We have now gone 703 days into the administration of President Barack Obama without the existence of a legally-mandated Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The board is granted subpoena investigative power and the mandate to report to Congress and the public every six months on the state of civil liberties protections and infringements by the U.S. government. But the board does not exist to date because of Barack Obama’s longstanding refusal to place a single person in nomination for the board.
This error of long-standing omission was finally rectified a week ago with the nomination of Elisebeth Collins Cook and James Xavier Dempsey to sit on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
The board does not and will not exist until the Senate ratifies the nominations of these two individuals, and that won’t take place until January at best. The sooner we can get some minimal investigation and reporting on civil liberties in the United States, the better.
What do you know of Cook and Dempsey? Are they the people you’d want to see on the board?
Careful there Obama, you’re on a slippery slope towards someone possibly requesting you not assassinate Americans at your whim. Next thing you know, these 2 will have been ratified, then they can plan their first meeting, then if a quorum shows up for that meeting, they can begin to request documents that hopefully still exist to use as evidence…. and they could eventually arrive at a point where they make some recommendations that congress can forward to the appropriate committee! I look forward to my posthumous pardon.
Baby steps…
Need to reset the In-action Clock again….
This will go nowhere fast (due to its late inception).
Any reaction to these particular nominees?