A fading sheen?

Now that the Democratic nomination has wound down and Obama has emerged as the victor, the main stream media, driven by the hard right (especially the self avowed McCain "surrogate" Faux News) have started attacking Obama's positions. The most common attacks are the blatant lies - the "Obama is a secret Muslim" and "Obama says high gas prices are a good thing." What is more insidious, though, are the attempts to portray Obama's long held positions as "flip-flops."

Julie over at Momocrats has a great series of posts (starting here) addressing a few key issues. As she points out: on the death penalty he has consistently been against killing innocents, but not against capital punishment in general; on gun control - "I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of . . . gun ownership . . . We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment."; FISA I will address later in this post.

Other attacks like this include NAFTA - his position has been that we need to renegotiate NAFTA, not drop it completely. His problem with NAFTA has been that there are no environmental protections and no worker protections. This allows manufacturing jobs that paid well and were union jobs here in America to be sent to Mexico and Canada where the workers can be paid less and there are fewer environmental protections. He wants to fix these issues; he does not want to unilaterally drop out.

Then there is Iraq. Obama has, since 2003, been against Iraq. But now you are seeing people attack him saying he doesn't intend to leave and in the same breath attack him for being a "cut and run Democrat." They can't have it both ways. Obama's stance has been "We have to be more careful getting out than we were careless getting in." This means that while he intends to pull most of our troops out in 12-18 months, he is not going to do something stupid that leaves us in a worse position than we already are in.

Just this past weekend we had yet another instance of this. General Wesley Clark said "Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." On its surface, it's true. However, McCain did serve in the military, achieving the rank of captain. This is a record of service that, as Obama has said for months, deserves our recognition. He has also consistently, even through the primary campaign, been against personal, ad hominem attacks. Thus, when he rejected General Clark's attack, he was not flip-flopping or throwing Clark under the bus, he was staying consistent with his message of bringing politics out of the gutter.

The last of these I want to focus on is the FISA legislation. In general, I am against these reforms. However, I have not read the legislation myself and I don't know all of the reforms it will be implementing. The one that I am most strongly against is the telecom immunity clause that will ensure no one is held responsible for completely ignoring the Constitution during Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. When this came up for vote a few months ago, Obama voted against cloture and co-sponsored an amendment with Sen. Dodd to strip the immunity clause. It has come back up for vote in the Senate and this time Obama did not vote on the cloture vote (neither did McCain or Clinton). He has, however said he will continue to push to remove the immunity. Without having researched this bill better, I can't make a complete judgment on his general support of the bill. As far as whether he has changed his position, that is harder to say; he still is fighting against the immunity, but it appears he has weakened his position on the bill at large.

Now all of this does not mean he hasn't changed position on things. The most talked about change has been his stance on public financing in his campaign. Back in 2007, he did say that as long as his Republican counterpart chose to accept public financing, so would he. This clearly is not happening. To explain this, he has said that with 1.7 million donors nationwide, his campaign is being financed by the public, but that ignores some of the other catches tied in with federal public financing. Personally, I am mixed on this. As an idealist, I would like for the public financing system to work and allow good campaigns. However, the other side is best summed up in a cartoon BAC posted a week ago:

There is also the issue of Israel. Throughout his career he has remained fairly neutral on this. However, after securing the nomination he spoke before AIPAC and came down very strongly pro-Israel. This really disappointed me. It weakens his ability to be a fair arbiter of any peace deal between Israel and Palestine. As of yet, I have not heard him address the issues raised in this speech.

I think Julie's final assessment is very accurate. Obama's positions are much more nuanced than a 10 second sound bite. This is something that draws me to him because it breaks away from the "with us or against us" mentality of the past eight years. But it is much harder to convey to the wider public and can be has been used against him. What should be the MSM's job, conveying the facts of the issues, has now fallen to us, the bloggers and grass roots activists.

FISA Failure

This afternoon, at 12:48 PM EDT, the House of Representatives signed away our fourth amendment rights. After a year of wrangling, the Bush administration was able to convince 105 Democrats, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, to vote for this horribly flawed bill. And because the fourth amendment wasn't enough for them, they have established a precedent of allowing the Bush administration to ignore whatever other laws they please.

The biggest issue in this bill is how the telecoms are being treated. In the previous bill that the House rejected, telecommunication companies that allowed the justice department to set up wiretaps that they knew were not warranted and thus were unconstitutional and illegal were granted unconditional immunity. This time, Kit Bond, who I am ashamed to say is one of my state's Senators, was able to work out a "compromise." Instead of blanket immunity, the FISA court would be able to hear whether or not the companies were given letters in which the administration says that what they want to do is legal. The court is not, however, allowed to judge whether such a statement was legal. Because Alberto Gonzales has already testified to the Senate that such a letter was sent to these companies, the courts will only be allowed to determine whether a well accepted fact is a fact. In other words, the telecos were just voted immunity.

The precedent set is that if the Bush administration breaks a law, and asks others to aid and abet him with it, no one will face any prosecution. All Bush has to do to overturn a 220+ year old amendment is write a letter saying, "Trust me."

On a more positive note, both of the local Congressmen, my own William Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan, both voted against it. I had the pleasure of meeting both of them at the Missouri Democratic Convention and both are upstanding men that deserve the positions they have earned.

I don't know if this updated bill still needs to go before the Senate (I'm 99% sure it does), but I don't hold high hopes that it will be killed there. This leaves us only one last option - the Supreme Court. Even though Congress is stripping the courts of their rights to hear cases on this issue, because it is a Constitutional issue, the Supreme Court can still choose to hear a case. With justices like Alito who believe that since we are at war with "radical islamists" we don't need to follow the Constitution, I fear even that might not be enough.

Welcome Back, Poll Tax

In a number of states, Republican legislatures have been pushing for new voter ID laws that require a government issued photo ID in order to vote. On the surface, this doesn't seem like a bad idea. I mean, you have a drivers license, I have a drivers license, what could go wrong? This is effectively what the Supreme Court just ruled in a case in Indiana.

But look a little deeper and you will see that not only is it an infringement on normal people's right to vote, but also completely ineffective as a vote fraud deterrent.

The biggest issue is the unrealized difficulty in getting these IDs. In order to get a new ID in Indiana (if they follow the same REAL ID rules we here in Missouri do), you need proof of social security number, proof of citizenship, and proof of residence. The first one is usually a social security card, to get a replacement one of these, if you lost (or never had one, say your parents lost it...) it you need to fill out SSA paperwork, get proof of citizenship (see below) and proof of identity (a driver's license...). Already you see the circular nature of these requirements.

Proof of citizenship/age is usually a birth certificate. To get this, you have to get as much information as you can about your birth, send that and a check (price I assume varies by state, usually between $15 and $20) to your state records department and hope they find your records. The difficulty of finding your records depends on the organization of the department, and most importantly of where your parents filed your birth records. If they don't find your record, you are out the fee and up the creek.

Proof of residency is a little bit less onerous, but in some cases much more difficult to get. To prove residence you need one of: utility bill, property tax receipt, bank statement or voter registration card. This is fine if you are living on your own (and have a permanent residence), but if you happen to live in a dorm, with your parents, or are homeless you won't necessarily have anything.

Add to all this the necessity to get to the SSA office and the DMV to file all the paperwork needed, and the cost of the government ID card, you wind up paying $40-$50 to get this information. And the ones that have the most to fight to get these are: elderly, whose paperwork may have long since been lost, if it was filed properly to begin with, and the poor, who have transportation issues, housing issues, and also difficulty getting the paperwork. This implicitly violates the 24th amendment against a poll tax.

Then there is the second sub-issue in that it will be ineffective except as a vote suppression tool. Anyone who works in security knows that a security system is only as strong as it's weakest link. The same holds for this scenario. The ID card you are required to present to vote on its face is pretty secure. It is difficult to forge and very clearly shows who is supposed to own it.

The problem is that all the paperwork required to get one is easily and regularly forged. Illegal immigrants across the country purchase or are given these documents in order to work. Now, instead, all they need to do is forge them, present them to a DMV employee (who won't pay close enough attention to notice a forgery), and walk away looking to all the world a legal voting citizen. This makes the new state IDs inherently flawed from the beginning, but it looks good to the general populace.

Everyone Has Rights

Or why we should have more than two parties

Last Sunday, Ralph Nader declared his candidacy for president this coming election. This has started a hail of denigrations and personal attacks on him, largely from Democrats and other groups on the left.

All I can say to these groups is shame on you! You stand up for civil rights, but when someone else exercises their civil rights in a way you don't like, you want to revoke them. The tactics taken on their behalf to remove his name from the ballots in key states back in 2004 were horrible. Everyone, whether as part of a party or not, has the right to be a part of the election.

As has been said in some free speech debates "To stand up for your right to free speech, you must defend the speech you hate." If anyone is allowed to arbiter who gets to say what because the general public doesn't like it, it is a very short step for that person/group to say I can't speak freely as well. The same thing goes for the right to run for president. It is a very short step for one group to go from blocking one person's right to be on the ballot to blocking someone else they don't like.

These things also remove our ability to argue morality on civil rights. We cannot in good conscious say that one set of rights we like and support, but these rights, or this person's rights, we don't like and so they shouldn't be allowed.

Addressing Nader's candidacy directly: Do I support him? No, but I fully support his right to run. Do I support his positions? Some, but others go too far in a direction I don't approve. I will, after the Democratic nominee has been selected, do a break down on all three major presidential candidates positions, similar to what I have already done. Am I afraid Nader will "steal" this election for the Republicans? No, Nader did not cost Gore the election in 2000. That election was won, by all counts, by Gore. It was handed to Bush by the Supreme Court. Take out your anger there. He had no effect on the election in 2004.

What we need to do is show how our candidate is better than the others, not denigrate the opponents or say that a vote for them is a vote for "the enemy" or other fear tactics like this. I believe that the Democratic candidate can win even against 100 Naders.

Tenth Amendment? Bah!

Ever since the Civil War, this amendment has been more and more marginalized. In three cases ruled on today by the Supreme Court, it has effectively been thrown out the window. The basics of this amendment say that any power the Constitution doesn't give to the federal government, or doesn't explicitly ban, belongs to the states and the people. This gave the states final word on a large number of topics, but kept them from removing civil rights from the people.

Slowly this has been eroded. Recent laws like this include the CAN-SPAM act, which overruled much stronger state based anti-spam laws, throwing out lawsuits that were in court at the time. There are also the medical marijuana laws in California and Oregon that are completely overruled by FDA and other federal blanket bans on the use of it. Today, using the same premise as was used in these cases, the Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings against medical equipment providers. These rulings were prosecuted in state courts on state laws that were more restrictive than FDA and related rules. These infractions caused serious damages to the litigants. The Supreme Court decided that the lesser restrictions provided by the federal government (you know, the FDA that took 5 years to remove heart attack inducing drugs from the market) overrule state laws and indemnify the corporations.

This is a clear violation of the tenth amendment. The states have a very clear law on this and the Constitution doesn't cover this area of law. If there were no state laws and the federal government did have one, the federal law would hold sway. But the Constitution is very clear whose laws take precedence. Our laws and courts should not take away citizens' rights, yet time and again under this administration we have suffered. It is time for a real change.

Integrity and Courage

A lot of noise has been made in the past year about Barack Obama's "present" votes in the Illinois state Senate. The Illinois chapter of NOW has recently joined the Clinton campaign in implying that Obama's present votes on certain bills while in the Illinois state legislature mean he is weak on women's rights; on the contrary, Barack Obama received a 100% positive rating from Planned Parenthood during his state senate career, and has consistently received 100% positive ratings from both Planned Parenthood and NARAL since being elected to the national Senate. Anyone who knows how the state Senate works in Illinois, however, realizes that Present votes are merely procedural votes, and are usually actually a sign of support for the bill . These assertions that Obama is weak on women's rights were so fallacious that former Chicago NOW president (1995 - 1999) and strong Hillary Clinton supporter, Lorna Brett Howard, publicly changed her affiliation and now supports Obama and is now being slimed by NOW and the Clinton campaign.

These tactics are bad enough on their own, but something that happened today in the Senate slams home the irony. Many of you know I have been supporting Sen. Dodd's fight against retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that assisted the government in illegally wiretapping American citizens. This fight has been delayed time and again through numerous procedural tactics, even though Democratic Majority Leader Reid fought hard to bring it to a vote. A civil rights betrayal succeeded today in the Senate when a version of the FISA bill including immunity provisions passed despite Senator Dodd's objections (fortunately the House did not pass the retroactive immunity clause so the fight does go on). In the vote for cloture (end the debate) only 29 people voted against, among them Sen. Obama. Also voted on at the same time was an amendment proposed by Sen. Dodd to remove the retroactive immunity; this vote failed 67 to 31, again with Sen. Obama voting to remove the immunity.

Sen. Clinton on the other hand didn't even have the political courage to vote "present"; she chose not to be there at all.

It doesn't take much integrity to twist your opponent's votes in such a way as to make him appear weak on women's rights. It takes a complete lack of integrity to launch such attacks when you aren't willing to put your voice on either side of the debate for everyone's rights. Sen. Obama has fought for 26 years, from the beginning of his public career for women's, minority, and everyone else's rights - from his time as a community organizer in Chicago, through his time as a civil rights lawyer to his state and federal Senate positions. It takes true political courage to stand up for what is right when it is not popular.

As a side note, my local Senator, Claire McCaskill (also an Obama supporter), voted to bring cloture and against the anti-immunity amendment, a vote which seriously lessens the likelihood of my voting for her again two years from now. We'll have to see.

The EFF has much more information on what the FISA provisions mean for you; check it out and while you are at it throw them some support.

Break Down of the Issues - Part 8

Domestic Policy

Well it looks like I made it before whatever you want to call next Tuesday. This is the last major topic I intend to do a break down on, but if anyone has more areas they would like me to dig into to compare, please feel free to ask in the comments or email me. Once the Republican field has thinned a bit (maybe after today?) I will try to compare them on the same topics.

Domestic policy will be broken up into numerous sections as the candidates go in depth on plans for numerous topics. See also Part 1, Part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7. Again, all of these policy statements are taken from the candidates' campaign websites.

Hillary Clinton	John Edwards	Barack Obama
Civil Liberties
Link Link Link Link	Link Link Link Link Link Link Link	Link Link Link Link(PDF)
Women
Support equal pay for women and men Expand access to family planning services	Require businesses to offer seven paid sick days a year Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover more workers and help states offer paid leave Protect women's right to choose Support the Paycheck Fairness Act to strengthen the remedies for sex discrimination	Work to overturn the Supreme Court's recent ruling that curtails racial minorities' and women's ability to challenge pay discrimination Pass the Fair Pay Act to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work Make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority
LGBT
Ensure that all Americans in committed relationships have equal benefits End Don't Ask Don't Tell	Support civil unions to guarantee gay and lesbian couples the same rights as straight couples Repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act Allow LGBT to serve openly in the military Allow gay and lesbian parents to adopt children equally to strait couples	Support civil unions that give same-sex couples equal legal rights and privileges as married couples Repeal Defence of Marriage Act Expand federal benefits to same sex couples Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell
Government and Elections
Ban cabinet officials from lobbying a Hillary Clinton administration Strengthen whistle blower protections End abuse of no-bid government contracts and post all contracts online Cut 500,000 government contractors Restore the Office of Technology Assessment Publish budgets for every government agency Push the passage of the Count Every Vote Act Provides a paper trail for every vote cast Designates Election Day as a national holiday Allows same-day registration Makes sure that impartial officials administer our elections Allows the attorney general to bring suit against anyone using deceptive practices (like distributing flyers with incorrect information about voter eligibility) to keep voters from voting	Require the use of paper ballots verified by voters and mandatory audits Allow same-day voter registration Support the right of Washington, D.C. residents to have voting representation in Congress Enact a new law making intentional interference with the right to vote a federal offense Prohibit Chief of State election officials from publicly supporting federal candidates Create a federal matching funds program to do an 8:1 match on campaign donations, up to a maximum $800 (donations over $100 still get $800 matched); limit donations to $1,000 Provide for public matching funding for Congressional campaigns Require corporations to disclose all political spending and activity Create a line item veto restricted to one package of rescissions per bill that can be overruled by Congress Prohibit all federal candidates from accepting campaign contributions or bundled contributions from federal lobbyists Bar appointees from lobbying their former colleagues for five years Expand the definition of prohibited lobbying to include directing strategy for other lobbyists Ban corporate lobbyists and lobbyists for foreign governments from working in the White House Require lobbyists to disclose within 48 hours which federal officials they met with and what about Prohibit executive branch employees from accepting corporate gifts End the practice of issuing presidential "signing statements"	Create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings Ensure that any tax breaks for corporate recipients, or tax earmarks, are also publicly available for viewing online Require independent monitoring of lobbying laws and ethics rules Support public financing of campaigns Provide free television and radio time to campaigns Require that nearly all government contract orders over $25,000 be competitively awarded Require all non-emergency bills be available to the American public to review and comment for five days before signing Require disclosure of the name of the legislator who asks for each earmark, along with a written justification, 72 hours before it can be voted on Ensure that all communications about regulatory policymaking between third parties and White House staff are disclosed to the public No political appointees will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years No political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch during the remainder of the administration All new hires at the agencies to sign a form affirming that no political appointee offered them the job solely on the basis of political affiliation or contribution
First Amendment and Privacy
Unable to find specific information on her site	Prohibit surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and emails without a warrant Define robust public interest obligations for digital broadcasters	Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media Promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints Supports restrictions on how personal information may be used and create technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used Update surveillance laws to ensure that law enforcement investigations and intelligence-gathering relating to U.S. citizens are done only under the rule of law Appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer Ensure the safety of our communications networks Ensure that each arm of the federal government makes its records open Ensure technological interoperability of key government functions
Miscellaneous
N/A	Close down Guantanamo Bay Restore habeas corpus	Eliminate sentencing disparities Give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in drug rehabilitation programs

From my cold dead hands

Or, Amendment IV, redux

It becomes even more obvious that the executive branch has no comprehension of the privacy implications of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has ruled time and again in support of personal privacy. This has often gone against various national intelligence agencies' agendas, but now they are pushing to throw personal privacy right out. In a recent speech, the principal deputy director of national intelligence has said we shouldn't have privacy from the government and private companies; we should trust them not to misuse private information.

Just focusing on his speech for a moment, he brings in a number of non-sequiturs:

• "Those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs." - There is a very big difference between a person talking about their private information and private information being taken without one's consent.
• "[People are] perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an (Internet service provider) who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data." - Where do I begin? What does privacy have to do with the immigration debate? Are illegal immigrants the only people ISPs employ? What is an ISP doing monitoring my traffic? As for that last one, I know there is no binding net neutrality legislation (yet), but as has been shown in the recent Comcast and AT & T kurfluffles, ISP customers expect traffic agnostic internet connections.
• "Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety. I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up" - Not a non-sequitur, its actually a false dichotomy. My privacy and other rights are independent of my and this nation's security. "Those who are willing to give up their civil liberties to preserve their safety, deserve neither and will lose both." - Ben Franklin.

If our founding fathers knew that this would happen after all of their sacrifices, we would still be part of England. There are hundreds of issues with these statements. The biggest issue is the call to "just trust us." I'm sure the veterans, the TSA workers, and who knows who else trust the government's handling of private information. I also don't trust what the government will do with that information: a) I don't know how they will sift through it all, b) I don't want to pay someone to do that sifting, and c) what will keep the false positive (whatever constitutes a positive...) rate down?

Thus I will keep my anonymizing and encryption tools, and, as Charlton Heston was known to say in defense of another Constitutional amendment (although I don't completely agree with his views on that): You can pry my software from my cold dead hands.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now, I know this whole Constitution thing has already been sent through the shredder a couple times in the past 7 years (well, and before that too, but I'm not going to go into it right now), but this is becoming ridiculous. The government has been saying for a long time that internet communications should have no expectation of privacy. This case is being fought currently in the federal courts to determine that fact for sure.

The way I see it. Anything I post on a bulletin board, blog, forum, or any other publicly read webpage is fair game. Read it all you want, thats why I put it there. If it is sent in a "private" email however, I expect it to be treated the same as any snail mail envelope. You can read who its from and who it is to, but without a court's approval, you should not be allowed to read the contents.

The government argues, however, that email, for the most part, is sent as plain text and that if they look at the full packet, they didn't really open it... Personally I believe that the headers constitute the envelope and the content is inside it, but if thats the way you want to play it, I am not waiting for a court to give the government a blank check. I have just recently downloaded and installed GNU Privacy Guard on my system. I already had Thunderbird (a great mail client, for anyone out there looking for one, a good replacement for Outlook or hopping between web mail clients). I also downloaded the engimail extension for Thunderbird. Now all of my email is signed (so no one can mess with it and anyone can tell I sent it), and if anyone wants to send me their public key (see sidebar links for more information on what these are and for my public key) I will send them only encrypted emails. Trianglman is the address, gmail is the domain.

Protect your rights. Demand that the Constitution be upheld. Don't sell your rights for a false sense of safety.

Those who would sacrifice their liberty for security deserve neither and will lose both.