You may have noticed in yesterday's news that Eric Holder, on behalf of the President has ordered the Department of Justice (once again) to continue defending indefensible and quite criminal and unconstitutional activity on the part of the Bush administration and is using the infamous "State Secrets" defense to protect the criminal perpetrators of the Bush regime.  Now they are extending the argument beyond even what the Bush people tried.  Yes, they are making the illegal power grab by Bush not only permanent but wider in scope.  In essence they are arguing it is okay for them to spy on you, me and everyone else at will, but none of us has any right to sue the government to stop that illegal activity.  This is at least as much of an outrage coming from Obama as it was from Bush! 

Candidate Obama campaigned unequivocally against the Bush administration's criminal violations of the Constitution and the liberties of the people up until last summer in a stunning and very public flip flop where he decided to break his very clear promise to the public and to his supporters and vote for granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that knowingly violated the law in order to spy on us all.  His excuses at the time were thin, boilerplate, classic Washington political bullshit wrapped up in the national security language to protect the flip flopping betrayer from the criticism he so richly deserved.  It was obvious that he felt comfortable selling out millions of his supporters and the public who naively believed he really would change things in Washington.  By that time, of course, he no longer needed the millions of liberals and lefties who supported him from day one because the nomination was his.  He has taken each and every one of those people for granted ever since and it is in this realm of policy where that reality becomes crystal clear.

At the time of the famous FISA flip flop, many of his supporters excoriated those who criticized Obama with their patented defense of his every hypocrisy and flip flop and subterfuge which goes something like this "What are you complaining about?  He is doing this because it is smart politics and he needs to get elected.  Stop criticizing him or he won't be able to win.  Once he is elected you'll see that he's going to be on the right side of the issue."  We continue to hear variants of this very same demand that people shut up now that Obama has, in fact, gotten elected.  The same camp followers exhort everyone who would dare to criticize the young emperor to keep quiet.  They imply he is secretly going to surprise us all by brilliantly changing course or some other fantasy about how Obama is so impossible shrewd that even though he looks like he's pointing up he's really pointing down and we should simply trust him.  "Give him a chance" they say and we will all see.  "It's too soon to criticize" him they say. 

You'll see indeed.  Yeah, we see.  He not only goes out of his way to direct his DOJ to defend the blatant crimes of the Bush years, but he has them argue in court to extend those same oppressive practices and unconsitutional powers into the future!  Not exactly the change that we were sold is it?

Last night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann with no great joy, made clear his disappointment and that of millions of other Obama supporters at this genuine betrayal of trust by the President and his administration.  This follows the President's attempts to avoid any responsibililty for and then his anemic (to put it mildly) statements regarding what to do about the war crimes, and other treaty violations the tyrant Bush and his henchmen are responsible for.  And a genuine betrayal it is because the President is not only supporting a policy of doing nothing about what has happned, he is actively implementing extensions of the very policies most sane people expected him to reverse or dismantle.   It is a sad day.

Olbermann interviewed Prof. Jonathan Turly on the subject as part of the report.  Turley is a very cool observer and commentator on the law and politics who cuts through much of the emotion and gets to the very heart of matters quickly adn always without rancor.  What he said to Olbermann really makes plain the situation we are now confronted with.  I think the folks who are the true devotees to Obama and who continue to make excuses for any and all things the President does need to really take a long, hard look at what is going on. 

It's a classic case of power corrupting.  Put another way, Obama's total betrayal of his supporters on these issues are a classic case of the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" which states that all revolutionaries eventually become the oligarchs they replace.  Now that Obama is the one at the controls he and his people have clearly deluded themselves into believing that all this immoral and illegal conduct is okay because they aren't bad guys.  They have willfully blinded themselves morally into failing to see that this conduct is illegal and immoral no matter who is carrying it out.   

People need to let the White House know that this is unacceptable from any administration and these are the tools of tyrants no matter who uses them.  I, for one, am going to at leat make a phone call and send an e-mail to the White House over this.  I hope others will too.

Here's a brief excerpt of Turley's comments.

"You cannot any longer suggest that President Obama is advancing the civil liberties and privacy interests that he promised to advance.  This is a terrible rollback.  It's a terrible decision.

And the Obama people seem to be arguing, well the Bush people were bad people doing bad things, but you know what?  It doesn't matter if you say you're a good person doing bad things.  You're doing bad things.  And that's what this is."

 

"I really do have a lot of respect for President Obama, but there are plenty of Constitutional professors that are what I call Constitutional relativists.  They believe the Constitution is very, very fluid.  I don't.  I believe the constitution is core principles like privacy, like the fourth amendment and you can't start compromising on those things for political convenience. 

The fact is, our President, I think, is more interested in programs than principles and he never intended to fight on issues like torture and electronic surveillance and we're gonna have to come to grips with that. 

And the people that support him in many different ways are going to have to come to grips and tell the President they will not support him here and they will not let him eviscerate privacy because of some cult of personality where he's so popular he can do anything.  He can't do this.  Because what he's frittering away are the rights that we all have as citizens."

Here's a link to the video:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677#30096358

 

Why haven't we seen more of or heard more from Prof. Wm. Black of the University of MO, Kansas City on TPM?  There may have been some mention of him, but there hasn't been a whole lot or else I think I would have noticed it. 

 

I'm not faulting the site so much as I am suggesting that Black's is an important voice for the public to hear.  Thus far, his has by and large been a voice in the wilderness in many respects.  This week's interview by Bill Moyers may help change that.  I'm suggesting TPM follow Moyers' lead.

 

Seems to me it would be doing a great service not simply to the TPM community, but Josh and company would be doing a great service to the nation by featuring Prof. Black's clear and important message of the fraud in the financial sector and the cover-up of that criminal behavior the Obama administration is continuing.  Also, by pressing the questions Black raises we might actually get some answers.  Word about and outrage over the crimes committed and ongoing could quickly spread in the blogosphere (potentially both left and right because this isn't an ideological issue really it's a matter of criminal fraud which we all oppose) and possibly bring enormous pressure to bear on Obama and his very poor choices of Summers and Geithner to actually turn away from the coverup of the crimes of Wall Street.

 

Up to this point, without a cogent, clear, and concise critique of what has occured on Wall Street and caused the world economic collapse, the media has provided little scrutiny and shed precious little light on what took place to cause all this economic pain and dislocation.  The people know in their guts what has happened is that the elite have robbed everyone blind, but there is an intricate, distracting dance going on amongs the elite to prevent the public from coming to the sort of clear understanding  Prof. Black provides us.  Black does this without any partisanship at all mind.  He, unlike those who make up our media, government and business elites is honest and forthright about our financial system being morphed into a gigantic ponzi scheme by unscrupulous businessmen and their enablers in government.  It's very clear who is to blame for all this if we get the facts.  Thus far, the corporate media and both the Bush and Obama administrations have done nothing but cover up the truth.  That needs to change.

 

TPM has a reputation for journalistic integrity that I think provides a great deal of credibility amongst other blogs and even in the corporate media as well as those on the left generally speaking.  It would certainly be within the same credible framework that TPM could pursue this issue.  It would also be an incredibly important act of leadership if TPM were to focus a very bright light on this situation that could well lead to real action.  It really is not just about the crimes that have clearly taken place and the raping and pillaging of our economy, but it is really about our children and the future of the nation economically and also quite frankly from a moral perspective as well.  The elite political, economic, and corporate media of our nation is so corrupt that it is, in my opinion, beyond redemption.  It will not reform itself: ever.  IF we wish to see the sort of moral corruption that has characterized our nation in all ways since the dawn of the Reagan era we must demand that it come to an end.  It will never cease on its own.  As long as we give them license they will continue to run amok.

 

It TPM were to make Black and the simple, clear truths he is speaking a focus of it's coverage it could well be an important opportunity to use the democratic power of the netroots to shed light where the elite don't want it shed and to force them (for once) to deal honestly and openly and properly with this enormous crisis.  I certainly don't think such an effort could hurt.  What's more, it may be our only chance of seeing any justice done here.  If it led to sizable popular demand for fixing instead of covering up this problem, it would in a real way, be an uprising that would force Obama to save himself and his administration from the worst set of decisions it has made by appointing Summers and Geithner who have done nothing but renew the Paulson plan of covering up Wall Street's crimes.  Those two guys are a flat out disaster as Black makes compellingly clear if you didn't already realize it.

 

It is our future, our country.  We should take collective action of some kind.  A site like TPM with the traffic and influence it has could make a critical difference in the course of the nation by providing a platform that helps focus on the common sense Black is preaching.  It could do this not by losing focus on its general coverage but by providing the spark.  Certainly all the straw and gasoline all around the Wall Street criminal scandal is already there.  I wouldn't advocate "changing" the site in any way.  All I'm saying is that a dogged pursuit of Black's line of thinking and of questioning the authorities on some of these very obvious problems could yield tremendous results. 

 

As far as I know, nobody has asked Geithner, Summers or Obama about any of this stuff.  They have been thrown softballs and have dodged the entire question of fraud, criminal investigation, exposing the fraud, admitting the insolvency of the financial institutions, and the avoidance of their legal responsibility to pursue these matters as established by law.  Isn't it the responsibility of journalists to pursue precisely these sorts of difficult matters?  We all know there won't be any pursuit of this by the corporate media.  I hope and believe the blogoshpere is capable of providing the best disinfectant there is for corruption: sunshine.

 

If you are not familiar with Prof. Black's message, check out these two excellent posts that are up on the cafe today.  The first link is to a post by cmaukonen, and the second is a post by Rowan Wolf.

 

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/cmaukonen/2009/04/bill-moyers-william-k-black-an.php?ref=reccafe

 

 

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/rowanwolf/2009/04/expose-the-crooks-take-this-vi.php?ref=reccafe

 

It is well worth everyone's time to watch the entire interview of Prof. Black by Bill Moyers.  In a real sense, no patriot should fail to watch it and no patriot should fail to act after doing so.