Irish Politician: Obama Is A War Criminal

Imagine if one of our American elected representatives stood up in the corporate-pandering 10%-approval-rating Congress and spoke truth to power like Irish T.D. (Teachta Dala) member Clare Daly did before her colleagues and her country.

She'd probably be shouted down and arrested by the Capitol Police as a heckler before she even got the first paragraph out.

This is what the real Left looks like, people. This is also how "transparent" political debate is supposed to work. In public, uncensored. Democracy is alive and well somewhere in the West.

Meanwhile, the Belfast Telegraph captured the reaction* of J. Edgar Obama's family:

*To a swarm of wonderful Irish midges and a boring tour guide. Lunch with Bono couldn't come soon enough. Now they're all safe and sound back in the Homeland, keeping us all safe as they listen to our sounds.

Anything You Don't Say Can Be Used Against You

You no longer have the absolute right to remain silent in Police State USA.

That is the unbelievable gist of a Supreme Court decision issued on Monday. If the cops don't Mirandize you prior to conducting an informal, friendly chat, and you clam up at some point in the voluntary interview, your very silence may now be legally construed as a prima facie indicator of your guilt. You must verbally self-invoke your right against self-incrimination, because passive-aggressive sullenness won't cut it. Even nervous tics can be used as evidence against you.

So as the chip, chip, chipping away at the Bill of Rights continues apace, we can now add the Fifth Amendment to the First and Fourth as optional suggestions no longer engraved in stone. It's all part of the brave new world of checks and balances of the Terror Triad formerly known as the three separate branches of government. The spy state not only has the right to vacuum up all your data, it has given itself the right to use your refusal to speak to them about it as a weapon against you. This, my friends, also applies to the "US Persons" whom the president insists are not spied upon by their own government.

Monday's decision stems from a Texas (where else?) case in which a man named Genevevo Salinas appealed his murder conviction based on claims that his refusal to talk to police during informal questioning were later used against him at trial. Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog lays it out:

He (Salinas) had voluntarily gone to a police station with officers to talk about the murder of two brothers in 1992.  He was not under arrest, and was not in custody, so he had no right to “Miranda warnings” telling him that he had a right to silence.

He answered almost all of the officers’ questions, but simply sat silent when the officers asked him if shotgun casings found at the scene would match his gun.  He acted very nervous in response, but said nothing.  Prosecutors used the fact that he said nothing to help convince the jury that he was guilty.  He was convicted and is serving a twenty-year sentence.

The Court rejected the argument by Salinas’s attorney that, since he was not in custody at the time and had not been given warnings about his rights, that he did not have to explicitly claim the protection of the Fifth Amendment when he did not want to answer the police questions about the shotgun casings.   The Court had previously said, in a number of other contexts, that one had to invoke the right for it to take effect, but it had never done so in the setting of a voluntary encounter of an individual with officers at a police station.

The conservative majority of the Court ruled that if you voluntarily talk to police, the Miranda Rule does not apply. They only have to inform you of your right to remain silent if they're holding you against your will.

He answered most of the officers’ questions, but simply remained silent when they asked him whether shotgun casings found at the scene of the murders would match his gun.   He shifted his feet, and others acted nervously, but did not say anything.   Later, at his trial, prosecutors told jurors that his silence in the face of that question showed that he was guilty, that he knew that the shotgun used to kill the victims was his. 

 His lawyer wanted the Supreme Court to rule that the simple fact of silence during police questioning, when an individual was not under arrest, could not be used against that person at a criminal trial.   The Court did not rule on that issue.  Instead, it said that Salinas had no complaint about the use of his silence, because in order to claim the Fifth Amendment right to say nothing that might be damaging, he had to explicitly say something that showed his silence was a claim of that right.  Since he did not do so, the Amendment did not protect him, according to the decision.

As Slate's Brandon L. Garrett points out, this "terrible decision" will make false confessions a lot more likely:

 Salinas may very well have been guilty of the two murders. But in many cases, as in this one, there are no eyewitnesses and not much other evidence of guilt: That is why the police may desperately need a confession. And that makes it crucial for them to handle interrogations and confessions with the utmost care. The court appreciated none of the pressures police face, and how they can squeeze an innocent suspect. Alito and the other conservatives were not troubled that there was no video to confirm that Salinas was in fact uncomfortable as well as silent. If Salinas had answered the question by exclaiming that he was innocent, could police have reported that he sounded desperate and like a liar? The court’s new ruling puts the “defendant in an impossible predicament. He must either answer the question or remain silent,” Justice Stephen Breyer said in dissent (joined by the other three liberal-moderates). “If he answers the question, he may well reveal, for example, prejudicial facts, disreputable associates, or suspicious circumstances—even if he is innocent.” But if he doesn’t answer, at trial, police and prosecutors can now take advantage of his silence, or perhaps even of just pausing or fidgeting.

 We're sure to see an epidemic of those friendly, exhausting, totally voluntary all-night chats conducted by seasoned interrogators. Youthful suspects not well-versed in Constitutional law, along with immigrants not well-versed in the English language ,will be prime targets for the new Silence is Not Golden ruling. Belching, nodding off to sleep, grimaces, yawns.... all can be used against you now. The private prison profiteers must be salivating. The school-to-prison pipeline just widened by a mile. 

We already have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, and this new decision making criminal convictions as easy as pie can only make it grow. One in a hundred "US Persons" is behind bars not because our crime rate is so high, but because we punish poor people for non-violent offenses, such as drug use. Incarcerated people tend to lack a high school diploma. People lacking a high school diploma tend to not be able to tell you the meaning of the Fifth Amendment.

Slam, bam.

Don't Like Corporatized News? Get Wasted!

With any luck, the million or so denizens of the Spy State who enjoy top secret security clearance will take full advantage of this special offer from the Washington Post:

Anything to loosen up the spooks and make them spill as they swill. After all, according to the email come-on that just landed in my In-Box, Washington Post connoisseurs have vacuumed up elite wines from all over the world in order to placate the palate, numb the senses, and loosen the tongue:

The experts at The Washington Post Wine Club swirl, sip and sniff thousands of wines from around the globe to curate special collections for Wine Club members. In addition to delivering incredible national and international wines, they are also excited to introduce the best from bourgeoning Washington-area wine regions for a one-of-a-kind Wine Club experience.

Oh golly. And here I thought the Washington area was a burgeoning whine region composed of millionaires grousing about how their security has been compromised by upstarts who don't know their place in Secret Society.

 I believe I'll wait for the New York Times to send me a special offer on their Marijuana of the Month Club. We can inhale elite pot at the same time we inhale their pricy propaganda. Thomas Friedman will be much easier to take if accompanied by a Maui Wauwie brownie. David Brooks, the human Skunk Weed, will go down smooth as silk with frequent tokes of Purple Haze. And you definitely want to light up some God's Bud as you partake of Ross Douthat. Maureen Dowd is just the ticket for Strawberry Queen (or, for when she Chronically offends the Obamabots, Urban Poison.)

If it's only a cheap glue-sniffing effect you're after, just log on to Politico. There's no pay-wall, so the inside-the-Beltway toxicity is totally free and gratuitous.

Cheers!

Checks & Balances

Back in the primordial era, American schools used to teach that our three branches of government provide a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one entity can ever ride roughshod over the system. The courts can strike down unconstitutional laws, the legislature makes sure that the president doesn't glom onto too much power, and the president has the power of the veto pen. Round and round Democracy goes, like a happy little amusement park ride.

That was then. Today we have a unified Triad of Terror operating in a funhouse of smoke and mirrors, grotesque simulacra of what the beloved founders ever could have envisioned in their wildest plutocratic dreams.

The current carnival barker in our neo-fascist theme park is President Obama. I finally watched the clip of his pre-G8 interview with Checkpoint Charlie Rose, portions of which I posted in my previous entry. Flying in the face of all fact, he pretended that checks and balances still exist within the soft totalitarian state known as USA. In true Orwellian fashion, he insisted that the secret rubber-stamp Fisa court is transparent, that Congress has been fully briefed and is therefore compliantly looking after the interests of the people, and that he himself is just a trustworthy caring fellow, so just trust him. Because, Charlie, if you could be in the Situation Room and see what I see, you would understand. Now shut up. Or, as he dismissively said when confronted over his own hypocrisy at a Berlin press conference today, "People (me) don't also don't always do what you want. It's shocking."

Checks and balances actually are very much alive. The checks comprise billions of dollars flowing in a torrent from the national treasury straight into the coffers of Booz Allen Hamilton and the rest of what columnist David Rohde is calling the Secrecy-Industrial complex. The balances are the precarious high wire stunts of  the rising stars of Security Circus (Feinstein, Clapper, Alexander) sending propagandistic chills and thrills into America's living rooms. Can they keep us safe from terror and still protect our basic freedoms? It's a nail-biter.

Can they continue to juggle their own self-contradicting claims, saying that the outing of state secrets is both an egregious, egregious assault on national security and an opportunity to have a feel-good National Conversation on Civil Liberties? 'Tis an earthquake of cognitive dissonance.

Will they ever explain why they now assert that massive surveillance sweeps of billions of phone records helped avert a terror attack on the New York Stock Exchange, but somehow forgot to hold one of their self-serving press conferences where they brag about arrests which later are proved to be FBI agent provocateur plots? The Magic 8 Ball says: Don't Count on It. (This article in Wired tells you why: the alleged plotters themselves called it off.)

Meanwhile, I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't point to a controversial new theory being proffered by columnist Naomi Wolf.  According to her, the very effortless articulate ease (so admired by me) with which Edward Snowden has explained NSA spying may indicate he is not who he says he is -- that he may, in fact, still be working for an intelligence agency which is using him to instill some cowed obedience into the populace. He could, paradoxically, be a manufactured distraction.

“But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance," writes Wolf, "it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times—rather than the machine itself—that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests—why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times—unless we know about it?”

While my first impulse is to scoff at Wolf, as does Dave Lindorff, there is a tiny part of me that can't totally discount her theory out of hand. (Blame it on devouring John Le Carre's plot-twisting novels since adolescence). Wolf is in a whole different league from the growing new coalition of Obamabots and Right Wingers, with all their silly shoot-the-messenger treachery and narcissistic personality disorder hysterics. But even if she's right, and Edward Snowden is a government plant being used to distract us and cow us, it's a stupid gambit. It will probably boomerang right back on them anyway. (It already is -- a local criminal court is now demanding NSA records as evidence in an armed robbery case. Yay!) Also, I think Glenn Greenwald is way too savvy to be taken in by a double agent.

And the Germans, meanwhile, are not naïve enough to be taken in by the charmingly offensive Barack Obama as he visits Berlin and speechifies to an invitation-only crowd of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate. According to Der Spiegel, ticket-holders were bailing out (officially because of an 85-degree "heat wave") and officials were scrambling at the last minute to fill all the empty seats. Protesters, kept far away from the latest circus stunt, were massed at the Berlin Wall, bearing signs containing the motto now going viral in Deutschland:

Stasi.2.... All Your Data Is Belong to Us

The Professor and the Mad Man

Edward Snowden is now more popular than Barack Obama. Young people, especially, are abandoning the president in droves. What was once considered hot shit has collapsed into a puddle of cold diarrhea in the wake of massive unemployment and recent revelations of abusive domestic surveillance. And as much as it pains me to say this, the high school refugee that the pundits love to hate actually sounds more intelligent than the Harvard Law grad Prez. Compare and contrast what they said during their two interviews today. First, here's a snippet from Snowden's spirited online press conference:

US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."

And now, here's Obama stammering out a defense of his spying apparatus to his own personal human pillow: (to be aired on PBS and CBS)

Charlie Rose: Should this be transparent in some way?

Barack Obama: It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court…. The whole point of my concern, before I was president — because some people say, “Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney.” Dick Cheney sometimes says, “Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock, and barrel.” My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances? So, on this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee — but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works.

And then there was this weird comparison between drunk driving checkpoints and going through TSA airport security:

Barack Obama: Well, in the end, and what I’ve said, and I continue to believe, is that we don’t have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security. That’s a false choice. That doesn’t mean that there are not tradeoffs involved in any given program, in any given action that we take. So all of us make a decision that we go through a whole bunch of security at airports, which when we were growing up that wasn’t the case…. And so that’s a tradeoff we make, the same way we make a tradeoff about drunk driving. We say, “Occasionally there are going to be checkpoints. They may be intrusive.” To say there’s a tradeoff doesn’t mean somehow that we’ve abandoned freedom. I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.

(Motor vehicle operation is to drunk checkpoints as passive airplane travel is to total body gropes and rapi-scans? I am not even going to try wrapping my head around that twisted logic. For one thing, police highway checkpoints actually do save us from the thousands of impaired drivers menacing our lives every single day. I'll have more to say about this in a later post. The TSA, on the other hand, is pure security theater, designed for intimidation of the populace.)

I also won't bother repeating all the hackneyed anti-Snowden talking points currently making the rounds in Pundit Land. But, as I wrote in response to one typical example in the New York Times,

I haven't seen this much vitriol leveled against defiant youth since the Vietnam War era, when denigrating anti-war demonstrators and draft dodgers became de rigueur for every self-respecting conservative, authoritarian and old fogey. And of course, for young Mitt Romney in his white shirt and tie, pranking the Stanford hippies for not mindlessly kowtowing to Old Glory.

Snowden correctly points out that the USA is spying on civilians everywhere -- who through no fault of their own, exist in the World is a Battlefield as declared by our creepy American exceptionalists. In the minds of the spymasters, we're all potential terrorists. We are all enemies of the state until proven otherwise -- not that they're bothering with such niceties as actual evidence. Just Google "Disposition Matrix" and "signature strikes".

Who cares about the inner workings of Snowden's psyche besides those who tremble at the upsetting of the status quo? What should be getting people upset is President Obama going on TV and oxymoronically telling Charlie Rose, that spying is ok as long as it's transparent.

Mendacity is fine as long as it's honest. Secrecy is great as long as we're open about it. Whistleblowing is noble as long as we don't embarrass the ruling elites in the process.

Incidentally -- did you know you can now stream the movie versions of 1984 from such government-friendly sites as Amazon? Just think. Big Brother will be watching you as you watch Big Brother watching you.

Daddy-O Speaks

It's time once again for that annual Fathers Day dose of paternalistic presidential pablum.

Hi, everybody. This Sunday is Father’s Day, and so I wanted to take a moment to talk about the most important job many of us will ever have – and that’s being a dad.

Today we’re blessed to live in a world where technology allows us to connect instantly with just about anyone on the planet.  But no matter how advanced we get, there will never be a substitute for the love and support and, most importantly, the presence of a parent in a child’s life.  And in many ways, that’s uniquely true for fathers.

I am blessed to rule a country where I can tap at will into the private communications of anyone on the planet with a phone or an internet connection. Of course, it might be better to have a parental authority figure -- like the Constitution -- looking over my shoulder when I order an execution or sweep up your phone records -- but unfortunately, I do not possess that inner parent known as a moral compass.

I never really knew my own father.  I was raised by a single mom and two wonderful grandparents who made incredible sacrifices for me.  And there are single parents all across the country who do a heroic job raising terrific kids.  But I still wish I had a dad who was not only around, but involved; another role model to teach me what my mom did her best to instill – values like hard work and integrity; responsibility and delayed gratification – all the things that give a child the foundation to envision a brighter future for themselves.

I am 51 years old, leader of the free world,  and I still crave a role model. Heaven help you. Now, where did I put that Kill List? My mom, whom I again damn with faint praise, "did her best to instill" those important values. But let's face it, she failed utterly. Single parents (i.e., mothers) may do a heroic job, but they just don't cut the mustard. Of all the countries in the civilized world, the United States treats its single mothers the most abysmally.

That’s why I try every day to be for Michelle and my girls what my father was not for my mother and me.  And I’ve met plenty of other people – dads and uncles and men without a family connection – who are trying to break the cycle and give more of our young people a strong male role model.

"Break the cycle" is my dog-whistle translation for the mythical absentee black father and the vicious cycle of the (largely fictional) trans-generational abandonment of families by black men. Due to some recent well-deserved criticism of how I treat the black community as a whole, I am only obliquely "going there" in this particular sermon.

Being a good parent – whether you’re gay or straight; a foster parent or a grandparent – isn’t easy.  It demands your constant attention, frequent sacrifice, and a healthy dose of patience.  And nobody’s perfect.  To this day, I’m still figuring out how to be a better husband to my wife and father to my kids. 

Aw, shucks. I'm still figuring out domestic bliss the same way I'm still figuring out how to be the father of my country. Like, here I thought I was being a protective dad when I banned the morning-after pill for young girls. And then the courts told me I was acting too political. But hey -- I'm just the dad for whom the thought of his daughters having sex was worse than the thought of them becoming single moms. You see, not every child is lucky enough to have such caring enlightened parents as Michelle and me. Even though I have no experience, no role models -- I only have a self-sacrificing gaggle of advisers cocooning me the same way people have coddled me all my life. What a disaster for all concerned.

And I want to do what I can as President to encourage marriage and strong families.  We should reform our child support laws to get more men working and engaged with their children.  And my Administration will continue to work with the faith and other community organizations, as well as businesses, on a campaign to encourage strong parenting and fatherhood.

Holy crap. David Brooks and Ross Douthat and the whole nihilistic conservative establishment just snuck into my brain. Polls show that people tend to demonize single mothers. Therefore, in keeping with the Ronald Reagan welfare queen mythos, I will just encourage those young hussies to get married instead of strengthening the government social safety net. Then, we can force the hordes of deadbeat dads to get jobs that either don't pay a living wage, or don't exist and won't exist because I and my Washington insider cohort are doing nothing to combat joblessness.

We are doing nothing, meanwhile, to rein in the big banks that have destroyed families and evicted them from their homes. We are doing nothing to prevent the mass closings of public schools in poor neighborhoods. Our War on Drugs is sweeping up young fathers and imprisoning them in record numbers. We keep sending young fathers off to war so that they cannot engage with their children.

 I do not now, nor do I ever intend to, suggest that government should be the solution to our national crisis of unemployment, underemployment and wage stagnation. No -- I will just feebly "encourage" profit-hoarding, tax-evading corporations and churches to embark on a national propaganda campaign to instill guilt into all those lazy, no-good schmucks who don't feel like working and supporting their children. I am a right wing extremist to my very core. Austerity runs in my veins.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned along the way, it’s that all our personal successes shine a little less brightly if we fail at family.  That’s what matters most.  When I look back on my life, I won’t be thinking about any particular legislation I passed or policy I promoted.  I’ll be thinking about Michelle, and the journey we’ve been on together.  I’ll be thinking about Sasha’s dance recitals and Malia’s tennis matches – about the conversations we’ve had and the quiet moments we’ve shared.  I’ll be thinking about whether I did right by them, and whether they knew, every day, just how much they were loved.

Without a picture postcard family, what good is it being a millionaire? As I embark on my lucrative post-presidential career, it will be all about me and mine. I don't want to look back upon eight years of half-measures, disasters and disappointments; I prefer to fondly recall the elitist pursuits of my own spawn. I choose to be blissfully unaware that the vast majority of struggling Americans cannot afford tennis and dance lessons for their children. As a matter of fact, one in four American children lives in poverty. Congress, through massive cuts to SNAP funding, is about to snatch the very food they eat right out of their mouths.

That’s what I think being a father is all about.  And if we can do our best to be a source of comfort and encouragement to our kids; if we can show them unconditional love and help them grow into the people they were meant to be; then we will have succeeded.

Holy Crap. Thomas Hobbes just snuck into my brain. Give the kiddies cold comfort, because that's all you got, proles! Record wealth inequity will continue, because....  "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, and have a great weekend.

I know I will. I'll be thinking of Michelle and the girls and all of you brutes as I hit the links this weekend with my all-male entourage of role models.

The Unbearable Rightness of Being Certain

Giving lie to the conventional wisdom that bipartisanship is dead, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today heaved her well-maintained self upon an increasingly crowded luxury bandwagon of Washington insiders, bull-horning to anyone who would listen: Bring Me the Head of Edward Snowden!

The more that the Democratic and Republican elites are joining hands in public to celebrate the death of the Constitution via massive domestic spying by the United States military, the more obvious it becomes that not only is the pseudoleft completely dead, it has been utterly replaced by the Big Righty Right.  If only we'd had PRISM before Nine Eleven, gushed Pelosi, we might have prevented Nine Eleven! This is what she burbled at a press con today:

"Certainly it would have improved the chances of doing that. I can't say with certainty that it would have, but it certainly would have improved the chance," she said. "It did give more opportunity to surveil."

Pelosi joins John Boehner, Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid and practically the whole Washington establishment in demanding that Edward Snowden be arrested and prosecuted for basically embarrassing the whole Washington establishment. They are, once again, blatantly acting in direct counterpoint to the mere citizens who elected them. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that at least a third of Americans consider Snowden a patriot, not a traitor, with another half unsure, and only a small minority believing he should be prosecuted. (this, despite the fact that a Gallup poll just a few days ago showed that half of us are not too bothered by being "surveilled" by the government. Maybe this will change as more people start paying attention.)

Meanwhile, yet another military poobah appeared before Congress yesterday to glibly claim that the National Security Agency spying apparatus has thwarted "dozens" of terrorist attacks. Naturally, he was not pressed for details or actual evidence. Names are being withheld to protect the nonexistent.

Meanwhile, not satisfied with calls for Snowden's arrest, resident Congressional xenophobe Peter King is also demanding the head of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald,  When he made the outrageous McCarthyesque accusation that Greenwald intends to blow the cover of  CIA operatives, King was not pressed for details or actual evidence.

You can sometimes tell when generals and politicians are lying by their body language. The NSA's James Clapper, for example, nervously rubbed at his bald pate the entire time he lied to Congress. Other liars betray themselves by failure to make eye contact, rapid blinking and sweaty brows. But then there is that subset of psychopaths who are able to lie calmly and coolly because they lack a moral compass. They are the scariest of all.

And Peter King is in a class all by himself. His lies are debunkable because they're stupid. He only has to make his lips move to betray his mendacity. Here's Greenwald's takedown.

And here's John Oliver's takedown of the media coverage of Bring Me the Head of Edward Snowden.

With so many powerful movers and shakers trying to take us for a ride in their effort to declare the Constitution unconstitutional, we need all the takedowns we can get.