all over the world. Just because Americans can't seem to figure it out, doesn't mean the idea is flawed. It just means the American system of government is so fundamentally fucked up it's hamstrung from the get-go.
Re:Figures (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I am really dispointed. (Score:3, Insightful)
The quote "since going forward would compromise "ongoing intelligence activities." makes me think the Obama administration is still doing this.
Not necessarily. For example, suppose the Bush administration was tracking the activities of terrorist group X, and doing so using warrantless wiretaps. Obama takes over, cancels the wiretapping program, but continues to investigate terrorist group X using other means. Well, now, if a trial about warrantless wiretapping goes forward, it's possible that sensitive information about the investigation of terrorist group X will be exposed, despite that being an "ongoing intelligence activity".
Re:Knee-jerk (Score:3, Insightful)
Except the Obama White House is also declaring themselves above the law - by insisting the suit be thrown out based on secret evidence rather than in open court.
Re:Knee-jerk (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you! Disclosure is happening - just in a way that proceeds with caution. If they said outright that it had to be dismissed and didn't say why *at all*, I'd be bothered. The judge is being told why. He can still say that the case will proceed.
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:3, Insightful)
He's a smart guy, he now has all the information possible
No he doesn't: he simply wouldn't have the time to process it. The information he now has is whatever the various TLAs (CIA, FBI, NSA, etc) are giving him about their activities. These agencies have been known to lie to Congress, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out they were lying to the president as well. Heck, in the CIA's case there was a recent spat in which the director found out about a longstanding program for the first time and immediately shut it down, which might have motivated the agents who were doing things they shouldn't have been to hide their programs from their own agency director.
Re:Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI: I refuse to use the poll tested terms of 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life'... I could use 'incendiary rhetoric' and call the opponents of given views 'anti-choice' and 'anti-life' as both sides tend to do about each other... however I've never been a big fan of framing words used in politics... so I call it what it is. Abortion. Those who are in favor of easy access to it, are pro-abortion, those who are against easy access to it are anti-abortion.
Remember... most people passionate about this issue are in favor of both choice, and life... it's just abortion they can't agree on.
I know... so hate filled and incendiary of me.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So in other words the United States government is covering-up its previous crimes. Gee. Golly. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I guess that makes it okay then.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No warrant; no search.
There's no need for opinion; it's quite clear. The wiretaps were illegal, and the court case needs to be allowed to continue to its conclusion so the U.S. officials responsible can spend a couple months in jail, just like any criminal. The AG's attempt to stop the court case means justice will be denied for the innocent victims.
Re:It's official... (Score:2, Insightful)
A third party won the Whitehouse in 1860. The president's name was Abraham Lincoln and he was a Republican. In fact, he was the first Republican president. Many don't know that the Republican party was created for the singular purpose of stopping the spread of slavery in the US.
It's proof that a noble cause and good leadership can get results. Coincidentally, Lincoln was an attorney and an Illinois state legislator.
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Change? What change? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to our founders and the souls lost in the revolutionary and civil wars.
Its a hard slope to climb, and it is very costly, but its not impossible. They need us (the people) more than we need them. There is no them without us, and there will always be an us, with or without them.
The real problem is, regardless of the bitching, and moaning, and whining, its really not bad enough to warrent such actions at this point. The general population is rather content with the current state of things. Even with all of the 'OMG BAD ECONOMY' and 'OMG WARRENTLESS WIRETAPS' and other silly things like 'OMG DMCA/COPYRIGHT/RIAA/MPAA', its still really not that bad. At least, not bad enough to make enough people get off their asses and do something about.
Ethiopia is bad. Somalia is bad, Sri Lanka is bad. Afghanistan is bad. Iraq is bad. We're sitting pretty really. We may VERY QUICKLY end up as bad as one of those, but until Americans are actually suffering, we're not going to do shit about it. And by suffering I mean things like actually starving to death and other real issues. Not the 'I can't get a job doing what I want to do so I'm going to collect unemployement and ignore the help wanted signs at the retail stores and fast food chains' bad that we are currently calling a 'horrible situation'.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion there was no need for war.
We should have ignored Bin Laden the same way we ignore Internet Trolls. Don't feed them with a response. Was 9/11 a tragedy? Yes, and so was the challenger disaster, and the New Orleans flooding, and so on. Rather than declare war, we should have just picked up the pieces, secured the border the same way you install a more-solid door on your house after a breakin, and continued to live in peace.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with that.
Yes there is. If you agree with everything someone says, there is something wrong. If you agree with what someone says only because they are saying it, there is something wrong as well. I like Rachel Maddow, but I often don't agree with her. I dislike Limbaugh, and sometimes I agree with him.
Both of them are just people, as asinine and fallible as the rest of us. Worse, they exist to publish purely ideological rhetoric as news. And if you agree with any proper-noun ideology your suffering from laziness of thought. A lot of the problems in the world come from people agreeing with their party just because it is their party.
I'm a life long Democrat, and the democrats are often complete morons, and sometimes the Republicans have better ideas. I self-identify as a socialist or progressive, but I would rather have the libertarians in charge of social issues (get the government out of my life), but the socialists in charge of economic issues (keep the corporations out of my life).
Life is much more nuanced than any stupid political ideology. If you find yourself constantly agreeing with anyone, perhaps you should go make your own opinions?
Re:Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because they're being more regulated, more taxed, more taken over by the government? Because they're dealing now with banks run by the government? Because the government wants to tell them how they can use their communication networks, or whether their employees are allowed to have an anonymous vote in the presence of labor union thugs? Oh, yeah, they're loving it. Sure.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:3, Insightful)
"And, please stop calling every fiscal policy you don't like a "Ponzi scheme."
I wasn't referring to fiscal policy, I was referring to the housing bubble. It WAS a ponzi scheme, the only other useful term would be pyramid scheme. The people originating all those half million dollars mortgages to hairdressers and gardeners knew they would eventually implode, so did all the mortgage auditors and the bond rating agencies, so did most of the Wall Street banksters who securitized them and sold them off to pension funds and assorted other investors as AAA bonds. There is absolutely NO WAY subprime mortgages to people with either no proof of income, or insufficient income, could ever warrant AAA bond ratings.
All the way through the system people were just cashing in on the front end of the pyramid scheme and were indifferent that a crash was inevitable when all the ARM interest rates ballooned and those gardeners and hairdressers would inevitably default. The whole system was designed to allow people to grab money where none existed, and to screw people at the end of the scheme(mainly bond investors who thought they had bought ultra safe AAA bonds).
The original Internet bubble was just as much a pyramid scheme(there I didn't call it a Ponsi scheme). In case you haven't noticed the U.S. economy is so dysfunctional now the only way it keeps going is through one pyramid scheme after another, borrowing money from the rest of the world, or just printing it. That will probably continue until the rest of the world gets a clue and removes the U.S. dollar as the sole global reserve currency. Charles DeGaulle in the 1960's railed that allowing the U.S. dollar to be the global reserve currency allowed the U.S. to print money, borrow money and generally steal the rest of the world blind. Once the world switches to a different reserve currency, and the world has finally figured out the scam the U.S. was running the last two years, the U.S. wont be able to borrow a plugged nickel, the dollar will implode and the party will be over. Every other country that can't pay its bills ends in the arms of the IMF because they can't just borrow and print like the U.S.. Well not every country, Zimbabwe also tried to print its way out of its economic problems....
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:3, Insightful)
Say what you like, but one person acting lethally on their own one-eyed interpretation of the law is still murder. And yes, despite your sig, it would make you a crackpot.
Assuming you and the GP are correct and the Attorney General is indeed breaking the law, he is still entitled to a fair trial in which to tell his side of the story to a jury of his peers.
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree--mostly. Gun to the head of anyone who allowed wiretaps, right from the assholes who gave the orders all the way down to the techs who implemented it. And YES to raising taxes and cutting spending--with one small caveat.
The small caveat is that Obama came to power as our economy was crumbling due to many decades of bad decisions, and the theory--crazy though it was--was that if the government encouraged lots of Americans to buy lots of American products (some of them even involving smart investment in energy-saving technology like insulation), then the economists would see GDP figures that they liked. The Bush plan, in contrast, was to enrich a bunch of his friends at the expense of the rest of the country and world, and blow up many billions of dollars' worth of expensive electronics and munitions in a foreign country in order to secure our future as The Country Whose Whole Economy Is Based On A Resource That We Don't Have (and that would destroy us if we did have it, anyway).
Obama's plan worked a little bit, anyway. GDP is up and the growth looks like it's attributable to the stimulus money (says yesterday's The Atlantic). Unemployment is not down, so his plan wasn't really a huge success (education incentives and the end of the Gag Rule will take quite a few more years to do any good). I think that as soon as we prop up failing businesses like GM we have strayed idiotically far from capitalism (and this from a confirmed socialist Canadian) but when you get right down to it, Obama had an impossible problem to solve, and he's making mistakes but at least he's trying.
Assuming we need to rebuild our economy from scratch (not completely unreasonable since it's a pyramid scheme at the moment), is Obama going about it the right way? Not really, but a little bit. Bush was the exact opposite--a total sell-out to deregulation- and hate-mongers, completely and proudly ignorant of history and science.
One area that our government needs to spend more on is regulating the industries and individuals that destroy the commons. Just as someone needs to enforce the Constitution, so also someone needs to ensure that I don't get rich by destroying common resources, like air, water, topsoil, etc. Cutting spending here will exacerbate a problem we've known about for quite a few hundreds of years, and it's rather shocking that Americans are still even more primitive here than the quality of our bread and cheese would suggest. If we prop up the economy by allowing industry to dump toxic manufacturing byproducts into the water table or the air, etc, then we all die. Yay economy? Why is this not considered a matter of National Security? Why don't we have restrictions on SUVs? Why does the EPA have so little power?
Ultimately, I suppose it's a good time to start learning Chinese.
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:3, Insightful)
"We're never going to be able to pay that off"
Neither party has any desire whatsoever to either pay it off, or face responsibility for incurring the debt. The fools running Washington went to the same schools, and sat in front of the same professors as the batch of fools who ran Wall Street into the ground.
Responsibility is the least likely lesson to be taught to any student in America today.
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:5, Insightful)
There were a number of anti-war/anti-Bush protests. I know because I attended one of them.
He said teabaggers, Slick. But much like the militia movement from the 90's, that stockpiled guns in preparation for Clinton's "New World Order", they took a vacation when Bush actually started to dismantle the Constitution.