Obama continued to make mostly the right moves in his first week in office.
- Closing GITMO and secret overseas CIA prisons: These two things here are why a lot of justice-loving people around the world have turned their back on America. I wouldn’t think it needed saying, but I’ll say it: torturing people is wrong. Holding people indefinitely without a trial is wrong. These things are illegal not only under a host of treaties we signed, but under our own fucking constitution, you remember, that document that founded our country and used to mean something? Republicans ask “what are we supposed to do, let these terrorists into the United States?!?!” Well, yeah. It’s not like we’re sending them to fucking Disney World. We got us plenty of high-value terrorists in US prisons right now.
I swear I remember living in a country once that wasn’t full of pussies. Then somebody blew up a measly 3000 people and all of a sudden we’re ready to give up all our moral convictions and the principles we’ve at least always said we wanted to live by, give everything over to a bunch of Mayberry Machiavellis in exchange for a bare illusion of safety. Sack up, America.
- Lifting the gag rule: Denying money to organizations that do good work overseas because they provide abortions is wrong. The world will be a better place without this rule.
- Restricting the CIA to interrogation techniques in the Army field manual: See above. Torture is wrong and does not make us safer. Ask John McCain.
On the civil liberties front, I was disappointed to see that Obama took Bush’s position on a secret wiretapping case that provides the only known remaining avenue for legal review of warrantless wiretapping. It’s a setback for the fourth amendment and the rule of law (specifically, FISA). I do believe that the government, ultimately, may have compelling reasons to do more monitoring of communications, perhaps even Americans’ communications, in the quickly changing world we live in. However, I think it is vitally important to preserving our way of life that such issues be hashed out in court and in Congress, not in smoky back rooms where the next Nixon can start watching the people on his enemies list–and there’s evidence that some of that went on during that slimy fuck W’s administration.
I hope somebody someday strings that sumbitch up, and Cheney with him. Fuck them in their earholes. There are too many people dead for too little reason, and too many rich motherfuckers that lined their pockets on the backs of the poor and dead soldiers over the last eight years to just let this shit slide. As much as irony demands that they be tried by a military tribunal with secret evidence they’re not allowed to see (and gained under duress by leashing them up and making the sodomize each other), I’m afraid I hope they get a fair trial in open court.
