Indefinite Domestic Military Detentions

By Stephen Lendman
(Editor’s Note: Please see our addendum articles on same topic, including an “explanation” by Sen. Carl Levin (left)—a Democrat—one of the main figures behind this abomination. Proof of the treachery of the Democratic party as bastion of defense for the citizens of the US emerges every day. Imagine if they’re already deforming and denying the Constitution, essentially suspending vital democratic guarantees, what the ruling circles will rig up if OWS gathers steam.)

Congress is now considering legislative language to mandate indefinite military detentions of US citizens suspected of present or past associations with alleged terrorist groups, with or without evidence to prove it. More on that below. The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other constitutional protections.

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA). The phrase “unprivileged enemy belligerent” replaced “unlawful enemy combatant.”

Language changed but not intent or lawlessness. Obama embraces the same Bush agenda, including keeping Guantanamo open after promising to close it, allowing torture there and abroad, and treating US citizens as lawlessly as foreign nationals.

MCA grants sweeping police state powers, including that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever….relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission (including) challenges to the lawfulness of (its) procedures….”

MCA scraped habeas protection (dating back to the 1215 Magna Carta) for domestic and foreign state enemies, citizens and non-citizens alike.

It says “Any person is punishable… who….aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures,” and in so doing helps a foreign enemy, provide “material support” to alleged terrorist groups, engages in spying, or commits other offenses previously handled in civil courts. No evidence is needed. Those charged are guilty by accusation.

Other key provisions include:

legalizing torture against anyone, letting the president decide what procedures can be used on his own authority;
denying detainees international law protection;
letting the executive interpret or ignore international and US law;
letting the president convene “military commissions” at his discretion to try anyone he designates an “unprivileged enemy belligerent,” detaining them indefinitely in secret;
denying speedy trials or none at all;
letting torture coerced confessions be used as evidence in trial proceedings, despite US and international law prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions;
letting hearsay and secret evidence be used; and
denying due process and judicial fairness overall.

On May 21, 2009, Obama addressed national security and civil liberties issues, including Guantanamo detainees, military commissions, and torture.

Saying his “single most important responsibility as president is to keep the American people safe,” he bogusly claimed Al Qaeda “is actively planning to attack us again (and) this threat will be with us for a long time….”

He added that uncharged detainees “who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people” (with or without evidence to prove it) will be held indefinitely without trial.

Obama’s March 7, 2011 Executive Order authorized military commission trials for Guantanamo detainees with revamped procedures, despite pledging to close the prison.

Congress Considers New Freedom-Stripping Legislation

On October 17, 2011, the ACLU addressed Section 1031 of S. 1253: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, saying it “significantly curtails existing protections against indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

It goes beyond previous laws by hardening them extrajudicially.

The last time Congress authorized indefinite detentions for uncharged US citizens without trial was in 1950. The Emergency Detention Act provision of the Internal Security Act authorized incarceration for those considered likely to commit espionage or sabotage.

It was never used, then repealed by the 1971 Non-Detenton Act, stating:

“No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.”

At issue was never again subjecting US citizens to lawless internment the way Japanese Americans were treated in 1942, forcing loyal citizens into War Relocation Camps.

Section 1031 of S. 1253 “would be the first exception to the statute’s protections.” Subsection (d) provides US citizens “little or no” indefinite detention protections domestically or abroad.

The provision refers solely to “citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States.” However, the Constitution fully protects them.

“Section 1031 could cause cleared naturalized United States citizens and cleared immigrants to be sent to a foreign country, even in the absence of any wrongdoing.”

Subsection (c) provides four options:

indefinite detention without charge;

military commission trials;

trial by another tribunal; or

transfer “to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.”

Even someone erroneously arrested and cleared of wrongdoing could be held indefinitely without charge, given non-civil trials, or sent abroad.

Post-9/11, Arab and/or Muslim Americans lawlessly experienced “roundups” because of their faith and ethnicity. Latino immigrants face similar abuse.

Section 1031 would authorize similar practices. Military forces could be used. US citizens would be terrorized, detained and held indefinitely without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, baseless allegations or none at all.

No reasonable proof is required, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Under subsection (b)(1), indefinite detentions can follow mere membership or support for suspect organizations.

US citizens at home and abroad could be detained. Presidents would have unchecked authority to arrest, interrogate and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat.

Constitutional, statute and international law won’t apply. Martial law will replace it. As a result, anyone for any reason or none at all could be indefinitely detained for life without charges or trial.

Section 1031 exceeds the laws of war. Its ambiguities and excesses would institute extrajudicial national security state terror. No one anywhere would be safe.

It calls “covered persons” anyone captured or detained, even unconnected to hostilities. In other words, the executive could order anyone indefinitely incarcerated on his say alone. The provision would exceed current presidential authority.

Like the companion House bill, detention would be authorized based on alleged prior associations with suspect groups. US military personnel anywhere in the world would be able to seize US citizens and others.

Anyone could be incarcerated for life with no possibility for redress. Section 1032 requires suspects held in military custody, outside constitutionally mandated civil protections.

Due process and judicial review won’t apply. Police state lawlessness could terrorize anyone suspected of terrorist group ties without proof.

In other words, presidents could order anyone imprisoned for life without cause. Despotic regimes operate this way. So would America more extrajudicially than ever.

Tyranny will replace constitutional law. Middle of the night arrests could become common. No one anywhere would be safe, including unjustly accused citizens.

The ACLU calls indefinite detention without judicial review “an appalling abuse of power. We know that our government has already mistakenly detained hundreds of people on suspicion of terrorism over the past 10 years.”

“Many have languished in custody for years with no way to even assert their innocence or address the evidence against them. All people are entitled to due process.”

Imagine new likely power abuses, including claiming OWS protesters threaten America.

Imagine human and civil rights workers, as well as anti-war activists targeted.

Imagine anyone challenging wealth and power interests at risk.

Imagine an America more than ever not fit to live in, and nowhere to hide.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

ADDENDUM

Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms?

by Andrew P. Napolitano, December 01, 2011

Can the president use the military to arrest anyone he wants, keep that person away from a judge and jury, and lock him up for as long as he wants? In the Senate’s dark and terrifying vision of the Constitution, he can.

Congress is supposed to work in public. That requirement is in the Constitution. It is there because the folks who wrote the Constitution had suffered long and hard under the British Privy Council, a secret group that advised the king and ran his government. We know from the now-defunct supercommittee, and other times when Congress has locked its doors, that government loves secrecy and hates transparency. Transparency forces the government to answer to us. Secrecy lets it steal our liberty and our property behind our backs.

Last week, while our minds were on family and turkey and football, the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to meet in secret. So, behind closed doors, it drafted an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the Pentagon. The amendment would permit the president to use the military for law enforcement purposes in the United States. This, of course, would present a radical departure from any use to which the military has been put in the memory of any Americans now living.

The last time the federal government regularly used the military for domestic law enforcement was at the end of Reconstruction in the South, in 1876. In fact, the deal to end Reconstruction resulted in the enactment of federal laws forbidding the domestic use of American military for law enforcement purposes. This has been our law, our custom, and our set of values to which every president has adhered for 135 years.

It is not for directing traffic that this legislation would authorize the president to use the military. Essentially, this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases. And that person, under this terrifying bill, would have no recourse to a judge to require the president either to file charges against him or to set him free.

Can you imagine an America in which you could lose all liberty — from the presumption of innocence to the right to counsel to fairness from the government to a jury trial — simply because the president says you are dangerous?

Nothing terrified or animated the Founders more than that. The Founders, who wrote the Constitution, had just won a war against a king who had less power than this legislation will give to the president. But to protect their freedoms, they wrote in the Constitution the now iconic guarantee of due process. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Note, the Founders used the word “person.” Thus, the requirement of due process must be accorded to all human beings held by the government — not just Americans, not just nice people, but all persons. When Lincoln tried to deny this during the Civil War, the Supreme Court rejected him and held that the Constitution guarantees its protections to everyone that the government restrains, no matter the crime, no matter the charge, no matter the evidence, no matter the danger.

If this legislation becomes law, it will be dangerous for anyone to be right when the government is wrong. It will be dangerous for all of us. Just consider what any president could get away with. Whom would he make disappear first? Might it be his political opponents? Might it be you?

COPYRIGHT 2011 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM.
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Levin floor statement on detainee provisions of NDAA

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Following is an unofficial transcript of Sen. Levin’s remarks today on the Senate floor regarding detainee provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012:

There have been so many misstatements of fact that have been made, it’s hard to keep up with them, but let me just take the last statement that the senator from Illinois made about changing military tribunal law. There is no change in military tribunal law whatsoever which is made in this bill

Now, I’m going to address the other misstatements that have been made by my friends and colleagues, but that one is the most recent so I want to just take on that one first.

Now, in terms of constitutional provisions, the ultimate authority on the constitution of the United States is the Supreme Court of the United States, and here is what they have said. In the Hamdi case about the issue which both our friends have raised about American citizens being subject to the law of war. “A citizen,” the Supreme Court said in 2004, “no less than an alien, can be part of supporting forces hostile to the United States and engage in armed conflict against the United States. Such a citizen,” referring to an American citizen, “if released would pose the same threat of returning to the front during the ongoing conflict.” And here is the bottom line for the Supreme Court. If we just take this one line out of this whole debate, it would be a breath of fresh air to cut through some of the words that have been used here this morning, one line. “There is no bar to this nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.” Okay? That’s not me, that’s not Senator Graham, that’s not Senator McCain. That’s the Supreme Court of the United States recently. “There is no bar to this nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.”

…

Now, there are a number of sections in this bill. My dear friend Senator Udall says these sections as though it is a whole bunch of sections which are at issue. There is really only one section which is at issue here, and that’s Section 1032, and that’s the so-called mandatory detention section that has a waiver in it. Section 1031 was written and approved by the administration. Okay? Section 1031, which my friend from Illinois has just said is an abomination, was written and approved by the administration. Now, Section 1031 is the authorities section. This authorizes. It doesn’t mandate anything with the waiver, the 1032 does. Section 1031.

And now I’m going to use the words in the administration’s own so-called SAP, or statement of administration policy. This is what the administration says about section 1031. “The authorities codified in this section already exist.” So they don’t think it’s necessary, 1031, but they don’t object to it. Their words. The authorities in 1031 already exist. They do. What this does is incorporate already existing authorities from Section 1031. Unnecessary in the view of the administration, yeah, but they helped write it and they approved it. We made changes in it. We have made so many changes in this language to satisfy the administration, I think it all comes down to one section, 1032. 1032 is the issue. Not all the sections, by the way, which would be stricken by the Udall amendment. The Udall amendment would strike all the sections, but it really comes down to Section 1032.

[Section] 1032 is the so-called mandatory provision, which, by the way, does not apply to American citizens. I better say that over again. Senator Graham said it, but let me say it over again. The most controversial provision, probably the only one in this bill, is Section 1032. Section 1032 says that the requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States. I guess that’s the second thing that I would like for colleagues to take away from what I say, is that section — and Senator Graham said the same thing — Section 1032, the mandatory section that has the waiver in it, does not by its own words apply to citizens of the United States. It has a waiver provision in it to make this flexible, and the way in which 1032 operates is that it says that if it’s determined, if it’s determined that a person is a member of al Qaeda, then that person will be held in military detention, they are at war with us, folks. Al Qaeda is at war with us. They brought that war to our shores. This isn’t just a foreign war. They brought that war to our shores on 9/11. They are at war with us. The Supreme Court said — and I’m going to read these words again – “there is no bar to this nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.” They brought this war to us, and if it’s determined that even an American citizen is a member of al Qaeda, then you can apply the law of war, according to the Supreme Court. That’s not according to the armed services committee, our bill or any one of us. That’s the Supreme Court speaking.

Who determines it? What we say to give the administration the flexibility that they want, the administration makes that determination, the procedures to make that determination. Who writes those procedures? We don’t write them. By explicitly, the executive branch writes those procedures. Can those procedures interfere with an ongoing interrogation or investigation? No. By our own language, it says that they shall not interfere with interrogation or intelligence gathering. That’s all in here. The only way this could interfere with an operation of the executive branch is if they decided to interfere themselves in their own operation. They are given explicitly the authority to write the procedures. I think we ought to debate about what is in the bill, and what is in the bill is very different from what our colleagues who support the Udall amendment have described. Yes, we are at war and yes we should codify how we handle detention, and this is an effort to do that, and as the administration says itself, we are not changing anything here in terms of section 1031, we are simply codifying existing law. The issue really relates to 1032.

And that’s what we ought to debate. Should somebody when it’s been determined by procedures adopted by the executive branch, been determined to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? And the answer is yes. But should flexibility be in here so the administration can provide a waiver even in that case? Yes.

And finally, about civilian trials, I happen to agree with my friend from Illinois, and he is a dear friend of mine. Civilian trials work. There is nothing in this provision that says civilian trials won’t be used, even if it’s determined that somebody is a member of al Qaeda. Not only doesn’t it prevent civilian trials from being used, we explicitly provide that civilian trials are available in all cases. It’s written right in here. I — I happen to like civilian trials a lot. I participated in a lot of them, and they are very appropriate, and we have a very good record. In the case that you mentioned, the senator from Illinois mentioned, excuse me, that case was a Michigan case. I know a lot about that case. It was the right way to go. I prefer civilian trials in many, many cases. This bill doesn’t say that we’re going to be using military commissions in lieu of civilian trials. That is a decision which we leave where it belongs, in the executive branch, but we do one thing in this bill in Section 1031, which needs to be said. We are at war with al Qaeda and people determined to be part of al Qaeda should be treated as people who are at war with us. But even with that statement, we give the administration a waiver. That’s how much flexibility we give to the executive branch.

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Time for Obama to Act to End Police-State Violence against the Occupiers

By Dave Lindorff, This Can’t Be Happening

Through his silence alone, Obama is condoning the police abuse of demonstrators of the Occupy Movement

The scenes of riot-gear-clad police assaulting peaceful demonstrators with everything from tear gas and mace to truncheons, point-blank shots with beanbags and rubber bullets, and of course the ubiquitous fist and club, have made a bad joke out of claims that America is either the land of the free or the home of the brave.

Scott Olson, a veteran of America’s Iraq War, suffered a severe brain injury that nearly killed him, and left him with difficulty speaking, thanks to a shot to his head by an attacking police officer in Oakland with a gun-fired teargas canister. Olsen is lucky to be alive. A comrade, veteran Kayvan Sabehgi, who was retreating from advancing police that same night with his hands tucked in his pockets, was chased and so brutally beaten by another attacking thug cop that he had to be hospitalized for treatment of a lacerated spleen.

Old women, pregnant mothers-to-be, and even children have been sprayed with pepper spray, teargassed and terrorized by police goons in New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere in what is almost certainly a coordinated attack on the Occupy Movement being run out of Washington.

President Obama has remained shamelessly silent about this police-state behavior by the nation’s local police forces, all of them armed and armored with the aid of Federal Homeland Security grants, and working on the basis of “intelligence” collected by federally-funded Fusion Centers” and federally- run Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

This is the moment that Obama, who faces an election in less than a year, has to demonstrate whether he is the president of the banks that have so lavishly funded his first campaign, that continue to pour money into his current re-election campaign, and that are urging this crackdown on protests, or the people — especially the young people — who worked so hard to put him into office in the first place.

The thuggish attacks on the peaceful protesters of the Occupy Movement are even more brutal than were many of the attacks on the Civil Rights Movement marchers of the 1950s and ’60s. The only thing lacking right now from those dark days are the murders and the dogs, but no doubt those will be next, as the movement demanding economic justice for the 99% and punishment for the 1% builds further.

Back in the 1950s, an earlier president, former Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhour, witnessing the atrocities of local police in Arkansas and other jurisdictions, did the right thing. He ordered out the National Guard to defend the civil rights of young black people who wanted to be able to attend public schools and colleges, and those week-end soldiers defended the people and the Constitution and kept the cops and their dogs at bay.

Now President Obama must do the same thing. Whether or not his Department of Homeland Security and his Justice Department have been orchestrating the attacks on demonstrators in the Occupy Movement, Obama must now order out the Guard and instruct them to defend the protesters and the Constitution. It would be a welcome new assignment for the Guard, which for the past decade has been wrongly shipped out of the country to help wage imperialist wars on Iraqis and Afghans.

If he does this, he instantly wins back the army of young people who once worked so tirelessly for his historic election in 2008. If he doesn’t do it, and allows the brutality and the thuggishness to continue to escalate, his reelection hopes are toast, and deservedly so.

The Obama presidency has been one of the greatest disasters for progressives in modern history, as a man who ran for office calling for change and for a new respect for the Constitution, almost immediately picked up where his predecessor had left off, escalating the country’s illegal wars, enlarging the share of the nation’s wealth going to the Pentagon and to the secret intelligence services, shoveling money to the biggest banks, endorsing the torture abuses at Guantanamo and at the many CIA black-sites around the world, authorizing the summary execution of American citizens abroad, and ignoring the looming catastrophe of global climate change.

It took some time, but out of this wreckage and betrayal, a movement has arisen, led by young people — many of them the very young people who worked so tirelessly for Obama. Now they are boldly demanding a government that works on behalf of the majority, not of the rich and powerful.

For their efforts, they are being assaulted by a police force that has been turned, over the last decade of a fraudulent, trumped-up “War” on Terror, into a kind of American Gestapo, that “polices” communities with assault weapons, enters homes wearing masks, beats and gasses people without even bothering to arrest them, kills unarmed citizens with impunity, and considers criticism of its actions tantamount to a crime in itself, meriting assault and/or arrest.

Obama has overseen and even been the author of much of this disaster, but he still has a choice at this point: Either put an immediate stop to this outrage, by inserting the National Guard between these thugs in blue or black, and the people, and start listening and responding to the demands of the Occupy Movement, or go down to defeat next November as the man who buried American democracy and freedom.

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Yes, It Is Immoral to Vote for Obama

Charles M. Young, This Can’t Be Happening
What is this man? A supreme cynic or a consummate hypocrite, or both?

Mike Whitney wrote a great column recently titled “Is It Immoral to Vote for Obama?” Based on Obama’s predilection to kill large numbers of people around the Middle East in pursuit of foreign policy objectives, Whitney argued, it would indeed be immoral to vote for him. He isn’t the lesser of two evils. He is worse than Bush, which makes him evil, period.

I would argue that it is immoral to vote for Obama because he is guilty of the negligent homicide of 70,000 American citizens every year.

Consider what negligent homicide is. Legally it means that somebody died, and that the defendant should reasonably have been aware of the risk and instead of doing something to stop it, he “intentionally, knowingly or recklessly” acted in such a way that the death occurred.

Ethically, it means that you could have prevented a death at little or no risk to yourself, and you chose not to. It means that if you see a child crawl into a refrigerator and shut the door, and you don’t let him out, you bear responsibility for his death.

Now consider what Obama did on September 2. It was Friday before Labor Day, an infamous date almost every year because politicians use it to announce things that make them look bad. Most voters are traveling for the long weekend and aren’t paying attention. So just the choice of date proves he was aware that his decision was rotten, just as flight indicates consciousness of guilt.

He announced that day that he would not implement new regulations recommended by his own Environmental Protection Agency that would have cut the amount of smog we all inhale with every breath.
Obama cut the rules that limit air pollution by utilities and other major polluters

Obama cut the rules that limit air pollution by utilities and other major polluters

He could have done so on his own authority. The Republicans in Congress did not have to vote on it. Instead of standing with the throngs of environmentalists who voted for him, he said the regulations would be a burden for business and chose to stand with the [notorious propaganda shill for the oil industry] American Petroleum Institute, which gloated that “the President’s decision was good news for the economy and Americans looking for work.”

How? If the President had gone with the new regulations, it would have cost $19-to-$90 billion, depending on how they were enforced. It would have mandated that energy companies, which are swimming in money, build new cleaner power plants and install scrubbers in the power plants already built. The new regulations would have forced the energy companies to create jobs, not cut them. What could be better for the economy than forcing rich people to give some money to people who want to work?

Ethically, the important thing to remember is this: 70,000 Americans die every year from air pollution. They die of lung cancer and emphysema. They die of heart attacks and strokes that are more likely to occur on hot, high-smog days. They die of other forms of cancer that smog exacerbates.

Nobody disputes the 70,000 figure. It’s from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Obama could have cut that number significantly by following the science (which he promised to do in his campaign) and adopting the new regulations. If he had done that, he could have had a big White House ceremony on a day other than Friday before Labor Day and everyone who voted for him in 2008 would have felt more inclined to vote for him again. Instead he chose to insult everyone who voted for him and hand the Republicans a stick to beat him. The $19-to-$90 billion that the energy companies would have had to spend to kill fewer people with their product is $19-to-$90 billion that the Koch brothers and other sociopathic coal barons will have to spend on destroying democracy.

Maybe it’s good for the employment rate if 70,000 workers die and 70,000 people who don’t have cancer yet take their jobs. Doesn’t seem like a big applause line on the campaign trail, though.

“I will continue to stand by the hardworking men and women at the EPA as they strive every day to hold polluters accountable and protect our families from harmful pollution,” said Obama.

Jesus Christ.

I don’t care if Obama is a traitor, or a coward, or a Manchurian candidate from the fascist right, or a lizard from Mars. I refuse to psychoanalyze him.

What matters is the 70,000 Americans who die every year from air pollution. I myself have two friends who died of heart attacks on hot, smoggy days. I know four people who have cancer, and everyone I know seems know four more people with cancer. Worldwide, 40% of all deaths are caused by pollution, according to the World Health Organization. Obama could have done something about this. If he had, it would have been to his political benefit. He chose not to. Intentionally, knowingly and recklessly, he chose to side with those who value money more than life.

Therefore, it is immoral to vote for Obama. The only moral path right now is nonviolent revolution. Until then, watch for an announcement that he’s going to build the tar sands pipeline on Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Or maybe Christmas eve.

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The Big Sellout

Charles P. Pierce , Esquire’s political blogs

IMAGE: This is how it happened.

First, Barack Obama hires the rancid flotsam of Wall Street to command the economic team tasked with salvaging the nation from what the equally rancid jetsam of Wall Street had done to it.

Not surprisingly, these people pivot the administration towards “deficit reduction” rather than balls-out stimulus as the solution to an economy gradually being cored out by nine-percent unemployment and the inevitable crash in demand that resulted from that. At which point, the administration appoints the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a pathetic collection of Beltway has-beens and, in the case of Alan Simpson, one mummified relic of an earlier age who was notable only for the fact that he apparently was born full-grown as a bitter, nasty old prick and only has gotten worse with age. At one point, Simpson memorably replied to a concerned constituent:

And yes, I’ve made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know ’em too. It’s the same with any system in America. We’ve reached a point now where it’ s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!

Why Barack Obama chose to exhume this fossil and empower him again will baffle historians down through the ages. Anyway, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the president’s commission came back with a preliminary draft report so howlingly bad that it couldn’t even command enough votes on the commission to be adopted officially. Nonetheless, the Simpson-Bowles “report” marked out clearly the parameters of the discussion going forward. As uncomfortable as it may be to him now, Barack Obama owns that report. It was his commission. In sum, the path to a complete sellout of Democratic values was there, if people wanted to follow it.

And, pretty plainly, they have.

Simpson-Bowles begat, in spirit, anyway, the SuperCommittee, and the SuperCommittee, which Newt Gingrich and I agree is a really stupid idea, is where the final yard sale of what’s left of the New Deal is going to happen. Apparently, all the pieces are in place for one of those Washington moments where we all take it in the neck while nobody cutting the deal misses a dinner invitation. “Bipartisanship” uber alles. The almost evangelical worship of a “deal” for deal’s sake between the irreconcilable Republicans and the invertebrate Democrats. And the magical thinking that only occurs when important politicians are put together with the financial wizards that have brought the country so much sweetness and joy since 2008.

“Nothing,” Boehner said, according to prepared remarks, “nothing, would send a more reassuring message to the markets than taking bipartisan steps to fix the structural problems in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

Oh, holy mother of god, what a crock these people are. In the middle of the worst recession since the 1930’s, with the country being told to accept nine-percent unemployment for the foreseeable future, and income inequality swamping the middle class, the responsible point of view among the leaders of both political parties is to “reform entitlements” until what’s left is sticks and splinters because then, and only then, will the delicate, blessed “Markets” feel goody-good-good about themselves again. We are all Dow Jones. This kind of thing should end your political viability on the spot. It should get you deluged with produce every time you set foot out of your house. It should mark you lousy.

Over the past three decades, a greedy, bubble-headed ferret named Pete Peterson has dedicated himself and his millions to the proposition that he and his colleagues in the financial-services sector should get their grubby paws on that Social Security money so that can do with it what they did so splendidly during the past decade or so. He has made this attempt in good times and in bad, under Republican presidents and Democratic ones, and he is an ace away from his goal right now. Barack Obama’s vaunted pivot to “populism” is doomed because he’s tied to the fate of a SuperCommittee made up of the isolated, self-involved members of a political elite to whom a kind word from David Gregory counts more than a public still rising in protest over the theft of their money and the pillaging of their birthrights. If the Democrats sign on to a “Grand Bargain” like this one, there simply is no argument any more for their continued existence as a political party.

ABOUT Charles P. Pierce

Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America. He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.

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AS EXPECTED: Obama green lights new BP Gulf oil drilling

By Tom Eley, Social Equality Party
How many betrayals can the nation and the world absorb from this despicable administration? Barack Obama and his accomplices are shamelessly breaking records for misleadership in the wake of one of the country’s foulest regimes. They’re again giving away OUR Gulf of Mexico to these confirmed bastards, who wounded it irreparably less than 2 years ago. This is not a government of the people but of the criminal corporations. And it must end. —Eds

The animals and environment, as usual, pay the real cost for corrupt human decisions.

The Obama administration has given BP the go-ahead to begin four new deep-sea oil exploration operations in the Gulf of Mexico only 18 months after a blowout on its Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig killed 11 workers and caused the worst oil spill in US history.

The drilling will take place in the Keathley Canyon 192 miles southwest of New Orleans in 6,000 feet of water—1,000 feet deeper than the Macondo well, site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The permits were approved by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), successor to the discredited Minerals Management Service (MMS), the regulatory agency that failed to correct numerous violations aboard the Deepwater Horizon.

The granting of new exploratory drilling rights to BP takes to a new level of shamelessness the subordination of the Obama administration to corporate interests. Not only has there has been no punishment for any executive from BP, Transocean, or Halliburton—the three corporations whose profit-driven negligence caused the April 20, 2010 blowout—but BP has now been given the green light to launch four new wells engaging in the same sort of deep-sea exploration as took place at the Macondo well.

The Obama administration claims that there are “tough new standards” in place for deep sea oil drilling. But aside from such bald assurances— and the changing of the letters MMS to BOEMRE—it is not clear precisely what these changes are.

In a statement regarding the new drilling permits for BP, the BOEMRE explained these purported new regulations in the following terms:

“Before approving this EP, BOEM [sic] confirmed BP’s compliance with the bureau’s rigorous, heightened standards established following the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.

“In July 2011, BP announced additional safety enhancements and performance standards they would voluntarily implement in connection with its deep water drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. BOEM has verified that BP has met the relevant voluntary performance standards.”

This “self-compliance” to “voluntary” regulations is the same concept of regulation that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster and that prevails in every branch of US industry, including food processing (which has made millions sick in recent years) and finance (which set the stage for the global economic crisis begun in 2007).

Commenting on the decision, Obama’s chief of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Michael Bromwich, declared that BP has a good offshore drilling record.

“They don’t have a deeply flawed record offshore,” he said “The question is: ‘Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?’, and we have concluded that’s not appropriate.”

Far from a “death penalty,” BP has suffered no penalty at the hands of the federal government. According to Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, BP has yet to pay any fine.

Financial analysts are now confident that the Obama administration will not pursue BP for “gross negligence” in the Gulf oil disaster, in spite of overwhelming evidence, including a lengthy paper trail and survivor testimony documenting the short cuts and reckless decisions taken to speed the Macondo Well into production. If BP is found to have been grossly negligent, under the Clean Water Act it could face billions in additional fines.

BP’s share prices rallied last month after one of the other corporations implicated in the Gulf disaster, Anadarko Petroleum, paid out $4 billion to settle all claims between the two companies. “The settlement [was] also an indication that BP was not guilty of gross negligence for the spill,” according to a financial commentator.

The Anadarko settlement will also allow BP to end payments into the escrow fund set up by the Obama administration as a means of shielding the oil giant from lawsuits. The “claims facility” fund is overseen by Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who previously has protected the federal government from inquiries into the 9/11 terrorist attacks by victims’ families, and chemical firms from veterans made sick by the defoliant Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. BP’s payments into Feinberg’s fund “will finish in 2012, a year ahead of schedule,” according to the British Daily Express.

It was also announced last week that BP will expand its operations in North Africa. It is one of several western oil majors which have benefited from the NATO onslaught against Libya and the toppling of the Gaddafi regime, with which it had previously signed exploratory contracts.

“We are absolutely planning to go back in and all the signals are that [the Transitional National Council] wants us to and expect us to come back,” BP’s Chief Executive Bob Dudley told reporters on October 22. “It’s just a matter of time and we’ll begin an exploration program.”

The newly-elected interim prime minister of Libya, Dr. Abdurrahim El-Keib, is a faculty member of the Petroleum Institute, a think-tank funded by BP and the same constellation of British, French, and US oil firms that stand to benefit the most from the regime change in Libya.

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