feckingmorons: Are your bags packed? Are you ready to go?

If you mean "do you have a gun?" the answer is yes and I will try to turn the tables if they try to get me. If you know what I mean.

This must be a tough one for the right wingers. Obama admin wins an appeals decision for shiat they support. They can't say good job Obama.

Meanwhile, the majority of left wingers will say this ruling sucks.

mediablitz: This must be a tough one for the right wingers. Obama admin wins an appeals decision for shiat they support. They can't say good job Obama.

Meanwhile, the majority of left wingers will say this ruling sucks. is Bush's fault not Obamas!

FTFY

ftfa: "The sharply divided ruling was a major victory for the Obama administration's efforts to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy powers"

President Transparency Hopey Changey strikes again!

At least this is better than his orders to execute an American citizen without trial.

Welcome to Banana Republic America where the income is more unequally distributed than Uruguay or Nicaragua and torture and disappearances are the Law.

In time of war we must trust that the President is only doing what is right for this country. To doubt him, or his underlings, is almost treasonous.

as a left winger this kind of pisses me off, and it makes me even more mad that the obama admin is continuing the shiatty policies of the bush admin.


meet the new boss, same as the old boss

an America ruled by fear doesn't seem like much of an America at all to me

Well congrats Republicans and Tea Partiers.
You've given Obama all the precedent he needs to have you ended if you ever become a challenge.
So you know, as you're forcefully detained, transported to a facility, and then tortured, well, give yourself a good old pat on the back for all your hard work.
And before someone chimes in with "but but but Obama", McCain would have done the exact same thing. Once the groundwork was laid by Bush II, it was a done deal.
You can still criticize the Democrats for the farked up "free speech zones" idea.

*flips table*
*breaks off table leg and swings blindly at everyone and everything*

mediablitz: This must be a tough one for the right wingers. Obama admin wins an appeals decision for shiat they support. They can't say good job Obama.

Meanwhile, the majority of left wingers will say this ruling sucks.

Abso-farking-lutely sucks. Fark you, Obama.

"Because we broke both national and international laws in the interests of national security, we can use national security to avoid criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits?" Really?

Good luck, folks. The federal government, courtesy of both the Bush and, now, the Obama administrations, has written itself a "get out of jail free" loophole for the hell that is to come.

FTA: former prisoners of the C.I.A. could not sue over their alleged torture in overseas prisons because such a lawsuit might expose secret government information.


In such a case, shouldn't the onus be on the CIA, or the government, to settle?

mediablitz: They can't say good job Obama.

Good job obama.

There, I said it. You happy now?

/Kip Winger
//Sorry, I meant to say right winger

tlchwi02: an America ruled by fear doesn't seem like much of an America at all to me

Yep. One of the major selling points of electing Obama, at least to me, was that he would undo the authoritarian evils pushed by the Bush administration.

Instead, he's using them as farking precedents, exploiting them to push us even farther away from the ideals on which this country was founded.

Seriously, what the hell has happened to America.

Let's take the moral high ground that we claim to have.
1- no torture
2- no denying of habeas corpus just because it's convenient

Can we stop being pussies and simply live proudly in a free society- threatened by terrorists, but not terrorized?

We could learn a thing or two from the Brits of old.

/keep calm and such

This is why I kill everyone I torture.

On the one hand, this is a horrible precedent which abolishes civil liberties dating back to before America was even discovered and allows for unchecked abuses of federal power.

...on the other hand, can we start torturing teabaggers yet?

Notice, all the "OMFG Bush is a Nazi" folks are saying "Its not Fascism when WE do it" now that a dem is in office.

Epiphany: mediablitz: This must be a tough one for the right wingers. Obama admin wins an appeals decision for shiat they support. They can't say good job Obama.

Meanwhile, the majority of left wingers will say this ruling sucks. is Bush's fault not Obamas!

FTFY

Or maybe those rare liberals who aren't made of straw cam recognize that the continuous drive to increase executive power isn't exclusive to either party. All modern presidents seem to abide by the dictum that you leave the office stronger than you found it.

The states-secrets privilege is easily the biggest real threat to American freedom. (It's also so horrifically unjust as to be obscene.) Yet, the freedom-lovers on the right seem to believe a marginal tax rate hike equals tyranny. It's sad. I would really love it if all these supposed freedom lovers would actually look around them and see that if tyranny comes it will come out of the national security state. Oh well, the republican experiment was fun while it lasted.

Epiphany: mediablitz: This must be a tough one for the right wingers. Obama admin wins an appeals decision for shiat they support. They can't say good job Obama.

Meanwhile, the majority of left wingers will say this ruling sucks. is Bush's fault not Obamas!

FTFY

Except the thread shows me to be correct and you to be wrong.

turntable slave: Seriously, what the hell has happened to America.

Let's take the moral high ground that we claim to have.
1- no torture
2- no denying of habeas corpus just because it's convenient

Can we stop being pussies and simply live proudly in a free society- threatened by terrorists, but not terrorized?

We could learn a thing or two from the Brits of old.

/keep calm and such

I think the saying is stiff upper lip but I'll spot you that.

This is a farking travesty, and the saddest part is it won't effect politics at all. I hope that Obama is badgered about this, they should replay the quotes about closing Gitmo (which is a little harder logistically) and ending torture ad nauseam.

I consider the current deterioration of human rights to be America's biggest disgrace since the days of American apartheid.

Of course instead of addressing the real issue here (torture, rendition, habeas corpus) this thread is going to degrade into A+ number one partisan hackery.

Rashnu: Or maybe those rare liberals who aren't made of straw cam recognize that the continuous drive to increase executive power isn't exclusive to either party. All modern presidents seem to abide by the dictum that you leave the office stronger than you found it.

Yep, and they've been appointing Supreme Court justices that whether or not they are "liberal" or "conservative" on most issues agree with an over-strong executive.

Can anyone link to the list of American citizens who have been spirited away, subjected to torture, then denied their day in court because of these national security policies?

I'm having trouble finding them.

texastag: Can anyone link to the list of American citizens who have been spirited away, subjected to torture, then denied their day in court because of these national security policies?

I'm having trouble finding them.

Funny b/c the constitution doesn't specify "citizen" for most of its rights. And we don't limit access to our courts to citizens either.

texastag: I'm having trouble finding them.

That's kinda the point.
They're not called "secret CIA sites" because it really means "open house everyone invited torturefest site".

MuffinMan8869: as a left winger this kind of pisses me off, and it makes me even more mad that the obama admin is continuing the shiatty policies of the bush admin.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss
.
.
Exactly, farkwit. Left wing voters are such morons. There has been no such thing as a "left wing" political platform for at least a generation. It's "just right lite" at best.

"Oh, but here's some free money for some stuff as well. Yaaaaaah! Aren't we the best?"

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Separated at birth?

The Zen Philosopher Basho: *flips table*
*breaks off table leg and swings blindly at everyone and everything*

*joins him*

texastag:

Can anyone link to the list of American citizens who have been spirited away, subjected to torture, then denied their day in court because of these national security policies?

I'm having trouble finding them.


As a matter of fact, the man who's standing outside your door right now has the list and would be happy to give it to you. Just answer the door. Go on.

ACallForPeace: And before someone chimes in with "but but but Obama", McCain would have done the exact same thing

No, no he wouldn't. He said so repeatedly. McCain may be squishy on some things, but he's vehemently anti-torture.

Bush/Obama are ok with torture. McCain isn't, probably due to his own experiences.
Obama: "Obviously you need to preserve some tools"
McCain: "We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear - whether it is true or false - if he believes it will relieve his suffering"

FormlessOne: tlchwi02: an America ruled by fear doesn't seem like much of an America at all to me

Yep. One of the major selling points of electing Obama, at least to me, was that he would undo the authoritarian evils pushed by the Bush administration.

Instead, he's using them as farking precedents, exploiting them to push us even farther away from the ideals on which this country was founded.

Obama could have gone one of two directions. He could have done what I perceive most of us elected him and Congress to do, and that is to undo the worst parts of the Patriot Act, close Guantanamo, and officially end the policies of extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping by bringing the dirty laundry into the light of day. Instead, we get immunity from prosecution, a repeat of Bush Administration policies, nothing revealed, nowhere in Afghanistan. I would mimic a Republican and say that this country is turning to shiat, but the truth is that it has always been like this.

I'm laughing at a lot of the leftists who were celebrating how Obama was going to bring change right now. Not because the change isn't happening, but because they believed deep in their hearts that the left wing was less prone to corruption than the right, and I like seeing stupid people proven wrong.

However, *I* expected less corruption myself, not because Obama is left-leaning, but because he's competent.

George W Bush was not competent. He was an ineffective person whose heart was in the right place (most of the time) but he couldn't control his underlings in the administration, who ran rampant with corruption.

I expected better from Barrack W Obama.

Maybe Palin had a point about the executive experience thing. One thing she did do as goverrnor was to throttle corruption at the state level (which is why I kind of liked her before she started opening her mouth), whereas Obama is still learning to deal with it. I don't know. Clinton, remember, had a bunch of shady people hanging around him his first couple years, but in later years he got rid of them.

This is when we could use someone like batman to pick up the responsible parties and slap the shiat out of them till the policy is ended.

Leskay: It's "just right lite" at best.
.
.

Sorry, that should read: just "right lite" or maybe: just "right wing lite" with the just outside of the inverted commas. Lest some left wing weenie decides my punctuation mistake makes my whole post null and void.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Same thing happened in Australia twice already in recent times. Gough Whitlam. Kevin Rudd.

The left wing morons voted in a fellow-moron because they wanted "hope" and "change" hahahaha!