Bijan Sabet

Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions

Remember my post about Gov 2.0 and our 2 party system?

Here’s yet another example. I believe that the antiwar/anti Patriot act voters played a big role in putting Democrats and President Obama in charge. Now this.

Sigh.

via soupsoup:

grutty:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.

and from the AP via the Washington Post

U.S. Argues Against Court Hearings

The Obama administration argued Monday that allowing terrorism suspects in Afghanistan to challenge their incarceration in U.S. courts would endanger the military mission in that country.

Although the Pentagon is giving the roughly 600 detainees at Bagram Airfield a chance to challenge their detentions, the Obama administration stuck with Bush administration policy in its court filing.

The Justice Department argued to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that Bagram detainees should not be given the same rights to sue that the Supreme Court granted last year to detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba.

— Associated Press

So essentially, the administration is arguing America’s right to invade another country, arrest and imprison its citizens, and deny them any type of trial? This is absurd. How can we be a shining example of democracy and human rights when we assert our right to lock people up and throw away the key without a trial?

I think the bottom line is that if we are going to incarcerate someone, we need to be able to demonstrate in a court of law that person’s crime. Period. I fail to see how demonstrating someone’s guilt might endanger the military mission in Afghanistan.

Wouldn’t this put Obama under the same microscope that his own Attorney General Eric Holder has put on the Bush administration?

Obama is losing a great deal of credibility here.