Tuesday, June 2, 2009

This is Not the Change We Were Counting On

I am glad that we don't have a president McCain and especially glad that Palin isn't a heartbeat away from the presidency - I really am.  But I am not at all happy to have a president Obama.  While he may be the lesser evil, that is only a matter of degree and with each passing day that degree is shrinking.  I am coming to the conclusion that Obama is liar and not even trying to be subtle about his lies.  His campaign promises are repeatedly turning out to be patently false and the biggest - the one about change - that one has been beaten down the most.  Unless of course you want to count his administrations recent support for overturning Michigan v Jackson, in Montejo v Louisiana.  "Change we can count on" is turning out to be rather frightening.  One of the few times he actually has changed the status quo and it is to remove protections afforded suspects in criminal matters.  From the brief filed by the Obama administration (p10):

The Jackson rule was based on the belief that the concern about coercion in the Fifth Amendment context is also present in the Sixth Amendment context.  Jackson, 475 U.S. at 631-632.  But that assumption is unfounded. The Sixth Amendment does not protect a defendant against official compulsion; it ensures that he will have the assistance of counsel to guide him through the intricacies of the trial process and ensure that his trial is fair.

But how can a trial be fair, if the police are allowed to coerce a confession out of the suspect?  How is such interrogation not part of the intricacies of the trial through which counsel is supposed to guide the defendant through? 

This ruling gives the police carte blanche to charge a suspect, arraign said suspect and then utilize the coercion that the fifth amendment prohibits, because the suspect is no longer a suspect, but a defendant.  This is nothing less than providing the police and prosecutors an end-run around the fifth amendment.  And there are damned good reasons we put these protections in place.  Because even within the parameters of how suspects, defendants and prisoners must be treated, there is a lot of room for pushing suspects to confess to crimes they may or may not have committed.  We have ample evidence that people will confess to crimes they didn't commit, because of the pressure brought to bear by law enforcement - and that's with these rules in place.  Weakening these rules just leaves law enforcement more room in which to push people into confessions and will inevitably lead to more miscarriages of justice.

I also think that hammering Obama personally for this is entirely justified.  It's not like he is unaware of the intricacies of the law.  He's a con-law scholar and knows full well what this means.  I am sick and fucking tired of this worn out argument that Obama can't know everything that's happening - can't just micro-manage every little thing.  These are not little things.  Continuing the Bush administrations propensity for secrecy is not a little thing and the bones we've been thrown do not balance out what's missing.  He had an opportunity to intervene in the case of Charlie Lynch and refused - in spite of his vow to stop prosecuting medical marijuana. 

I am not all that keen on writing about politics.  I have simply gotten burnt out and become increasingly jaded.  But the actions of the Obama administration have become so egregious that there is no way to avoid exposing the hypocrisy and outright lies to the hard light of day.  Bush was an atrocity and as far as I'm concerned belongs in prison.  But there was little question where he stood after his first term (and arguably before).  Obama on the other hand, is becoming more of an unknown, as he proves over and over that what he said he would do bears no relation to what he's doing.  When all we have to go by is a lot of lies told to become president, it's impossible to know what he'll do next.  There are still advantages to having Obama in the oval office, instead of McCain - but those advantages are a scant few, no matter how important they might be.  And at the rate he's going, this will be his only term and gods forbid, any SCOTUS seats that open up in four years may well get filled by a fucking republican nut.

HT/Ed Brayton


4 comments:

Dan J said...

If you are ever arrested you need to forget something that Mommy taught you years ago; that police officers are your friends. Once you're under arrest, they are not your friends. They are legally allowed to lie to you, and will try damn near anything to get you to tell them what they want to hear (note that this is not in any way equivalent to "the truth"). Don't tell them anything other than your name except on the advice of an attorney, who should be present (insist on this!) during any and all questioning. Don't volunteer anything!

Jason Thibeault said...

I think the big problem is, America's craving a real liberal in office, and regardless of what the fundagelicals and last-25-percent Republicans might tell you about that arugula-loving socialist, Obama's actually shaping up to be one of the better conservative presidents you've had in a long while. The media has shifted the Overton window of what's acceptable in politics so much over the last 40-odd years that Obama looked like a liberal to everyone concerned, but turned out to be a barely-left-of-center President all-told. He was elected to shake things up, but he's taking too long to do it, if he intends on doing it at all. And if he does, he should be pushing harder than he is, and listening less to the back-room rumblings of the entrenched political class that's still around in Washington (I mean, seriously, how many of his campaign promises were tempered almost immediately after a secretive meeting with the powers-that-be? How obvious can you get?).

Elected as "change you can believe in", turns out to be a centrist pragmatist rather than a true progressive, and the progressives are understandably feeling burned. The actual politicians lag public sentiment by several years. What worries me is that in the next election cycle, rather than electing a more progressive Democrat (or hell, a Socialist like Bernie Sanders!), they'll give the Republicans another do-over and they'll just fuck things right up again.

Juniper Shoemaker said...

Obama on the other hand, is becoming more of an unknown, as he proves over and over that what he said he would do bears no relation to what he's doing.

This is a bit rich, from my pro-science funding point of view. Did you intend this post to foster a debate about whether or not the Sixth Amendment affords a suspect so much protection (in terms of the guarantee of legal counsel) as to render the Jackson rule redundant, or did you merely write it to strongly intimate that you'd rather have another Republican administration because, by God, at least those right-wingers are consistent? ('Cause that's all that matters! Wait . . .)

For the record, from what I can tell, the Obama Administration's support for the overturn of Michigan v. Jackson is definitely a step in the wrong-ass direction. This support and his administration's Bush-like proclivities regarding (non)transparency (among several other issues!) seriously disappoint me. Still. For someone like me, there is a huge difference between a President Obama and a President McCain.

DuWayne Brayton said...

Did you intend this post to foster a debate about whether or not the Sixth Amendment affords a suspect so much protection (in terms of the guarantee of legal counsel) as to render the Jackson rule redundant, or did you merely write it to strongly intimate that you'd rather have another Republican administration because, by God, at least those right-wingers are consistent?

Where the hell would you get the idea that I would prefer a republican?!? Seriously, I think I am quite clear that one of my biggest fears is that Obama is going to alienate the electorate and in four years we'll have some rightwing nut filling vacancies on SCOTUS again.

This is a bit rich, from my pro-science funding point of view.

I honestly don't think that that and the couple of other bones he's thrown, make up for the outright lies.

Still. For someone like me, there is a huge difference between a President Obama and a President McCain.

I can respect that and do. But for me there really isn't and on this issue in particular, I sincerely doubt a McCain administration would have filed that brief. That doesn't mean I wish we had a president McCain, the SCOTUS issue alone is sufficient. But I only wish we didn't have a Obama administration slightly less than I am glad we don't have a McCain administration.