Are the Dems Missing a Bet?
Dahlia Lithwick, at Slate.com, thinks so. I’ll trust that she’s right on the facts, if she is, no one at the convention is talking about the Bush Administration’s assault on the Constitution and law and John McCain’s support of it.
Guantanamo. Warrantless wiretapping. Political firings and hirings at the Justice Department. Cheney, Pflame, Scooter. What’s his name Gonzales who was the Attorney General and his misadventures with law and the Constitution.
Maybe the Dems have it right and the bulk of us don’t much care about the niceties of the Bill of Rights when mortgages, fuel and food are going South on us. But, even if those are the issues that will draw in the most voters for the Dems, wouldn’t an appeal to those who care about the niceties bring a few more votes?
Damn, I forgot that Obama voted to give immunity to the telecom companies that did the actual wiretapping. Never mind. Some messiah.
9 comments:
Excellent point. The silence is remarkable. I guess that Biden did make one rather oblique reference to the attack on the constitution when he contrasted himself with Cheney. I wonder if the decision is not calculated. I know that for me, as important as this issue is, I can't help but get angry and a little gut sick about it. Those might not be the emotions that the Dems want to provoke during their convention. But it sure would be nice to have some assurances that this nonsense is going to stop.
They must be reading Slate.com (and me). There were several speakers yesterday that raised the civil liberty issues listed in the post.
I don't know if either party is all that enamored of the Constitution these days, if not always for the same reasons. And -- in this the Dems are surely right -- most Americans are abysmally ignorant about the Constitution... except for that 'right to remain silent' stuff they get from TV... which doesn't apply on "24."
Thank heaven judges still take the Constitution seriously.
Gitmo is the prison for people caught trying to kill our soldiers, Plame was not outed by Libby, warrantless wiretaps of terrorist phone calls is a good idea and Cheney's energy meetings were no more secret that Clintons health care reform.
Bush only fired a few DA's at Justice while Clinton fired all of them. Perfectly legal, they serve at the pleasure fo the President so what is the bitch there?
Maybe they realize those charges are so easily refuted that they would rather talk about other things like Obama not being close friends with convicted terrorists and other known convicted felons or hiding how they are going to raise your taxes.
BTW, excellent blog
Hey Dale, thanks for stopping by and the compliment.
Your point about the FIRED prosecuters is correct, though legal isn't always right - I don't have any great love for Bill.
Gitmo is a place that probably houses bad people. The trouble to my mind is that is houses people who are in the modern day equivalent of centuries old political prisons - they are there because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time based on no real evidence; and, more importantly, there's not much they can do about it as "we" have stacked the legal deck. Try them in a courtroom and convict them or let them go.
I really don't have a problem with wiretaps, just do it the way we've been doing it for a long time. Make your case to a neutral and you get to tap away. When it comes to FISA, do it after the fact and you're OK.
I'll skip Cheney/Pflame/Scooter as I'm really not sure who did what to whom. I do know there was a lot going on that I'm not going to know about in the near future because of the Administration's obession with not letting me know anything that it doesn't want me to know.
Finally, taxes. That is the rub that may well make me not vote for Obama. I'm toying with the idea that it doesn't much matter as the GOP and the Dems are pretty much the same when it comes to spending my money, they just use it for different projects.
Come back again and give me a hard time. Most of the more conservative readers don't say much, Jay, Rick, Ryan, Moe?
Taxes. I don't care a whole lot for taxes, myself. Seriously. Thing is, I can't figure out how else to pay for all the stuff people expect government to do...
The bigget problem is how much we expect that our grandparents did not. The answer is not more taxes, the answer is a smaller governement (aka fantasy land)
Can't really agree that the people are in Gitmo becasue of the wrong place, wrong time and no real evidence. They weren't standing on a street corner in Kabul chewing a piece of lamb jerky, they were on a battlefield shooting at our troops.
You don't try these guys in a civilian court due to the rights they are entitld to there permitting the loss of intelligence sources and methods. They are being held, similar to POW's, to extract intelligence and prevent thm from returning to battle and killing more of our soldiers.
Regarding taxes, you should review McCains record and feel much better about him. He has consistently and overwhelmingly opposed spending. Look at how many earmarks go back to Arizona.
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