Hard Core Conservative Confusion Illustrated Once Again

Conor Friedersdorf states a truth that few have enunciated as clearly or succinctly:  "Secret policy and secret law corrode representative government, undermining Americans' ability to govern themselves."

How do conservatives respond to threats posed by the Patriot Act and the national security state? They want to shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded. Defunding a law that everyone knows about is, of course, the best way to deal with secret policies and secret laws. Damn, it all seems so obvious, I'm shocked that every President since FDR hasn't made that policy central to their administration.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that conservatives who spend most of their time bragging about the strength of their values seem to have a confused sense of priorities?

Quotation Of The Day: Worst Congress Ever Edition

Conor Firedersdorf lays out the case that it's not the current 112th Congress but the 107th Congress from the early years of the Bush Administration:

In October 2001, with just one senator dissenting, that Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, the most alarming infringement on civil liberties in a generation and a precursor to all War on Terrorism abuses to come. In a bipartisan bill that January, legislators approved No Child Left Behind, a well-intentioned but flawed education-reform bill that forced an ineffective test-taking regime on the states and has not lived up to its name. Another bipartisan bill, the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation, didn't remedy the problems it was meant to address before or after parts of it were found by the Supreme Court to violate the Constitution.

But no failure was as consequential as the 2002 authorization for military force against Iraq. What a historic debacle. That same Congress created the Department of Homeland Security, so their legacy of awfulness may well continue in perpetuity. It's all worth remembering next time someone tells you that the present Congress is the worst ever because they won't get anything done. For a couple years after President Bush took over, Congress agreed enough to push through all sorts of major policies with bipartisan support. They just turned out to be follies.

Sometimes bipartisan agreement is far more catastrophic than gridlock.

Thune Votes To Rip The Constitution, But Only A Little

Conor Friedersdorf reminds readers that Americans are allowing their elected officials to usurp citizens' constitutional rights.

Is it lawful for the president to order any American held indefinitely as a terrorist, without formal charges, evidence presented in open court, a trial by jury, or a standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"? The U.S. Senate had a chance Wednesday to assert that no, a president does not possess that power -- that the United States Constitution guarantees due process. . . . 

The U.S. Senate refused to affirm that American citizens arrested in the United States shouldn't be subject to indefinite military detention on the president's order. Senator Feinstein's amendment to that effect went down in defeat with 55 historic votes against it. 

Unsurprisingly, Senator John Thune refused to stand up for Americans' freedom.  Apparently, he believes that he has to destroy the Constitution in order to save it.  It's unknown if he would have voted differently if the decision had affected a corporation instead of a flesh and blood citizen.

Thune apparently agrees with Senator Lindsey Graham who claims,

"It has been the law of the United States for decades that an American citizen on our soil who collaborates with the enemy has committed an act of war and will be held under the law of war, not domestic criminal law," he said. "In World War II it was perfectly proper to hold an American citizen as an enemy combatant who helped the Nazis. But we believe, somehow, in 2011, that is no longer fair. That would be wrong. My God, what are we doing in 2011? Do you not think al-Qaeda is trying to recruit people here at home? Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it is the battlefield."

As Friedersdorf notes,

That quote is important, for Graham is saying that as long as terrorists are trying to recruit  on American soil, our homeland is a battlefield. That means a perpetual state of war. Here are the senators who refuse to affirm that American citizens retain the right to due process during this war that is supposedly being waged everywhere on earth and that has no foreseeable end in sight.

Like Orwell's Big Brother, Thune and Graham seems to believe that "War is Peace"

I would hope that there would be some public outcry.  Freidersdorf notes,

The Republicans listed ought to be condemned by "constitutional conservatives." Those are the Tea-Party-affiliated voters who, according to Yuval Levin of National Review, are "focused on restraining government" through "a system of checks to prevent sudden large mistakes while enabling gradual changes supported by a broad and longstanding consensus." These conservatives, Levin says, insist on "constitutional forms that compel self-restraint and enable self-correction" out of "the humble desire for forms that might prevent large mistakes." They are "focused on recovering the U.S. Constitution, and especially its limits on government power," because in the view of the Framers, "there is no omniscience; there is only imperfect humanity." We therefore need "checks on all of our various excesses, and a system that forces us to think through important decisions as best we can." If a bloc of voters with those attitudes in fact exists, they've now got a list of senators to challenge in the next primaries they face.

I share his dismay that "As yet, there is no hint that there will be such a rebellion."


Oh well, I am sure that  Thune and other Republicans will vote to fully fund the Department of Fear.  If the Department of Fear is insufficient, I'm sure someone will be able to create a Ministry of Truth.

Quotation of the Decade: Liberty Edition

From this Shahid Buttar op-ed

Oct. 26 marks the 10th anniversary of the USA Patriot Act, the first among many bipartisan government assaults on the Bill of Rights over the past decade. It is a time to mourn our lost freedoms.

Our constitutional rights have dramatically eroded, turning the “land of the free” into the “land of the easily intimidated.”

We have traded liberty for a false impression of security, and we will regret it.

Amen.

Minor Musing about Politics and Liberty

A couple of days ago, The Madville Times posted about the apparent failure to get enough signatures to refer two bills made necessary by federal health care reform.  In the comments, Steve Sibson, Cory, and I were amiably discussing Hegel without a philosophical license. when Sibson ended the conversation by, "The end-game is the same…statism. The frog’s water is now boiling."

Given the topic, Sibson seems to be saying that health care reform will end the Republic.  Big government certainly carries inherent risks, but I've always been confused why health care reform was the issue that animated tea party supporters.

Why wasn't it the Patriot Act? Why did it take 10 years to see reports like this one?

Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights.

Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government's ability to monitor individual actions.

The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps — those authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device — of court-ordered searches of business records and of surveillance of non-American "lone wolf" suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.

The roving wiretaps and access to business records are small parts of the USA Patriot Act enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But unlike most of the act, which is permanent law, those provisions must be renewed periodically because of concerns that they could be used to violate privacy rights. The same applies to the "lone wolf" provision, which was part of a 2004 intelligence law.

Paul argued that in the rush to meet the terrorist threat in 2001 Congress enacted a Patriot Act that tramples on individual liberties. He had some backing from liberal Democrats such as Durbin and Udall, as well as civil liberties groups who have long contended the law gives the government authority to spy on innocent citizens.

"The Patriot Act has been used improperly again and again by law enforcement to invade Americans' privacy and violate their constitutional rights," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.

 Why wasn't it NCLB?  Why did it take nearly a decade to read this?

“I think what you’re seeing is the Republican Party going back to its conservative roots and, yes, going back to its core principles and I think that’s a good thing,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in an interview here, adding: “I would argue that we did lose our way for a while.”

Jindal, who was an official in Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services and served two terms in Congress during the Bush era, cites No Child Left Behind as an example of wayward Republicanism.

“How does it make sense for Republicans to be imposing this one-size-fits-all approach from the federal level onto the states and the local school board when we’ve always believed that government that governs closest to the people governs best?” he asked.

Why aren't conservatives angered about situations like this one?

Risen claims the intimidation began under the Bush administration but has continued into the Obama era. "I believe that the efforts to target me has continued under the Obama Administration, which has been aggressively investigating whistleblowers and reporters in a way that will have a chilling effect on freedom of the press in the United States," Risen wrote.

When it comes to basic liberties, I have to agree with E.D. Kain who writes,

Rand Paul is quickly becoming one of the most important voices on civil liberties in the Senate, alongside a small cadre of others like Democratic Senator, Ron Wyden, of Oregon. I think it’s important to get away from the left/right Republican/Democrat politics and work to elect as many civil libertarians as we possibly can.

Update:

Several people have pointed out that Rand Paul’s free-speech record is pretty bad. Perhaps the civil libertarian label doesn’t apply. Still, on some level I’ll take what I can get. Paul has voiced sensible opposition to the Patriot Act, the TSA, and the war in Libya. He’s far from perfect, but he’s better than many nonetheless. So far, at least, he hasn’t plotted the assassination of a U.S. citizen.

I'll take every ally I can get in the war to preserve freedoms, but I get really confused by the items that become priorities that motivate anger.  All of the above situations seem to be more of a threat than health care reform which seems to be an insurance company protection act that might hit my pocket book but won't take away basic liberty.

Patriort Act Signing: Two Quick Updates

Update 1:  I have recently written that symbolism and metaphors matter.  This paragraph from the San Francisco Chronicle illustrates an interesting symbolic message about the signing of the Patriot Act extension

With Obama in France, the White House said the president used an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature. It is only used with proper authorization of the president.

Are Americans to believe that a terrorist attack is so imminent that it would have occurred in the hours it would have taken to fly to fly an actual copy of the bill to France to have President Obama personally sign it into law? 

People fear the law because they believe it skirts constitutional limitations and uses technology to do it.  Now President Obama uses technology to sign the extension.  I don't care that signatures on letters use an autopen, but laws should have actual signatures.  The symbolism here matters; this signing method symbolizes that both Democrats and Republicans give only lip service to the idea of protecting civil liberties.

Update 2:  The Madville Times point out that South Dakota's delegation didn't stand up for the Constitution.

Today, I'm Thankful for Rand Paul

Last night, I probably caused my Democratic friends some consternation when I reminded them that redistricting probably wouldn't make it easier for them to increase their numbers in the South Dakota legislature.  This title of this post probably caused more consternation.

Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and son of Republican presidential candidate Ron Raul. is trying limit the ill-named Patriot Act.  The Los Angeles Times sums up the situation:

The bill would extend three expiring provisions of the act, including one that allows federal authorities to continue eavesdropping when terrorism suspects change phones and another that allows surveillance of foreign suspects even if they have no known affiliation to a terrorist group, called the "lone wolf" provision. A third allows the government to investigate virtually any personal records of terrorism suspects, in what has become known as the library records provision. All require a court order.

Paul wants to offer amendments to rein in the government’s reach, including one that would prohibit federal authorities from investigating gun ownership records.

According to Politico,

Freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a vocal critic of the counter-terrorism surveillance law, threatened Monday to “drag out” the process if Reid fails to hold votes on some of the nine amendments Paul introduced or co-sponsored on Monday. Paul, a libertarian-minded tea-party senator, noted that Reid had promised earlier this year to set aside a week’s worth of debate on the bill and allow votes on amendments.

Politico goes on to explain that Paul doesn't have the votes to stop re-authorization, just delay votes.  Paul claims wants votes on amendments he sponsored.

One of Paul’s proposed amendments, backed by Gun Owners of America, would block law enforcement officials from being able to access certain firearm records under the Patriot Act. An amendment, authored by liberal Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and co-sponsored by Paul, calls for greater oversight of Patriot Act provisions and adds new sunsets to surveillance tools known as National Security Letters.

Glenn Greenwald adds a few other names who deserve a thank you for voting against cloture and ending the filibuster.

The 8 Senators voting against cloture were Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democrats Jeff Merkley, Mark Begich, Max Baucus, and John Tester, and GOP Senators Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and Dean Heller (GOP Sen. Mike Lee announced he'd vote NO but missed the vote due to inclement weather).  Sen. Paul, along with Sen. Tester, took the lead in speaking out against the excesses and abuses of the Patriot Act and the vital need for reforms.

I'm not saying Americans don't need to fight terrorism, but the Patriot unconstitutionally abridges liberties.  This editorial sums things up better than I can.

Fighting terrorism requires active and watchful intelligence gathering. But this battle can't be an excuse for erasing privacy and personal liberties. The Patriot Act goes too far in a constitutional society by erasing bedrock guarantees of privacy and personal protections.