Yesterday, we thought that the Obama Administration, after two delays, was finally going to release a CIA memo revealing the breadth and knowing criminality of U.S. government torture under George W. Bush. Obama didn’t release the memo.

This morning, we thought that Obama’s delay in releasing the memo would be just three or four days, until the end of the 4th of July weekend.

This evening, we’re finding out that Barack Obama is using the occasion of the anniversary of America’s struggle for liberty to announce that he will keep secrets about torture from the American people from another two months, at which time, of course, he may just announce another delay.

The government has held this memo for years already. What on earth does Barack Obama need another two months for to decide whether to release the memo? How hard is it for Obama to choose whether to tell us the truth? How long does Obama need to figure out whether to keep his promises of a government of openness, accountability, and respect for constitutional rights?

In March of 2008, Adam Davidson of NPR revealed the massive increase in “Suspicious Activity Reports” to monitor the purchasing and financial transactions of you and prominent “politically exposed persons,” without a warrant, to uncover evidence of precrime. Here’s Davidson’s description of how Suspicious Activity Reports work in the age of Homeland Security:

Banks monitor every transaction. Every one, no matter how small…. “Your transaction is being transferred to the bank and it will be loaded into our transaction monitoring system and we will actually add this transaction together with several other types of transaction that you’ve done recently.” The software is checking to see if maybe that $4 is part of a pattern…. The report goes to a bank’s compliance officer, listing all recent suspicious transactions. Every transaction is given a numerical score…. The computer makes the score based on who is making the transaction, where does he come from, who is he associated with, what else is he up to. Every bank customer has, somewhere, in some computer database, a risk assessment score…. It also checks a bunch of lists. Are you on a terror watch list? A list of criminals?… A PEP — banks really do use that term — is anybody with political power. That means a Nigerian General, a U.S. Senator, or say the Governor of New York. And any PEP — any Politically Exposed Person — is monitored more carefully…. The Patriot Act forced banks to more closely monitor suspicious activity.

Remember Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York? He was brought down politically after — without any evidence, without a warrant — his extramural, extramarital activity was brought to light through government collection and analysis of, yes, Suspicious Activity Reports.

Since then, I’ve been tracking the Department of Treasury’s twice-annual reports of these Suspicious Activity Reports (also known as SARs). The SAR Activity Review By The Numbers report has been issued twice a year — once in the fall and once in May or June — since 2003, with trend information extending back to 1996. Here’s a representation of the available data as of the release of the last By The Numbers report in November 2008 during the waning days of the Bush administration:

You can see why the trends are important to follow; since the passage of the Patriot Act the volume of Suspicious Activity Reports filed with the government has ballooned. Notice the asterisk for 2008 — the November 2008 report, of course, could not include all data for 2008, but only data on reports up through June 2008. The figure for 2008 was a preliminary extrapolation. To get full data on the volume of SARs for 2008, we’d have to wait for the regular By The Numbers report, scheduled to be released in May or June of 2009.

May and June of 2009 have passed, and as you can see here (as of today, July 2) there is no new report available.

Candidate Barack Obama ran for president on the pledge that his administration would champion transparency in government. When federal snooping on the financial activity of everyday Joes and “Politically Exposed Persons” goes undisclosed, that does not strike me as “transparent.”

Did I mention that at the end of this year, a number of provisions of the Patriot Act will expire unless they are renewed by Congress? Continued public disclosure of Suspicious Activity Report trends would complicate this renewal. When information about Patriot Act surveillance is swept quietly under the carpet, renewal of the Patriot Act’s provisions is made that much simpler.

You may remember that I wrote yesterday morning that the big news of the day about torture would be the release of a CIA memo written during the Bush Administration, revealing the scope of planned torture under George W. Bush. The Obama Administration had promised to release the memo requested by the ACLU yesterday, after all, and with Barack Obama a promise is a… suggestion that may be later completely reversed.

The CIA memo was not released. The Obama Administration asked for a three day extension, and then suggested that maybe the memo wouldn’t be released until next week, when of course, Obama may change his mind again.

Apparently, there’s some uncertainty within the Obama Administration about whether to follow President Obama’s pledge to have a government of unprecedented openness, or to keep most of the memo secret, just as George W. Bush did. Obama is delaying while he decides how much information about government torture he will continue to conceal. Supporters of Barack Obama ought to be asking themselves why Mr. Yes We Can can’t muster the willpower to finally allow the American public to learn the whole truth about U.S. government torture.

If we aren’t even given full information about what went on with torture under Bush, how can we know that torture has actually stopped under Obama? Given Obama’s efforts to keep military interrogations undocumented, and his opposition to justice for those who have been tortured, I don’t see how he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Really. Which is worse: that Maine Republican candidate for Governor Les Otten has pretty obviously copied President Barack Obama’s website theme…

… or that President Barack Obama has pretty obviously copied from the Republican Party platform on warrantless surveillance, state secrets, torture, the imbalance of power and anti-gay discrimination?

Expect the big civil liberties news of the day to be the release of a memo from the CIA related to torture. That’s all well and good, but that memo is about what happened during the Bush Administration, in the past, and President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress have made it clear that they’re not going to allow any efforts to hold anyone accountable for torture that took place in the past.

Given that inaction, I think that we need to take extra care to hold Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats accountable for their actions on torture in the present. Yesterday, I focused on a particular aspect of congressional accountability for torture when it came to an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill passed last week. The amendment was offered by Democrat Rush Holt, yet 31 Democrats voted against it.

That amendment was something you’re not going to read about in the news today. No journalists are reporting on it, but it gives an extremely important insight into the difference between what the Obama Administration says it’s going to do, and what it actually intends to do. The Obama Administration says it’s going to end torture, and restore open government, but it’s actually moved to protect illegal government secrecy in order to cover up torture. The Obama Administration continues that pattern with its position on the Holt amendment.

The Holt amendment passed last week has to do with interrogations. It would require the military to videotape all interrogations, except for tactical interrogations on the battlefield where videotaping is impractical. The measure was actually recommended by a military task force that was assembled by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the end of the Bush Administration. In a document called The Walsh Report, the task force recommended that all military interrogations be videotaped in order to prevent torture and other forms of abuse and coercion, in order to protect military interrogation teams from false accusations of torture, abuse and coercion, and in order to provide better military intelligence.

Given the military’s own recommendation in the Walsh Report, and the way that videotaping protections soldiers and prisoners alike, it seems that voting for the Holt amendment would be an obvious decision. Yet, 31 Democrats and 162 Republicans voted against it. Why?

During the debate over the amendment last week, Republican Representative Howard McKeon offered a surprising reason for opposing the measure: The Obama Administration opposes it. McKeon presented the following statement from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, explaining why the Obama White House asked for the videotaping requirement to be defeated:

“The Department of Defense strongly opposes the provision because it would severely restrict the collection of intelligence through interrogations, undercut the Department’s ability to recruit sources, and impose an unreasonable administrative and logistical burden on the warfighter.”

It’s a bit bizarre, but Robert Gates is now arguing against the opinion of the panel of experts that he himself assembled, and the Obama Administration is giving political support to efforts by Republicans and right wing Democrats in Congress to block the prevention of torture.

The justifications for this reversal offered by Gates don’t make sense. There’s no logistical burden on the “warfighter” (is that a word?). The Holt amendment specifically provides an exception for tactical interrogations that take place on the battlefield, where videotaping may not be practical. The videotaping provision shouldn’t harm the military’s ability to recruit sources either, as there’s no requirement in the amendment that voluntary sources be told that they will be videotaped.

The protest from Gates that I am most bothered by is his claim that videotaping interrogations will “severely restrict the collection of intelligence through interrogations”. First of all, the Walsh Report makes it clear that the videotaping would actually make interrogations more successful, providing a better quality of intelligence than would otherwise be available. Secondly, it doesn’t make sense to claim that the videotaping of an interrogation would interfere with the collection of intelligence at all, much less “severely restrict” it, unless the military intends to use interrogation techniques, such as torture, that are illegal.

There’s reason for us to worry about such a possibility, given Barack Obama’s sudden insistence this spring that he must not release photographic and video evidence of torture. The Obama Administration’s move to oppose the videotaping of interrogations is yet another instance of Obama’s overall effort to preserve the government secrecy that made widespread violations of the Constitution and international law possible. The Obama White House appears to be concerned not just with keeping the torture of the past a secret, but with preserving a shroud over interrogations in the present, making torture and abuse likely to continue.

Coming upon my car this afternoon in the Short North neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, I found this magnet affixed to my car. I didn’t put it there.

What an odd activity, and what an odd time to engage in it. I mean, hey, this is a swing state and all, but really, we’re three and a half years out from the next presidential election. I’m still twisting my brain trying to figure out how this came to pass. Did a supply of Barack Obama car magnets being shipped into the state in preparation for the next election cycle fall out of a cargo plane on the way to the airport, wafting down across the city? Was some ex-Obama supporter looking for a place to put her old car magnet but uncomfortable with the idea of a trash can? Am I a sleepwalker nursing some suppressed joy at the Obama policy record? Or is this a freak convergence of billions of infinitesimal quantum probabilities, leading to the spontaneous generation of an Obama magnet out of nothing but the arrested decay of virtual particles?

Or is it you? Did you do it, you rascal, you?

Barack Obama loves giving lofty speeches about the need to confront the crisis of global climate change and pollution of the environment. On March 19 this year, Obama laid down the line on what must be done: “We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.”

This weekend, Obama moved that line, and twisted into a kind of squiggly shape with a lot of loopholes in it. Obama declared that he opposes efforts to hold foreign countries accountable when they refuse to comply with limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama used the term “protectionist” to refer to elements of the American Clean Energy and Security Act that establish tariffs against nations that continue refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Well, yeah, I guess measures like this are protectionist. They protect everybody from pollution, and from climate change. They protect American workers from foreign governments that try to use dirty, dangerous old energy technologies to create an unfair trade advantage. What does Obama have against protecting us from these sorts of things?

President Obama is the one who set an absolutist, dichotomous standard for climate action. He ought to be judged by that standard. If, as Obama says, “We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it,” then Obama chose to side for this weekend with the forces that want to let climate change go unchecked. If, as Obama says, “We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America,” then Obama chose this this weekend to let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad.

By Obama’s own measure, he’s not taking the action on climate change or labor that America needs from its President.

It’s been a year of a heck of a lot of broken promises for Barack Obama, and over the weekend a new one has come along. You remember that Obama and the Democrats criticized McCain health care proposals that would have taxed health benefits. They said it was wrong to tax health benefits at a time when people are struggling to pay premiums.

Health care benefits are, however, a significant form of income in the US. So, taxing these benefits could go a long way toward putting the government’s budget back in order, and could help pay for health care reform policies to provide health insurance to people who currently don’t have any at all.

The Obama Administration let journalists know this weekend that it would consider taxing health benefits - but only the benefits of Americans who make more than $250,000 per year.

Is it a good idea? Is this broken Obama promise acceptable, given that Obama is targeting wealthy Americans?

The news has emerged that President Barack Obama is considering an executive order to impose a system of indefinite detention without trial in the United States of America. The New York Times interviewed Obama administration officials to uncover the reasons why:

At the heart of the issue are more than 200 men being held at Guantánamo, in some cases for years. Initially, the administration had hoped that most could either be sent back to their home countries or tried in criminal courts in the United States. But emptying the prison has proved politically difficult.

Officials acknowledge that they have had trouble persuading other countries to accept detainees, and it now appears that some detainees — as many as several dozen — are unlikely candidates for criminal trials because of legal issues, including having evidence against them that was obtained by coerced interrogations.

Legislation remains an option, officials said, but the possibility of an executive order, which would bypass Congress, seems to indicate that the administration fears it may be unable to reach an agreement with lawmakers on a new detention system to replace Guantánamo.

Got that? Let’s rephrase: the Obama White House wants to issue an executive order to detain people because it doesn’t believe a judicial trial would convict the people it wants imprisoned and it doesn’t believe that the sort of legislative bill it wants would pass Congress.

Remember your high school American civics class and the lesson on the checks and balances of power distributed between three coequal branches of government? When Barack Obama was a candidate a year ago, he told us he remembered that lesson, too. He told us that change doesn’t come from the top down, but from the bottom up. He told us that he had read the Constitution and taught the Constitution and believed in the Constitution. He told us he’d restore judicial review to detainees and the right to a fair trial. He told us he’d restore human rights and civil rights for individuals. He told us he’d restore due process and rule of law, not rule by edict.

Now that he’s President, and he doesn’t think he’ll get the outcome he wants on individual cases from the legislative and judicial branches, he’s decided he’s going to overrule judicial power, to overrule Congress’ power of legislation, to overrule the Constitution itself. Rather than deal with the pesky separation of powers, Barack Obama will issue his personal edict that in America, there is no more right to a speedy, public trial by impartial jury. Under Barack Obama’s presidential declaration, Barack Obama will be judge, Barack Obama will be jury, and Barack Obama will be jailer. There are names for a person who feels desperately that unless he controls every aspect of a situation, it will all turn out wrong. “Micromanager” is a polite one. “Control freak” is more blunt. “Tyrant” is usually the one we use in politics.

Does this remind you of anyone? Does it remind you of George W. Bush? Does it remind you of Dick Cheney? It should. The Obama administration has adopted the kingly aspirations of the Bush administration. History tells us that it’s a bad idea to let control freaks and tyrants grab the crown, or to fashion a crown for themselves when none exists.

I expect some of you are thinking right now that this really isn’t such a big deal, that it can’t be such a big deal, because Barack Obama seems like such a nice fellow. Besides, you might be thinking, President Obama is just doing what he has to do to clean up after the messes of the Bush administration, to deal with the aftermath of leftover detainees. He’ll resolve the issue of the Guantanamo detainees, you’re thinking, and then we can move forward without looking backward to the dawn of a new bright and shiny day where we all hold hands on the hillside and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony and buy the world a Coke and keep it company…

… well, hold on there, Sheila. Read what the Washington Post reports, after speaking to Obama administration officials, about the plans for this executive order:

Such detainees — those at Guantanamo and those who may be captured in the future — would also have the right to legal representation during confinement and access to some of the information that is being used to keep them behind bars…. One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare.

Did you notice the word “future” there? Funny word, “future”: it usually refers to what somebody’s planning to do next.

In spite of all the talk from President Obama and Democrats in Congress about how they are “committed” to overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, which legalizes inequality in order to discriminate against same-sex couples, there isn’t actually one single piece of legislation that would overturn the law. The President hasn’t sent legislation to Congress. Congress hasn’t written legislation.

So, how can the President and congressional Democrats say that they’re “committed” to overturning the Defense of Marriage Act? Maybe it’s in the same sense that same-sex couples are allowed to say that they’re committed to each other in private, but can’t make an official, public act of commitment in the same way that heterosexual couples can.

It doesn’t really take that much commitment for the President, or someone in Congress, to write legislation. All they have to do is assign an aide to sit down and write it for them, and do the required paperwork. Politicians in Washington D.C. write legislation all the time, for small matters as well as grand ideas.

For example, yesterday, Senator David Vitter introduced a resolution to designate March 31, 2010, as National Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Day. (Can you come up with some ideas for how to celebrate that holiday?) If Vitter can take time to write the National Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness Day resolution, Democrats in Congress and Barack Obama can take the time to write a bill overturning the Defense of Marriage Act…

…unless they’re not as committed as they say they are.

Did you think that, with the election of Barack Obama, you wouldn’t have to worry about the problems of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Think again.

George W. Bush is no longer President, but lots of people are still dying in Iraq. Today, a bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad has killed dozens.

In Afghanistan, torture is a problem that won’t die - it just continues to create suffering for those who value the truth. The BBC interviewed 27 former prisoners who had been held at the American military base in Bagram. 25 said that they had been tortured or abused.

Apparently, some of the torture photographs Barack Obama refuses to allow us to see were taken at the Bagram prison. Just what is Obama trying to cover up, and why? And why is it that Obama is refusing prisoners at Bagram even the basic right of habeas corpus? Why would Obama do that at a prison where torture is alleged to be rampant?

Keep in mind that the 27 Bagram prisoners who were interviewed by the BBC were never even charged with a crime. 25 people sampled by the BBC were tortured and abused by Americans, and weren’t even formally accused of any crime.

Why is Barack Obama helping to cover up these crimes?

PawPaw writes to us today with helpful scientific information about Barack Obama:

He is 50% white, 44% Arab and 6% Black.

I wasn’t sure at first whether to believe PawPaw or not, because he didn’t include any documentation of this claim or any links to such documentation. Those are pretty specific numbers, too: 44% Arab, not 43%! Where do they come from?

Well, I decided to take a closer look. And here’s the proof I found, plain as day, and specific too:

See, all we had to do was to look at the Race Gauge on his neck! You might not have noticed yours, because, well, how easy is it for you to look at your own neck? But Barack Obama’s Race Gauge clearly shows a tripartite division of racial lineage. His is a Communist subtype gauge, with Russian-type Caucasian lineage therefore measured red. That’s a clear 50% White right there. Then there’s the green (think Libya) Arab measurement on the gauge, which is nearly as salient, obviously matching the 44% figure. That leaves 6% Black (and blue).

I am so sorry I ever doubted your claim, PawPaw. Now let’s spread the word! Because this is, you know, really, really important.

Torture is a moral issue, and the issue is not past. Despite revelations that American torture practices lasted seven years, that medical doctors participated in the torture, that it involved drowning one man 183 times, and that the major purpose of all this torture was to generate fabricated “evidence” to support an invasion of Iraq, despite all this, American government under President Barack Obama is not trying to uncover American torture practices. On the contrary, the Obama administration is engaged in vigorous efforts to cover it all up. Torture investigations? Off the table. Binyam Mohamed torture report? Quashed. Abu Ghraib torture photos? Stifled. CIA torture photos, and tapes, and transcripts? Hidden. State secrets powers for the President? Vigorously pursued. It’s not just the Obama administration, either. Congress is also acting to hide evidence of US government torture from you, to stall or stop any congressional investigations and to make legislative reform more difficult.

This is why activism on the issue of American torture by Americans is essential even though George W. Bush is out of office. This week, rallies, marches and other protect actions against torture are taking place across the country. Here’s a list of the actions I’m aware of; post a comment if you know of others.

Thursday, June 25

San Francisco, CA
Pasadena, CA
Tampa Bay, FL
Washington, D.C. March to the DOJ
Boston, MA at Harvard Square
Portland, OR
Bryn Mawr, PA
Salt Lake City, UT

Friday, June 26

San Jose, CA
Atlanta, GA

Saturday, June 27

Washington, DC: 24 Hours in front of the White House

Barack Obama has changed his mind again, but this time, it’s good thing. Earlier this year, the Obama Administration had sought continued funding for the National Applications Office, a Department of Homeland Security agency that has been coordinating the use of military spy satellites to watch American citizens within the borders of the US, without search warrant. The program was an outrageous violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure by the government.

This morning, however, it is being reported that the Obama Administration has reversed course and has decided to dismantle the National Applications Office.

The Obama Administration still has not ended the use of warrantless electronic surveillance and physical searches that became legal, though still unconstitutional, under the Protect America Act and FISA Amendments Act.