Pardon the Constitutional Dust
July 19th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
A theme is developing at the Netroots Nation Convention: Don’t expect Senator Obama to be the magic bullet when it comes to cleaning up the wreckage of eight years of George W.’s misrule.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based legal advocacy organization hosted a panel Saturday afternoon on Guantanamo and Habeas Corpus and what the president can do in the first 100 days of his term to restore the Constitution and the Rule of Law.
As Americans we are hooked on the idea that any problem can be solved with 10 simple solutions or in some given number of days. Yesterday, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke plugged his 12 solutions for our national security crisis at his panel.
The consensus on today’s panel of lawyers and journalists was that it will take more than a push broom and 100 days to clean upDubya’s mess. The picture was bleak: our Constitution is in tatters and the Supreme Court and Congress have descended into an Alice in Wonderland world where right is wrong and up is down.
Admittedly, it was depressing. Still it was energizing to see a large room nearly filled with extremely concerned and pissed-off citizens. At one point, an attendee stood up and asked what bloggers and activists could do to turn the ship around.
Panelist Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (yes his book was plugged at the panel) encouraged attendees to spend less time behind the computer and more time in the streets protesting.
Scahill saved his most scathing remarks for Congressional Democrats, including Barack Obama, commenting that instead of defining themselves as a real opposition party, the Dems had undermined efforts to hold Bush’s administration accountable. “Bush is operating in an enforcement-free zone inside the United States and outside the United States,” he said.
Scahill warned that the U.S. was in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in history with a record number of private contractors carrying out government duties around the world. To illustrate this, he reminded the audience that Blackwater and Dyncorp were at the moment guarding Sen. Obama as he toured Afghanistan and Iraq.
ACLU Lawyer and panelist Jameel Jaffar told the audience that it was wrong and dangerous to blame Bush for everything. He cited the Supreme Court and Congress as miserable failures when it came to defending democracy and the Constitution.
“Ultimately, it will take more than a change in administration to effect the change we want,” he said. “The most important thing in the first 100 days is to set up a truth and accountability mechanism like the 9-11 Commission,” he suggested.
The take-home message was that American citizens need to keep a close eye on their government — now more than ever — and hold political leaders accountable. This includes Barack Obama, no matter how badly Democrats want to see him in the White House.
Scahill exhorted the crowd — many of them Obama supporters — to “cheat” on their candidate with a little bit of conscience.
“John McCain and a head of lettuce could get the same number of votes,” he said, drawing laughs from the crowd. “Now is when you really need to hold Obama’s feet to the fire, because he needs your votes and he needs your money — he won’t need them after November.”
July 20th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Those damned once-every-four-years accountability moments.
You — or maybe it was somebody on that panel — made a great point, Melissa: if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi won’t hold Bush accountable for anything, what do you suppose a veto-proof majority and a Democratic president can screw up in four years? Or two?
They have a big to-do list waiting for them in six months, and I just don’t think they can stop the wars and fix the economy if they can’t even compel Karl Rove to testify.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
[…] Pardon the Constitutional Dust […]
July 20th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I was a little disappointed in the the panel and quite frankly, the audience members. Particularly when Dahlia Litwick would speak in broad, snarky terms about torture, everyone would just sort of chuckle like, “Oh, that silly administration.” We should be enraged. Scahill seemed somewhat genuinely angry about…well, everything, but everyone else kind of made light of what a horribly depressing state of affairs our government is in.
I also didn’t feel as though there was any defined “roadmap” as advertised — just the panelists pointing out their various complaints with the government and with Congress not holding the people in charge accountable. Aside from “We’re all screwed!” I didn’t really get what the take-away message was supposed to be.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
So where does the vague note of disapproval about authors wanting to sell books come from?
While I consider it a good investment, the Texas Observer don’t come over my transom for free, either.