Reply #54: Obama fought and defeated the 2008 SCOTUS ruling

[Bluesbreaker]

He continued the Bush policy of putting prisoners in non-U.S. detention facilities (e.g., Bagram), where they would not even have the rights afforded to Guantanamo prisoners.

In February 2009, the Obama administration shocked many civil libertarians by filing a brief in federal court that, in two sentences, declared that it embraced the most extremist Bush theory on this issue -- the Obama DOJ argued, that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.

Obama's brief said he agreed in full with the Bush/Cheney position. He argued that the President has the power to abduct, transport and imprison people in Bagram indefinitely with no charges of any kind. He told the courts that they have no authority to "second-guess" his decisions when it comes to war powers.

This is what Barack Obama has done to the habeas clause of the Constitution: if you are in Thailand (as one of the petitioners in the case was) and the U.S. abducts you and flies you to Guantanamo, then you have the right to have a federal court determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold you. If, however, President Obama orders that you be taken to from Thailand to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then you will have no rights of any kind, and he can order you detained there indefinitely without any right to a habeas review.

That's just one civil liberties issue on which President Obama has departed dramatically from candidate Obama. Anytime there is a corporate interest at stake, Obama sides with the corporations and against consumers and the American public. Read the current Mother Jones feature on how the administration was complicit in a coverup to protect BP and Big Oil's continued access to deep water drilling. Or read the posts on DU by madfloridian about what Obama and Arne Duncan are doing to the country's public schools. He's worse than Bush on many issues, but he gets a pass because he flies the Democratic flag.