Obama refuses to release visitor logs: Yet another instance of more of the same...
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Obama dreams up policies even Bush couldn't think of: In this videoclip, Democracy Now and Vince Warren (of the Center for Constitutional Rights) outline Obama's new policy of "preventive detention," which is a sexy way of saying "we are going to lock people up even if they haven't committed a crime." Where are our morals??
Is Obama Really that Different from Bush?
Bush's Third Term?: This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?
There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some 'due process' even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.
The News and Us
The News and Us: Paul Krugman muses about why news outlets tend to cover the politics and horserace aspects of things like healthcare far more than they cover the policy substance:
The WaPo ombudsman hits on a pet peeve of mine from way back: reporting that focuses on how policy proposals are supposedly playing, rather than what’s actually in them. Back in 2004 I looked at TV reports on health care plans, and found not a single segment actually explaining the candidates’ plans. This time the WaPo ombud looks at his own paper’s reporting, and it’s not much better.
Why does this happen? I suspect several reasons.
1. It’s easier to research horse-race stuff....2. It’s easier to write horse-race stuff....3. It’s safer to cover the race.
I suspect there at least two other reasons as well.' First, news operations, by definition, report news.' And horserace stuff changes all the time.' There's always something new to report.
But that's not so for the policy stuff.' You can write a big piece comparing the various healthcare proposals out there, and once you've done it, you're done.' You're not going to run another piece a week later covering the exact same ground.' You need to find a new angle.' But policy doesn't change all that much, and there are only just so many fresh angles on this stuff.' So if you're dedicated to reporting on new stuff, you're going to have a tough time writing lots of policy primers.
Second, let's face it: most people fall asleep when they come across stuff like this.' Even here in the blogosphere most readers have only a limited appetite for wonkery, and as Krugman mentions, trying to make this stuff interesting is next to impossible.' 'I’ve spent years trying to learn the craft,' he says, 'and it still often comes out way too dry.'' And that's despite the fact that he has the advantage of writing for the most educated, politically engaged audience you can imagine.
This is only going to get worse.' I don't think mainstream news outlets have ever been all that good at explaining policy, but they've probably gotten worse over the years as attention spans have shortened and the media environment has gotten ever louder and more ubiquitous.' You really can't explain healthcare reform in two minutes, but fewer and fewer people are willing to sit around for much longer than that.
The fault, in other words, lies not in the media, but in ourselves.' The mainstream media may have written ten times as much about the townhalls as they did about the actual substance of the healthcare proposals on the table, but the blogosphere only did a little better.' Even here in wonkland, the outrage of the day is a much more tempting blog topic than reimbursement rates for Medicare.
Emperor Barack
David Swanson's "Emperor Barack": In this article, David Swanson outlines the case that, in many ways, Obama is indistinguishable from the man we claimed ran away with the Executive branch just a year ago.
The Public's Right to Know
The Public's Right to Know: Today Adam Liptak gives us yet another reason to lament the financial meltdown in the newspaper industry.' In the past, it was most often newspapers that filed lawsuits demanding access to information that had been placed off limits for one reason or another.' But as their finances dwindle they can't afford to file these kinds of suits as often, and other types of publishers don't want to:
Consider the aftermath of a recent settlement in a lawsuit against Amtrak....As part of the settlement, the parties asked Judge Lawrence F. Stengel of Federal District Court in Philadelphia not only to vacate eight of his decisions in the case but also to ‘direct LexisNexis and Westlaw to remove the decisions’ from ‘their respective legal research services/databases.’
The judge agreed, and the database companies complied.
‘In the infrequent event that we are ordered by the court to remove a decision from Westlaw,’ explained John Shaughnessy, a spokesman for the service, which is owned by ThomsonReuters, ‘we will comply with the order, deleting the text of the decision but keeping the title of the case and its docket number. We also publish the court’s order to remove so there’s a clear record of the action.’
In cases like this, newspapers have traditionally refused to cooperate.' What's more, they filed suits to keep this kind of information public not just out of concern for their business, but because their owners were genuinely obsessed with First Amendment rights.' Newer businesses, conversely, tend to either have reason to cooperate with the government, or else think of these suits strictly from a perspective of whether they're economically worth it.' We've still got the ACLU, of course, but they can't pick up all the slack.' In the great power struggle between government secrecy and the public's right to know, the demise of the newspaper industry is a victory for the bad guys.
"(Via MoJo Blogs and Articles.)
Government To Ban Unwanted 'Robocalls'
Government To Ban Unwanted 'Robocalls': "
The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it is banning many types of prerecorded telemarketing solicitations. Currently, consumers must specifically join a do-not-call list to avoid them. Starting Sept. 1, telemarketers will first need written permission from the customer to make such calls. Violators will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call.
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"(Via Top Stories.)
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