Constitution // Current TV

November 17: Security Measures Drastic In 7000 ASTYNOMIKOUS

Some 7,000 police officers are required to participate in the strict security measures... more

sarajaff192
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#Occupy Portland: The end of free speech, or the end of taking responsibility?

The City of Portland and the Occupy movement are both to blame for Portland’s... more

hoosierdaddy
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Welcome To The USSA - Tell The Truth, Lose Your Job

Full interview with Patricia McCallister-Fired Lausd School Teacher Patricia... more

maasanova
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The Declaration of Economic Democracy: 6 proposed demands for the #OccupyWallStreet Movement

While you don’t need a spokesperson, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t... more

LOrion
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#OWS POSTER NOTICE to Local Governments

Right of Assembly to discuss grievances is ours under our Constitution! Infringement... more

LOrion
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Fox's Napolitano: Government exists 'to take away human freedom' (VIDEO)

Jon Stewart challenges Fox News’s legal analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, on his... more

StewSteve
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NYPD Threatens to Sue OWS Protesters, Russell Simmons Calls for Peaceful Activism

Edited on Thu Oct-27-11 03:19 PM by Roy Rolling Source: International Business Times... more

KB723
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Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal?

In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of... more

Dagum
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TSA Arrests Me for Using the Fourth Amendment as a Weapon

Oct. 17, 2011 Albuquerque International Sunport Security Checkpoint: I pass a... more

goldenways
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Republicans Infected by "Constitutional Conservative" Virus

http://goo.gl/G972l -- A virus has taken hold within the modern conservative movement.... more

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Rootstriking

Talk at the Harvard 9/25-25 Conference on the Constitutional Convention, co-sponsored... more

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Zombie Reagan for President!

Zombie Reagan Eat Brain. So the teabaggers would have nothing to worry about. But he... more

ParkyBill
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Political Animal Project

A Nation In Crisis. http://youtu.be/9K6tmyFtXYk

hls2387
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September 17, 1937 - FDR's Constitution Day Address. | Newstalgia

FDR in 1937. Eerie times, them.

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What Happens If The Tea Party Wins

NationofChange Millhiser Think Progress / Video Compilation Published: Friday 16... more

Buckeye_Bill
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ACLU report on Obama and civil liberties

Remember when Obama undoing what Bush did and getting back to the Consitution was cool and popular? Turns out Obama has still been as bad as Bush and even worse in some cases.

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Last week, the top lawyer and 34-year-veteran of the CIA, John Rizzo, explained to PBS' Frontline that Obama has "changed virtually nothing" from Bush policies in these areas, and this week, the ACLU explains that "most [Bush] policies remain core elements of our national security strategy today."

At some point very soon, this basic truth will be impossible to deny with a straight face even for the most hardened loyalists of both parties, each of whom have been eager, for their own reasons, to deny it (and even the two differences cited there, though positive, are wildly exaggerated by Obama defenders: the torture techniques authorized by Bush were no longer in use and the CIA black sites were empty by the time Obama was inaugurated; by contrast, there is ample evidence that the Obama administration continues to use torture by proxy and rendition/CIA-black-sites by proxy as well).

The report is broken down into sections/chapters, and here are a few highlights:

The ACLU then devotes an entire chapter to the way in which immunity for America's torturers -- bestowed jointly by President Obama and a judicial branch meekly deferential to his and Bush's claims of state secrecy -- has contaminated and degraded the entire justice system and made the future reintroduction of torture a virtual inevitability:

This Surveillance State, like most other Bush/Obama Terrorism policies, is justified by a never-ending orgy of fear-mongering. But other than the enrichment of the private Security State industry (see here and here).

A separate chapter is devoted to what the ACLU calls "A Massive and Unchecked Surveillance Society." It explains: "Using Patriot Act authority, the Bush Administration started -- and the Obama Administration has continued -- to conduct wholesale 'preventive' surveillance of innocent Americans without judicial review." And "the result is a national surveillance society in which Americans’ right to privacy is under unprecedented siege." But little is known about exactly what is being done by this purely unaccountable hidden government -- what The Washington Post calls "Top Secret America" -- because of this:

Pointing to that core theory of both presidencies, the ACLU dispatches one of the most misleading claims of Obama defenders: that the President's failure to close Guantanamo is due exclusively to Congressional obstructionism; in fact, long before Congress acted at all with regard to that camp, the President announced his intention to continue its core injustice -- indefinite detention -- albeit in a different locale:

During the Bush era, the actions and condemnations of the ACLU received ample positive attention from progressives. That, of course, is no longer true, and this damning report will likely be ignored in most of those circles, just as this truly remarkable comment from the ACLU's Executive Director has been. And, as usual, anyone urging that attention be paid to these facts will be met with demands that eyes be diverted instead to how scary Sarah Palin Christine O'Donnell Michele Bachmann Rick Perry is, and then this will all blissfully fade away in a cloud of partisan electioneering even with the election more than a year away.

Either way, this creeping unchecked authoritarianism marches forward unabated, and is now -- rather than the province of the right-wing GOP -- fully bipartisan consensus. I really don't understand how progressives think they'll be taken seriously the next time there is a GOP President and they try to resurrect their feigned concern for these matters; they'll be every bit as credible as conservatives who pretend to be deficit-warriors and defenders of restrained government only when the other party is in power.Remember when Obama undoing what Bush did and getting back to the Consitution was cool... more