My Patience is Wearing Thin Mr. President

I was hopeful that because Barack Obama is a Constitutional scholar he might give up some of the power accrued by the executive branch over the last 8 years. Things started off so well. Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanomo, appointed an Attorney General that unequivocally called water boarding torture, and staffed the Office of Legal Counsel with outspoken critics of the Bush administration's indefinite detention and torture policies.

However, two months later we find out that the Obama administration is defending the author of the torture memos in court, denying the Supreme Court the opportunity to rule on whether or not the President has the authority to indefinitely detain people, and attempting to throw out the lawsuits of torture victims by abusing the State Secrets Act.

Look, I know that the President is doing many good things when it comes to foreign and domestic policy. For example, I believe Obama when he says we no longer torture, but what is he doing to guarantee that future administrations won't torture. Also, Obama did the right thing when he brought charges against a detainee that Bush had declared an enemy combatant. However, in doing so he prevented the Supreme Court from ruling on whether or not the President has the power to imprison someone for 5 years without charges or a trial. My point is that I don't think we should rely on having a benevolent President in office, but right now that's what it feels like to me.

On a related note, Jonathan Turley recently provided a unique perspective on President Obama's dustup with Dick Cheney.

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The Stimulus Package: An Embarrassment, or Victory for the President?

In short, I think it was a victory. Republicans are claiming that their almost complete opposition  to the bill (zero House Republicans voted for the measure, and only three Senate Republicans voted for it) is an embarrassment to President Obama because he was unable to garner bipartisan support. Let's think about this for a moment. Obama was able to pass the largest spending bill in history, in record time, in a form very similar to his original plan. How this could be portrayed as anything less than a political victory is a mystery to me. Furthermore, the public widely believes that Obama tried his best to be bipartisan, but Republicans would have nothing to do with him. So not only did Obama get what he wanted, people believe that he tried his best to be bipartisan.

As an aside, here is a breakdown of the spending in the final version of the bill. For what it's worth, I'm very happy to see that the funding for food stamps and aid to state and local governments made into the bill. Moderate Republican and Democratic senators tried to cut these from the plan altogether, even though temporarily increasing the funding for food stamps is one of the most stimulative measures we could take. Also, environmentalists seem to be pretty happy with the final outcome.

Bipartisanship? How About Some Good Old Fashioned Partisan Warfare?

Is anybody else frustrated by Obama's handling of the stimulus bill? First, he starts off by allocating 300 billion dollars of the bill to tax cuts, rather than dedicating more money to infrastructure, and using tax cuts to get Republican votes. The Republicans used Obama's attempts at bipartisanship to embarrass him. We got a watered down, less effective bill in exchange for zero Republican votes. Didn't we just have an election that was largely decided on the economy? And didn't the Democrats enlarge their majorities in both houses and win the Presidency? You would never know it.

If you ask me, Obama needs to make Republicans pay a political price for opposing his stimulus bill. I'm sure he has a lot of money left over from the campaign. He should use it to run adds in the traditionally Republican states that he won. There is no harm in pointing out which members of Congress are opposing the stimulus package. 

On a somewhat related note, the Center for American Progress has a cool webpage that allows you to create your own stimulus package! Here's a fun experiment. Create a package that focuses mainly on rescue and investment, and compare it to one that focuses on tax cuts. Make sure they both have the same price tag, and compare the number of jobs they create.

The Kangaroo Court System at Guantanamo

The next time you hear Dick Cheney say that the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay are an essential component of our national security aparatus, ask yourself this question: If Guantanamo is so effective, why did the Bush administration's prosecutors keep resigning?

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Also, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that U.S. federal courts have a much better record of convicting terrorists than the military commission system created by the Bush administration.