It’s now been 535 days since Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. Since a time before Obama’s inauguration, federal law has required President Obama to appoint a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This board is charged with the responsibility of tracking the compliance of the executive branch of government with the provisions of the Constitution. The board is granted the ability to subpoena members of the government to testify and supply documentation, and it is granted access to classified information in order to carry out its work. Finally, the board is tasked with making regular reports to the U.S. Congress and the American public on the constitutionality of activities by a presidential administration.

This board and these powers do not fill a hypothetical need. Just yesterday, the National Security Agency acknowledged the existence of a program called Perfect Citizen in which the United States Military is putting surveillance devices in computer networks across the domestic USA to snoop on Internet traffic. Of course, the National Security Agency denies that the Perfect Citizen program is planning to spy on Americans using these devices — which is odd, considering that they are being deployed domestically — and proclaims that its efforts are purely for purposes of “research and development.” The military-industrial corporation assigned the $100 million Perfect Citizen contract, Raytheon, tells the media that “We have no info on this” — which again is odd, considering that the Wall Street Journal obtained a Raytheon e-mail in which the corporation declares that “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

What does the operation called Perfect Citizen have to do with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board? A lot. First of all, the NSA didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Perfect Citizen until Wall Street Journal investigators uncovered details about the program. If the Wall Street Journal hadn’t stumbled across the information, we might never have known about this domestic military surveillance program. But since the NSA is under the authority of the executive branch and the President of the United States, then the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have had the power to uncover this program and report on its activities to the Congress and the public. It doesn’t stop there. In 2010, after the disclosure of the program’s existence, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have had the power to assess the claims of the NSA that Perfect Citizen is just a hypothetical program.

The board would have been able to do these things if it had been constituted as it should have been in 2009. But for 535 days now, Barack Obama has ignored federal law and failed to nominate even one member to sit on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. The Board remains nonexistent. The Board’s oversight functions are going undone. Because the board has not been filled and does not exist, it cannot carry out these investigative and reporting functions on programs like Perfect Citizen. We’re lucky we even know that the program exists. We have no idea what other Obama administration programs are out there that may be violating our constitutional rights. And when programs like Perfect Citizen do come to light, there’s no way to assess the accuracy of the NSA’s protestations that this is all just “research” and we don’t have to worry our purty little heads none.

The ongoing lack of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is not only a violation of federal law, but is also a violation of the trust placed in a candidate who told us on the campaign trail that unlike his predecessor, he would restore the rule of law and obey the Constitution. This is not the Change we were promised.

Mitt Romney, who ran for office as a liberal Republican in Massachusetts, then made an about face to run for president as a fire-breathing conservative in 2008, is putting up a new trial balloon: maybe he’ll avoid the whole conservative thing in 2012 this time and run as a non-ideological candidate with good management skills.

Is this what a good manager would do?

Bob sends us a tiny little love mail today:

“YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA?
THANKS A LOT ASS HOLE.”

I don’t know why Bob refers to himself as an “Ass Hole.” Perhaps he’s suffering from McCain regret. That’s understandable, considering how John McCain embarrassingly chanted “Drill Baby Drill!” on the campaign trail in 2008. It’s understandable Bob may want to denigrate his choice of McCain considering that in 2009 John McCain voted to force offshore oil drilling to proceed, pushing over environmental and safety concerns at various sites. He may feel badly about that McCain vote considering that John McCain introduced legislation earlier this year to detain American citizens indefinitely without charge.

I may have many regrets about actions taken by the Obama administration, but I can breathe a sigh of relief that at least we aren’t stuck with the inflexibly radical John McCain as president. In that regard, I’m happy to accept your thanks.

But let’s move on from Election 2008 and get down to the personal level that connects us all in a common web of oneness with our mother Gaia, father Time, half-brother Space and cousin Clem. Bob, oh my brother being Bob, it’s OK, man. It’s OK. None of us are perfect; we’re fallible human beings from the tippy-tops of our heads down to our… well, you know. Stop beating yourself up about that McCain vote. Look to the future instead. Just promise yourself you won’t vote Republican in 2010 and really, there’ll be no damage done!

P.S. Your meaning would have been clearer if you’d put a comma in between the “LOT” and “ASS.” Just fyi there. Cheers!

That’s my question to the National Rifle Association. The NRA distributed literature during the 2008 presidential campaign proclaiming that as President, Barack Obama would “Close Down 90 Percent of Gun Shops in America.”

Has it escaped my attention? Has Barack Obama closed 90 percent of gun shops yet?

If you could help me out in researching the answer to this question by posting the names of any gun shops Barack Obama has shut down since entering the Oval Office, I’d greatly appreciate it.

There are 43 congressional primary elections taking place today, in Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina. However, many voters in some of those elections still won’t have an opportunity to choose their own political party’s candidate. That’s because a good number of the elections are uncontested, with an incumbent or party favorite running unchallenged. Out of the 41 House primaries and 2 Senate primaries taking place today, only 17 have actual contests for both Democrats and Republicans.

Indiana saw a particularly audacious example of the kind of backroom deals that have made contested races so rare. Senator Evan Bayh waited until almost the very last minute to announce that he would not seek re-election this year. That made it impossible for any Democratic candidates to get sufficient petitions signed to earn a place on a primary election ballot, and so Indiana’s Democratic Party central executive committee got to choose the nominee – Evan Bayh’s protege, Blue Dog Congressman Brad Ellsworth.

Ellsworth’s appointment as Democratic nominee left the 8th congressional district seat open to a new Democratic candidate, but gosh, given that Ellsworth’s announcement that he would not seek re-election to that seat came so late, there was no opportunity for Democratic voters to choose their own candidate in that race either. Democratic Party insider Trent Van Haaften was anointed the nominee.

Conventional wisdom is that the lack of democratic choice within the political parties makes their candidates stronger, but so far, Van Haaften has coasted through the campaign season without much effort. “New Site Coming Soon!” has been the promise for a while at trentforcongress.com, as Van Haaften’s site only allows people to volunteer or give him money. What are Van Haaften’s positions on the issues? What are his qualifications? How will he interact with voters? No one knows, because Van Haaften can’t be bothered to say. Without any competition from within the Democratic Party, Van Haaften hasn’t been particularly motivated to get his campaign in gear.

I don’t know if Alan Keyes is making sense, but I do know that Alan Keyes is still trying to pay off the debts that he incurred during his presidential campaigns in 1996, 2000 and 2008. How do I know? The FEC records tell me so.

Alan Keyes was a big flop in every presidential campaign he ran, but those big flops didn’t come cheaply. The Alan Keyes presidential campaign committees still had $495,730 in debt at the end of March this year, even though Keyes collected 119 donations larger than $200 in the last 15 months.

One of the key platforms of the Alan Keyes presidential campaigns: Fiscal responsibility.

Why would people donate money to a three-time failed presidential candidate who holds no public office or other substantial position of responsibility?

In the 2008 presidential election cycle, the corporation called Unity08 used its media contacts with DC insiders such as David Broder and shared financial history with publications such as The Hill and Atlantic Monthly to spread word that it would run the first-ever secure online presidential nomination, the end of which would be for the corporation to run its very own candidates for President and Vice President of the United States.

A read through the long history of Unity08 reveals that as it began operations (with its first headquarters inside a Republican public relations firm), it identified the following four reasons for embracing its corporate presidential campaign:

1. Lobbyists were in control of national politics;
2. Big money donations drove presidential elections;
3. Low turnout in party primaries and general elections meant that small numbers of Americans actually chose the president; and
4. A president willing to adopt policies with origins outside his party was needed in the White House.

But through a series of odd pirhouettes, it turned out that Unity08:

1. Was peppered with lobbyists in its leadership (prompting Unity08′s explanation that “you have to have been in it to know what’s wrong with it.”);
2. Was filing lawsuits to obtain the right to break its early small-money pledge and start taking big money campaign contributions of unlimited size;
3. Was faced with an election season in which primary and general election turnout was remarkably high;
4. Faded after failing to attract enough contributors and sending money on to a Draft Bloomberg campaign for which it had obtained a website; and
5. Saw the election of a Democratic President in 2008 who has since adopted Republican positions on domestic surveillance, international wars, faith-based initiatives, executive privilege, freedom of information, the endangered species act and offshore oil drilling, to name just a few policies.

Nevertheless, despite bringing in an income of $0 in 2009 Unity08 somehow managed to maintain an office half a block from the White House and retain a stable of lawyers to argue the case in federal courts that it should be permitted to take big money donations of unlimited size.

On March 2, 2010, Unity08 won its case in federal court. See here for the full text of this decision.

In that decision, it is revealed that the political consultants and lobbyists behind Unity08 had plans to resurrect their organization for the next presidential election (to be renamed “Unity12″) as soon as that corporation won the ability to take big money contributions of unlimited size.

Is Unity08 getting ready to relaunch? It looks like it. The old unity08.com website had reverted to an advertisement for the Republican Peak Creative Media firm that originally launched it. But now unity08.com has erased the Republican P.R. ad and once again features a statement from the Board of Directors of Unity08 [Update: an hour later, the Peak Creative Media advertisement is back. Someone is actively tinkering with that website]. An anonymized person or group has registered the website unity12.com.

But if Unity08 wants to reintroduce itself, it’s going to have company: pre-existing groups named “Unity12″ or “Unity2012″ include an association of journalists of color, a New Age group of “lightworkers,” a Canadian branch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, a myspace page, an assisted-living foundation and a website that asks you to send on the big money donations and corporate sponsorships its way instead. With all of these uses, I don’t see how Unity08 can claim a trademark for 2012.

If Unity08 wants to pull anything off for the 2012 election season, it’s going to have to start soon. Watch and wait for what comes next.

Searching the White House website for news of the Patriot Act reauthorization, I’ve found this, the most recent presidential communication on the matter:

H.R.3961- PATRIOT Act Extension

This legislation will likely soon be received by the President. Read the text of the legislation or submit a comment.

The process of reauthorizing the Patriot Act bypassed the committee deliberation, involved last-minute legislative introduction on the sly, involved no debate in the Senate with a voice vote, and allowed only brief remarks in the House with the final vote held under the misleading title of “Medicare.” With this sort of secretive behavior out of the public eye, there’s been little procedural opportunity for the American public to weigh in with its wishes. Now, if you wish, the only thing left for you to do is let the office of the president know that this is all going down without your approval. I’ll be the first to admit it won’t accomplish much of anything, but that’s one small notch over accomplishing nothing.

My note to the White House:

I speak as someone who voted for Barack Obama in 2008: it is a shame that President Obama urged reauthorization of the Patriot Act without reform. It is a shame that President Obama arranged for Judiciary committee deliberations to be shelved. And it is a shame that President Obama is set to sign the reauthorization of the Patriot Act into law. As a constitutional scholar, surely President Obama knows better.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I am no longer sure I will vote for him in 2012.

One of the reasons I voted for Barack Obama for President was his promise to halt Bush’s practice of issuing nullifying signing statements. George W. Bush had developed a nasty habit in his presidency of simply declaring portions of laws passed by Congress to be null and void, picking and choosing which parts of the law he’d pay attention to and which parts of the law he’d outright ignore. As a presidential candidate on May 19, 2008 in Billings, Montana, he undeniably, irrefutably flat-out promised a voter he would not use signing statements if elected president:

Question: When Congress offers you a bill, do you promise not to use presidential signing statements to get your way?

Barack Obama: Yes.

[Extended Applause]

Let me just explain for those who are unfamiliar with this issue. We’ve got a government designed by the Founders so that there’d be checks and balances. You don’t want a president who’s too powerful or a Congress that’s too powerful or courts too powerful. Everybody’s got their own role. Congress’s job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it. But what George Bush has been trying to do, as part of his effort to accumulate more power in the presidency, is he’s been saying, “Well, I can basically change what Congress passed by attaching a letter saying, ‘I don’t agree with this part or I don’t agree with that part. I’m going to choose to interpret it this way or that way.’”

That’s not part of his power, but this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he’s going along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress, all right?

That was change I could believe in. That was change I could vote for. It’s not change that’s happened. President Barack Obama has broken his campaign promise and used signing statements to nullify portions of laws that he does not like. Challenged on his broken promise, Obama asserts his future right to issue signing statements to nullify portions of laws.

It was unconstitutional when George W. Bush did it. Barack Obama was right when he called Bush’s signing statements unconstitutional in 2008. It is unconstitutional when Barack Obama does it, too. The abuse of power continues under President Barack Obama, and American liberty continues to be imperiled.

On President’s Day, our writer Jim reflected on the value of the Obama presidency so far and concluded that, in spite of its many flaws, he was still glad he voted for Obama. As for myself, I didn’t vote for Obama in 2008, and I’m glad I didn’t.

I voted for Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate, not because Cynthia McKinney would make a good President, but in order to make my vote a protest of the abandonment of progressive values that, even then, the Obama campaign had become. As we recorded throughout the second half of 2008, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign offered several prominent reversals of the progressive promises he made as a Democratic primary candidate.

Since Obama became President, the disappointment has grown worse. Obama is now supporting the “clean coal” hoax, devoting billions of dollars to the development of new nuclear weapons, expanding the corrupt Office of Faith Based Initiatives without reform, continuing Bush’s unitary executive policy of President-as-Dictator, keeping Guantanamo open, and continuing massive spying operations against law abiding Americans. Obama has worked to cover up torture by the American government, and most recently there are revelations that Obama lied about a torture coverup that was begun under Bush but continued by the current White House.

For a while, it seemed that most Democrats were determined to be willfully oblivious to these betrayals by Obama. “He needs more time,” they’d say. It’s clear by now, though, that time isn’t the problem. Obama is the problem.

So, Democratic voters are feeling pretty glum about their own political party, and especially about their Democratic President. Obama is doing many of the same rotten things they used to hate George W. Bush for doing. But what can the Democrats do about it? He’s their candidate, right?

So, Democratic activism these days is pretty limited. The Democratic grassroots is halfhearted, sitting on its hands, sighing deeply, profoundly reluctant to give strong support to any Democratic politician, out of fear of being betrayed again.

Resignation is the new hope.

This morning, we’re asked a question:

Are you all glad you voted for Barack Obama now?

That’s a good question, and it deserves more of an answer than a “Yes” or a “No.” It deserves an explanation, and by way of explaining I’ll give my answer to a few questions that this question is not, but might seem to be, asking.

Am I happy with Barack Obama’s record in office? With a few exceptions, no. Barack Obama has continued the Bush administration’s program of expansive domestic warrantless surveillance. Barack Obama supports Patriot Act reauthorization and an expansive view of executive power that makes government less accountable to the people. Barack Obama has continued the Bush administration’s poor environmental record when it comes to offshore drilling, clean coal and endangered species protection. Barack Obama directed big bailouts to bankers and wealthy investors, but sent scant relief to Americans struggling to get by. Barack Obama took the banner of “health care reform” and turned it into a mandate that people buy health insurance without provision for an affordable public option. I do not support these actions carried out by Barack Obama. I am opposed to the Obama policy agenda.

Do I support the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012? In the abstract, no. I would either like to see a more solid liberal with strong experience like Russell Feingold or Dick Durbin run for President in a successful Democratic Party primary campaign, or see a third party candidacy featuring a liberal challenge to Barack Obama in 2012. I would actively support such a challenge in practice. But I don’t expect to see the combination of a candidate with strong experience and a solid liberal record challenging Barack Obama from either inside the Democratic Party or from the outside as a third party challenger. In lieu of that, I think the 2012 presidential election will need to be a season in which liberals keep the pressure up on Barack Obama.

Will I cast my vote for Barack Obama in 2012? To be honest, I’m not sure. There are two reasonable approaches to voting. One approach is to help the better of the two most viable candidates win, and frankly I expect Barack Obama to be a poor candidate but still better than any Republican alternative. Taking that approach, I would barring unforseen developments cast my vote for Barack Obama again in 2012. Another reasonable approach is to use a vote as a voice, an expression of support for the best model of leadership among all candidates, not simply between the two who are most viable. Taking that approach, I might vote for a Green or independent candidate for president if they presented a strong liberal policy platform and a strong personal record of leadership.

But these are different questions from the question we are asked this morning, Are you all glad you voted for Barack Obama now? Speaking for myself, I have to say yes. Independent candidate Ralph Nader had a good policy platform but represented a disastrous personal capacity for leadership. He has no executive experience, he has never held elective office and has never participated in government in a leadership capacity. His stellar lifetime record is a record as a critic, and a president is not a critic. If he won the presidency, I firmly believe the result would have been discord and disaster. In 2008, he couldn’t even manage to form an alliance with the Green Party.

If John McCain and Sarah Palin had won election, they would have done much worse than Barack Obama. Sarah Palin might have relieved us by resigning from the Vice Presidency, but can you imagine what she’d be up to by now if she’d stayed in office? John McCain is only getting older and more frail, and Sarah Palin is not fit to be President. In the meantime, while John McCain may have the experience and personal ability to lead, I find his regressive policy priorities to be repugnant.

So yes, I am still glad I voted for Barack Obama. I oppose his record in office. I’d rather see someone else in the White House after 2012. I firmly believe that these three statements are compatible.

What’s your take?

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain wanted to promote discrimination against lgbt Americans in the military, but to seem fair about it at the same time. So McCain said that, sure, he’d support repealing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of kicking people out of the military merely for being openly homosexual – once generals came to him and told him that they thought the policy should be repealed.

Guess what happened today? Generals came to McCain and told him that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is bad for the military. McCain responded by telling the generals that they’re wrong. “At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” said McCain.

Let’s remember, John McCain put the military into this period of immense hardship in the first place. He voted to send American soldiers off to hastily-arranged wars without an exit strategy. But now, McCain is saying that while it’s okay to send American soldiers to kill and be killed, it’s just too much to offer those same soldiers protection from discrimination.

When George W. Bush was President, we complained when Bush offered, year after year, record-breaking budgets for military spending. Now, for the second year in a row, Barack Obama is doing the same.

This year, Obama has proposed a Pentagon budget of $708 billion dollars, larger than anything Bush ever spent. It’s bigger than his record-breaking military budget of last year. Are we supposed to sit back and cheer, because it’s Barack Obama who’s brought us this puffed-up budget?

Unlike the one-time expenditure of 700 billion dollars in the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout, the federal government won’t get any of the 708 billion dollars in defense spending this year. It’s gone for good, and we’ll get another bill of the same size, if not bigger, next year, and the year after that.

A significant degree of Barack Obama’s victory over the other top Democratic presidential candidates in 2008 can be attributed to his opposition to the invasion of Iraq back in 2003. Hillary Clinton could have easily topped Obama, if it weren’t for the vigorous opposition to her candidacy from large numbers of anti-war Democrats who never forgave her for voting in favor of the American invasion. Peace activists in 2008 thought they would be getting a President in Obama who would see things at least a little bit more their way.

That’s not what we saw in last year’s military budget, and it’s not what we’re seeing this year either. Last year, Democrats made excuses for Obama. Give him some more time to get settled into the Oval Office, they said, and then we’ll all see some real changes.

What are those Democrats going to say now? Will they acknowledge the failure of Obama to bring change, or will they change their ideology to suit their leader?

From the spring of 2007 to January of 2008, Unity08 declared itself to be a grassroots movement dedicated to bringing the American people together, taking big money out of politics and solving America’s problems by electing its own presidential ticket consisting of one Republican and one Democrat, running together. At the same time, Unity08 dedicated a great amount of effort to stacking its board with lobbyists and their families, collecting gigantic no-interest loans from undisclosed contributors, suing the FEC so it could grab even larger campaign contributions from insiders, contacting various Republicans to run for President on its ticket, and kicking citizens off its supposedly open forum when they began to ask questions.

In short, Unity08 inadvertently provided some of the best entertainment of the early 2008 election season. As the vague rumblings of a 2012 presidential election season begin to be heard, will we be treated to another round of political fun via Unity2012? All signs point to the answer “No.” Any effort to inaugurate Unity2012 will be met by the reality of pre-existing organizations. There’s the National Association of Black Journalists, holding its upcoming “Unity 2012″ conference in Orlando, Florida. There’s the organization of New Age lightworkers. Unity 2012 is also the name of a youth conference for the Ukrainian Catholic Church being held in Winnipeg, Canada. Heck, there’s Emmanuel Guerra‘s myspace page. Working with a slightly different name, over in the UK Unity12 is an organization assisting disabled people with challenges related to independent living.

I see no indication on the World Wide Web that the organizers of Unity08 (the website of which is now a blatant advertisement for its creator, the Republican-leaning Peak Media public relations corporation) have started up any 2012-related group. Why do we have to wait for them to get the ball rolling on exactly the same sort of effort for 2012? Let’s start an American Unity12 group ourselves: a more honest version of what Unity08 tried to accomplish on the sly.