Patience? (updated)
Patience Dr. Prole counsels. MY ASS! was my response, there's no time for patience.
Well, Doc, there is time for patience - the international economy requires patience as it does nothing overnight (except sink alarmingly). The whole Israel/Palestine situation requires patience, and lots of it.
Iraq? We broke it, we must be responsible in handling it. Much patience should be used in dealing with that disaster. Afghanistan? Same thing - it's a delicate situation and it's our, self inflicted problem.
But there are some things for which patience is not a virtue and those things relate to the subject of Executive power and Obama's (un)willingness to relinquish it.
Glenn Greenwald again:
As I detailed over the weekend, the Obama administration -- in the case brought by two American lawyers and their charity-client claiming that their conversations were illegally intercepted by the Bush administration -- has announced that it intends to try to appeal, yet again, in order to prevent the court from hearing the lawsuit. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Obama's request to stay the District Judge's Order, which had held that it will review a classified document that the plaintiffs claim proves they were subjected to the illegal eavesdropping (thus conferring standing on the plaintiffs to challenge the legality of Bush's NSA program), and also ordered the Obama administration to provide security clearances to the plaintiffs' lawyers so that they could review the document as well. The Obama DOJ immediately announced they intend to try to appeal again -- the third time, since Obama's Inauguration, that the Obama DOJ will try to argue before a court that the case should not heard at all.
Patience? Maybe.
I suppose that if this gets thrown out or struck down at the Supreme Court level, then Obama can say that he "wanted the theory tested in court and it was found lacking and that's the end of that" or some such variation. And I suppose that if that really is the plan, forcing the courts to set the limits, then he can't really come out and say that even though it'd make the likes of me much less suspicious of his actions.
But if this is the plan, I think it's a foolish one because the courts only rule on existing legislation, usually in very narrow terms. If Obama was interested in addressing this issue in the context of preserving the separation of powers then he'd 1) issue executive order defining how his administration is going to act when it comes to state secrets (setting precedent) and 2) sponsor legislation to precisely define the limits of executive power.
He's doing nothing proactive here other than punting to the courts and that, just leaves me wondering what the hell's happening.
Patience?
- it suddenly occurs to me another possible explanation for his actions on this and other cases: if he changes positions on state secrets and torture and habeous corpus issues then he'll have to take a stand on bush's criminality. and so far this seems to be the one thing he just doesn't wanna touch
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From The Nation: Investigating Bush's Crimes
Obama has been careful to avoid any suggestion that he or his senior officers are directing a criminal investigation or prosecution of the Bush-era torture enablers. He is right to do so. The criminal justice system of a democratic state should not operate like a well-oiled military machine taking its cue from the commander in chief. It requires professional prosecutors who operate with critical detachment from political officials when they pursue criminal investigations. Moreover, the painful circumstances of the torture and surveillance programs, particularly the fact that senior Justice Department officials were complicit in their implementation at almost every step, make it an ethically doubtful proposition for the Justice Department even to take up the matter.
Very strong arguments for the President staying out of it altogether. Perhaps I'll be try some patience and see how this develops.
