Obama: A disaster for civil liberties

Los Angeles Times ^ | September 29, 2011 | By Jonathan Turley

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Protecting individual rights and liberties — apart from the right to be tax-free — seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties. However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush.

In time, the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties. Now the president has begun campaigning for a second term. He will again be selling himself more than his policies, but he is likely to find many civil libertarians who simply are not buying.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.

[mk2000]

Wow another Lib having buyers remorse?

[PhilosopherStone1000]

Law professor? Are there ANY of Dumb0’s constituencies that he hasn’t pissed off yet?

The adult Dems (what few there are) must be wetting themselves in fear that Dumb0 is going to be Carter squared, cutting them off from their pig troughs for decades to come.

I expect Dumb0 to wake up with a horse’s head in his bed any day now.

[Mountain Mary]

I met a self proclaimed socialist(how does one admit to that?) the other day and she said she is upset with the Bamster. I didn’t want to know why or hear her explanation of why she is a socialist.(for fear I would hit her).
But the point is that someone who is to the left of most lefties ...is unhappy with the Kenyan Usurper.

[Mountain Mary]

LOL, PS1000.

[GlockThe Vote]

Wow! turley is now jumping ship?

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

They want a dictator and feel he’s not doing enough.

[IMR 4350]

If you say so.

He wakes up with a horses ass next to him every morning already.

[Mountain Mary]

Major LOL, IMR!!!

[PhilosopherStone1000]

LOL! You kind of have to give Michelle credit though for staying with a guy that stupid who constantly smells of smoke and Reggie Love’s back side.

Hey, if I was married to Dumb0 I’d take as many million dollar vacations away from him as I could while I could too.

[Mountain Mary]

A coffee spew on the computer keys. You guys are on your game this morning..but my dog is getting scared.

[PhilosopherStone1000]

Poor puppy! Give him a pat on the head and tell them we’re not dangerous!

[Mountain Mary]

Michelle is biding her time until she can rid herself of Purple Lips...

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

CANDIDATE OBAMA told us he wanted a National Domestic Security Force the same size as our military working within our borders, and his constituents didn’t have a problem with That, but now they’re all upset about the Constitutional, Civil Liberties - which do not extend to - people who Aren’t Citizens.

And Turley’s a professor of law. It’s no wonder our Courts don’t work.

[PhilosopherStone1000]

I’m putting the over/under at 30 days after Dumb0 gets unceremoniously tossed out the WH door at noon on Jan 20, 2013.

First it will be a long vacation, then some time with her dad in Oregon, followed by a trial separation - all the while blaming racism for the enormous stress that it put on their marriage.

Actually, I should go to InTrade with this and make some money.

[nathanbedford]

A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that "the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals' rights and freedoms." Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not "soft" on terror.

On television professor Jonathan Turley comes off as an unctuous little shit. In this case he misjudges both the nature of the man and the nature of the political "right."

He thinks Obama is just another good government liberal sensitive to civil liberties who has somehow gone wrong. He also misjudges the right as the quoted excerpt above illustrates. Why does Turley think the right-wingers would not be offended by Obama's breaches of civil liberties? His tacit characterization of the right as people who might be indifferent to civil liberties is outrageous.

Further, Turley fails to even consider other civil liberties besides those having to do with the war on terror upon which Obama and Eric Holder have trampled and would overstep even more egregiously if they had the chance to further intimidate the media and control the Internet.

I don't hear Professor Turley's left-wing civil liberties crowd crying out in anguish over these outrages by the Obama administration.

I am unaware of the truth of his assertion that waterboarding has been expressly held to be torture by the United States court. Is that so? In any event, a basic flaw in this article is the conflating of regulations about the treatment of war-criminals with domestic civil liberties.

The real threat to our civil liberties comes from the latter not the former unless we have an inchoate tyrant like Barack Obama as commander-in-chief.

[Zeppo]

Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties. However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them.

. . .

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush.

Oh, come on Mr. Turley. I thought that you were smarter than that.

Of course the "civil liberties movement" has quieted to a whisper, just like the "peace activists" have quieted to a whisper.

You aren't foolish enough and gullible enough to actually take their concerns at face value, are you?

Those "movements" are largely phony, astroturf campaigns by assorted Communists and Democrats (but I repeat myself) and their fellow travelers and America-hating comrades and enablers in the press and government and academia. Their only agenda is to make loud noises whenever a Republican is in control, so that weak-minded "moderates" who don't know what to think unless they are told can be led around by the nose.

The "activists" in those "movements" are no different than the phony and hypocritical "Women's movement" harpies who became strangely silent (or worse, jumped to his defense) when Bill Clinton's sexual misdeeds became public. In other words, "women's issues" are just another leftist ploy that they use to bash normal, decent people. You didn't actually think that they believe all of the garbage that they spew, did you? Were you born yesterday or something?

Did you actually believe that "community organizer" was a legitimate occupation? Were you actually fooled into thinking that Obama was intelligent and capable and honest?

You, yourself, are part of that crowd, although judging by the confusion that you put forth in this article, you are apparently more of a "useful idiot" than one of the phony loudmouths that lead the parade.

Here's a two-part recommendation for you: a) get over it, and b) develop some critical thinking skills so that you can see the world as it actually is, instead of being such a credulous fool.

[MonicaG]

Before you go to InTrade think about what else the Mrs. has going for her... I think she pretty much has to stay involved with grifter hubby or at least give that appearance (like the intimate, warm & always charming HillBill marriage).

[PhilosopherStone1000]

Unlike Hill, Michelle has no politcal aspirations and no reason to stick to her dead weight hubby.

And unlike Bill, Dumb0 is not going to make 10s of millions of $$$ in speaking engagements once he’s out. Heck, nobody even wants to listen to him now while he’s the Resident.

[The_Reader_David]

Wow another Lib having buyers remorse?

Not necessarily. The LA Times, while their official editorial line is reliably left-of-center, has conservative columnists, invites in conservative guest columnists, and covers news straight enough of the time (way more than the NY Times, or WaPo) that I think they're my favorite MSM print daily. The 'are pigs flying?' reaction from FReepers to solid news in an MSM outlet happens way more often with the LA Times than any other paper: They seem to be covering Fast and Furious fairly aggressively, and back in the day, they and AFP were the two main news outlets to actively debunk NATO claims of 'genocide' in the Balkans as they were being made. I think someone fairly high up in their newsroom remembers what 'objective' actually means and holds to the elsewhere long-lost ideal of objective journalism, and that ideal comes across in their editorial pages by having a lot more right-of-center columns for balance than token (tame) conservative the East Coast dailies allow.