July 6, 2013

OT, but your post and the humorous replies to it reminded me of Jim Croce

for some reason;

Song makes me weep each time I hear it. "I think about the love that I thought would save me." That's humanity in a single line.

July 1, 2013

Question for SoCal DUers: Is there a solidarity rally for Wendy Davis tonight at Los Angeles'

City Hall? I thought I saw a mention of it a few days ago, but neglected to bookmark it at the time.

Now I'm trying to find out information about it and confirm it and cannot seem to find any mention.

Any help with links or contacts would be greatly appreciated.

June 24, 2013

Is the NSA Worth Preserving?

I have contacted my Rep (Maxine Waters) and Senator Boxer twice in the past three weeks, as the NSA story has developed and permutated. (Feinstein's Washington # rang busy the first time and I didn't bother trying her again after she preemptively labeled Snowden a 'traitor').

As the episode has deepened and lengthened, I find my thoughs continually swirling and find it hard to make any sustained arguments.

So I thought it might be productive and useful to push back almost to first principles and ask a couple basic questions:

1) Is the NSA necessary to the national security of the United States or can it be significantly curtailed and\or ended?

and

2) If there is a need for the NSA, what exactly is that need? Is there anything about the NSA and what it does that is worth preserving?

I plan to contact Rep. Waters and Sen. Boxer at least one more time about these matters and was thinking I would ask that the NSA budget be cut as one way to re-assert meaningful Congressional oversight over it. But even as I type this, that suggestion seems like sort of a knee-jerk response. I am a layperson with no experience in national security or diplomacy and relatively little experience in politics (although I've worked briefly in telecom and longer in IT). So I felt like I would sound like a fool if I called for a budget cut to the NSA if I did not have some rational basis for doing so. And then I thought, based on some of the fine discussions I have read here, that there might actually be a good reason(s) for continuing the NSA largely as it is.

Based on the awesome discussions I've read here and the many fine voices on both sides of the divide, I think it should be possible to discuss the two questions above without resort to taunts or invective. If a thread like this one has already taken place here, I will gladly retract this one to save folks the trouble of posting their opinions yet again. (If you can point me to the link to that earlier discussion if it exists, it would be much appreciated.)

June 22, 2013

What is Impeachment? (A Primer for Non-Citizens of the US):

Author's Note: When I first logged on this morning, I saw a thread accusing President Obama of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors". The Board was understandably quick to attack and question the person making the post but his claim that he was not a U.S. citizen had prompted me to draft this response. By the time I was ready to post it, the thread in question had been 'hidden' (presumably by Jury or admin action). But I thought my words might prove useful to members of DU who are not citizens of the U.S. I was typing in a hurry and did not bother chasing down citations. But this might be a good thread for our Constitutional Law experts and American historians to chime in with their perspectives.


I think what you may fail to realize, given that you are a stranger to our shores, is that the phrase 'high crimes and misdemeanors' is left purposely vague because impeachment, the Constitutional process where such applies, is at heart a 'poltiical process' and not a 'criminal process'. By which I mean to say, each Congress (and, more specifically, each House Judiciary Committee) must define what constitutes a 'high crime and misdemeanor.'

Thus, in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted that Nixon had committed an 'abuse of power' as one of its articles of impeachment. Now 'abuse of power' is about as vague a charge as you can get and, to my knowledge, appears nowhere in the Constitution, and yet most here in Congress and among the masses by August 1974 knew exactly what it meant and why Nixon was guilty of it. (Had the process continued to trial in the Senate, there is absolutely no doubt that Nixon would have been removed from office for "abuse of power".)

And so with President Obama. You can yell and scream until you are blue in the face that Obama has committed 'high crimes and misdemeanors' but until Congress (using the process I roughed out above) declares it so, your yells and screams have no practical meaning.

Make no mistake, I do not think President Obama perfect and, were one to judge him strictly by Geneva, one might also have to ask whether Obama violated the prohibition on disposing of combatants' corpses in unmarked graves when Osama bin Laden's corpse was dumped unceremoniously at sea. Arguably a breach of Geneva, but not a 'high crime and misdemeanor' until and unless Congress rules it such. The same applies to the tactic of using drones. Again, arguably a breach -- even a serious breach -- of Geneva but in no way a 'high crime and misdemeanor.'

Many of us here - myself included - felt Bush committed criminal actions that certainly rose to the level of impeachable offenses. (I would start with 'fraud committed againt the people of the U.S.') But when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated that impeachment was 'off the table' in 2006, that meant that Bush would not be held to the Cosntitutional standard of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' Whether one agreed or disagreed with it, Pelosi's decision underlined that impeachment for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' is at heart a political and not a moral or statutory standard.

June 17, 2013

Question for those who lived through the Vietnam War and Pentagon Papers:

did Daniel Ellsberg's release of the PP produce the same degree of acrimony directed at him as Snowden's leak of classified documents has? By that, I mean, were people screaming 'Traitor!' and 'Coward!' at Ellsberg or, conversely, was their widespread approval among the general populace for Ellsberg's leaks?

I know that Nixon unleashed his goons on Ellsberg and the New York Times, but I'm more interested in the reaction to Ellsberg's leak among the general public and among political junkies like us. I was just a little boy when it happened, so I don't really remember it at all. Also, the internet didn't exist back then, so people had to express themselves orally or on paper (through letters to the editor and whatnot).

One possibility that has occurred to me is that by the time of the PP, the Vietnam War had become unpopular among a large segment of the populace. (I think there was still majority support but only just barely.) That disapproval of the war among large swathes of the public and the political cadre may have created some space for Ellsberg that Snowden doesn't currently enjoy, because support for the War on Terror has not completely evaporated yet. I read Ellsberg's autobiography Secrets a long time ago, but I don't remember him discussing popular reactions to his leak.

A secondary question: did Neil Sheehan (the NY Times reporter who got the PP scoop) get the same degree of personal and critical scrutiny as Glenn Greenwald has?

June 16, 2013

Rather than engage in 'Gotcha' taunts and 'told-you-so' recriminations, I propose

we begin considering countermeasures to secure our liberty and pursuit of happiness.

My wife and I have been considering and discussing dropping off the grid entirely - cancelling all phone service, credit cards, bank accounts and internet service. But we have realized that our lives are so boring (aside from time spent on DU, of course) that the NSA probably listens to our phone calls and reads our emails as a sure-fire cure for insomnia

Short of dropping off the grid, then, are there any counter-measures that can and should be taken?

I have called my rep and Senators twice in the past 10 days and am prepared to call again on Monday. But has this reached a point where solving it is no longer possible through the political-electoral process?

Let's get a discussion going about what we can do now, not what we should have known or said earlier. Sometimes, we really do need to look forward, not backward. I think this may be one of those times.

June 15, 2013

We should all get naked and sit in trees, rather than accept

a modus vivendi with the Dreedles of the world.