The Common Ills: Barack's unconstitutional and undemocratic spying

File it under history you should know, from Kade Crockford's "A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Plum Job in Opposition to General Warrants (in 1760)" (ACLU Blog of Rights):

A new poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire for the Boston Globe reveals that 40 percent of Massachusetts residents oppose “the government obtaining phone and electronic records of US citizens,” while only 25 percent support it. These numbers make clear that Commonwealth residents still hold dear the very principles of American justice that were born under our feet.
After all, our state has long been a cradle of liberty, and the Fourth Amendment was practically born in Boston.
Do you know about James Otis, his struggle against the British Empire, and the making of the Fourth Amendment? A brilliant, young attorney, Otis became practically obsessed with what he viewed as a profound injustice visited upon the American colonists by their British rulers: the writs of assistance.
Writs of assistance were essentially general warrants. They allowed British soldiers to raid and search homes based on no suspicion whatsoever of criminal activity. Any soldier could violate the sanctity of anyone’s person or home. The British foot soldiers didn’t have to have any reason whatsoever for these searches. The writs of assistance were extreme violations of the basic privacy and property rights of Americans, and the American revolutionaries loathed them – no one more eloquently or passionately than Otis.
An extremely talented and ambitious man, Otis was Advocate-General of the colony of Massachusetts at only 31 years old, the equivalent of today’s attorney general. His ambition did not surpass his commitment to justice, however: Otis resigned in disgust when tasked with defending the legitimacy of the British Empire’s general writs. Almost immediately afterwards, a group of Boston merchants sought his help to oppose the writs before the Massachusetts superior court. Otis refused to accept payment and argued the case with passion and vigor.

Americans have always been opposed to their government spying on them. If you're an American and you don't know that, you had a really sorry education. It's one of those shared values that we're all supposed to be aware of. And one of the reasons that American citizenship is a requirement to be President is because of those shared values and shared meanings.

Public education in the United States has always been about socialization. So if, for example, from ages six to ten, you're in a foreign school -- say, in Indonesia -- that's not there to teach Americans, you're not learning the social mores and norms of your country and yes, it does come back.

When you have no background for this, you have no grounding. So people wonder, "Did that Democrat just say his hero was Ronald Reagan?" Because you've got no framework, you've got no bedrock. Everything's a buffet to you where only the immediate taste of an item matters because facts in your world have no historical underpinnings. So you say you're for this and then, say after the election, you're not for this. Because you have no core. Nothing has been instilled in you about your country.

Note this:

Your child is born into history. She has no memory of it, yet she finds herself in the middle of a story that began before she became one of its characters. She also wants to have a place in it.
As parents we can prepare our children to achieve the lifelong task of finding their place in history by helping them to learn what shaped the world into which they were born. Without information about their history, children don't "get" a lot of what they hear and see around them.
Your attitude about history can also make a difference for your child. Showing your interest in history--your belief that knowing history makes a difference for your life--encourages your child's own interest.
Many parents say they love history. If you are one of them you can share your particular interests in history with your children as well as help them develop their own.
Many other parents say they find history boring. If you are among these, try one of the following: start writing your own life story; read the diary of Anne Frank, or the autobiography of Frederick Douglass; read the Declaration of Independence, or rent a video about the Civil War. As you rediscover history your children may be inspired your interest.

That's not me, that's the US Dept of Education. And that's the reason that you've had the Dept of Education awarding grants to elementary schools and teachers who take US history out of social studies and expand it into its own field of study for the children.

This is not top secret, this is not hush-hush. This is education in the US. You can look at Dewey, you can look at Jane Addams, you can look at any educator you want and the socialization process (which some on the right confuse with "Socialism") is there. In the US, education has always been sold as a cultural experience.

Now if you missed it during your formative years, that doesn't mean you're bad person, doesn't even mean you're stupid. From ages six to ten in Indonesia, Barack probably learned many valuable things. But that important core that's missing? That's the thing that should tell a person, "Don't run for president." Not of a country you're still playing catch up on because what every one else had instilled in them by age nine, you missed out on.

That process is really important to who we become. Very few are going to embrace all those mores and norms presented to them at age 8. And that's known. It's honestly not expected that every child's going to be a little parrot. Some children will keep to themselves what they disagree with -- and that will shape the adult they become. Some children will openly call it b.s. All of that is the process of who you become and how you interact with your country. But if you don't have that interaction (both with basic facts and with a peer group), if you don't learn at 8 where you stand with regards to your country, you don't pick that socialization up later.

Charlie Rose is a lousy interviewer. But even the worst journalist could have asked something like, "Put the Fourth Amendment into your own words and meaning." The Constitution does have meaning. When it was written, it became for many around the world a beacon of hope.

Without a foundation of appreciation, which starts with all those seemingly nonsense early school projects (dioramas, school plays, etc.), it's just a series of statements that you can circumvent, try to bend, try to break. That especially can be how you see it if you're an attorney. And explains how you can lie about a historical American moment (Selma) and twist it into the reason you were born -- even though you were born four years prior to that event.

In today's paper, the editorial board of the New York Times notes the claims Barack made on Charlie Rose's show:

His promises lacked specificity, and some of his descriptions of domestic spy work verged on the misleading.

Mr. Obama said that no phone or Internet conversation can be monitored without a warrant from the court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Asked whether that process should be more transparent, Mr. Obama responded with this astonishing statement: "It is transparent, that’s why we set up the FISA court."

Perhaps the court is transparent to him and the intelligence agencies, but it is utterly opaque to the public.

Bill Van Auken (WSWS) also notes the Rose interview:

Obama gave the interview largely to counter revelations about crimes far more serious than those committed by Nixon and his co-conspirators. Over the past two weeks, documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden have revealed state surveillance programs carried out behind the backs of the American people and in violation of basic constitutional rights that target millions of people in the US and around the world.
“Some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney,’” Obama said in a PBS interview. “Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock and barrel.’ My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?”
These “checks and balances”—a secret FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court that rubber stamps every request from intelligence agencies—had made the spying programs “transparent,” Obama claimed. The only ones in the dark are the millions of Americans being spied upon and having their rights to privacy and free speech shredded by measures traditionally associated with a police state.

Eric London (WSWS) quotes Barack from the interview stating, "The one thing people should understand about all these programs is they have disrupted plots." It's a shocking statement that goes completely against the American experiment in democracy.

It also doesn't play too well overseas which may explain this photo -- and everyone in it not wishing to stand close to Barack.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Barack's unconstitutional and undemocratic spying