Update on Obama, Discrimination and Military Commissions Act

I’m open to supporting Barack Obama for President, but there are a few things he needs to clear up before I can feel truly confident in his worthiness as a candidate. For one thing, there’s the problem of Barack Obama’s religious justification for denying equal rights to all Americans – a troubling argument coming from a politician who claims to be against discrimination.

Nine days ago, I left a blog entry at the Obama for President campaign site, asking this question: Why should I think that Senator Obama will protect me against religious bigotry when he won’t protect same-sex couples from it? In these nine days, there has been only one response from an Obama supporter – and that Obama supporter wrote saying that he thought churches ought to be given an exclusive power to decide who gets married and who doesn’t. That’s hardly an encouraging idea.

While I was back over at the Obama blogs, I checked to see if anyone had any word of Barack Obama finally taking action on the Military Commissions Act in the Senate, co-sponsoring one of the bills to try to fix the Military Commissions Act, or offering a bill of his own. Alas, Barack Obama has not taken action yet. All I could find was a blog entry entitled: Habeas Corpus: Obama should act on this, which consisted of a cut-and-pasted New York Times article and a comment that Barack Obama is involved in a bill proposed by Senator Specter.

If Barack Obama truly is involved in that bill, S. 185, there is no on-the-record indication of that. Besides, S. 185 is a profoundly inadequate bill. S. 185 only reinstates the habeas corpus rights taken away by the Military Commissions Act. It does nothing about the measures in the Military Commissions Act that legalize torture, or take away the right to a fair and speedy trial, or allow the determination of enemy status to be made merely on the say-so of a committee appointed by the President, or provide legal amnesty to the President and other top officials for war crimes, or revoke the legal power of the Geneva Conventions.

That’s a lot of unfinished business.

As it is, Barack Obama hasn’t done anything but talk. I checked again this morning, and Senator Obama has still not introduced any legislation to repeal the Military Commissions Act or co-sponsored anyone else’s legislation dealing with the Military Commissions Act.

Over on the blogs at the Barack Obama campaign site, supporters haven’t offered anything but excuses for this inaction. It’s early in the presidential campaign, they say. Maybe Barack Obama will do something later, they say.

It may be early in the presidential campaign, but it is not early in Barack Obama’s term in the United States Senate. If Barack Obama won’t stand up to protect our liberty in the Senate, why should we believe that he would do the right thing as President?

To be fair, Barack Obama isn’t the only senator running for President who has this problem. Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden also have done nothing in the Senate to counteract the dangerous Military Commissions Act. Of all the senators running for President, only Christopher Dodd has taken action. His bill, the Restoring The Constitution Act, S. 576, is not the total repeal I would like to see, but it is much more effective than S. 185, and much to be preferred to the complete inaction of Obama, Clinton and Biden.

In the House of Representatives, the only legislation that would do anything to counteract the Military Commissions Act has zero cosponsors. No, not even Dennis Kucinich has put his signature down as a sponsor of that bill. What’s Kucinich’s excuse, I wonder? Is he too busy campaigning for President to draft a simple bill to repeal the Military Commissions Act?

Please help pressure members of Congress to take action. Sign the petition to fully repeal the Military Commissions Act.