When George W. Bush ignored science to push for the implementation of pre-determined policies, American liberals condemned the practice.

Before Barack Obama became president, he promised to respect the integrity of the scientific process and allow scientific results to inform our policies in an unperturbed fashion:

From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Because the truth is that promoting science isnt just about providing resources – its about protecting free and open inquiry. Its about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. Its about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when its inconvenient – especially when its inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States.

Now the Los Angeles Times reports that scientists are being pressured by Obama administration appointees to change their results in order to streamline approval for environmentally destructive projects, just as they were pressured by the officials of the Bush administration:

“We are getting complaints from government scientists now at the same rate we were during the Bush administration,” said Jeffrey Ruch, an activist lawyer who heads an organization representing scientific whistle-blowers….

interviews with several scientists — most of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation in their jobs — as well as reviews of e-mails provided by Ruch and others show a wide range of complaints during the Obama presidency:

In Florida, water-quality experts reported government interference with efforts to assess damage to the Everglades stemming from development projects.

In the Pacific Northwest, federal scientists said they were pressured to minimize the effects they had documented of dams on struggling salmon populations.

In several Western states, biologists reported being pushed to ignore the effects of overgrazing on federal land.

In Alaska, some oil and gas exploration decisions given preliminary approval under Bush moved forward under Obama, critics said, despite previously presented evidence of environmental harm.

The most immediate case of politics allegedly trumping science, some government and outside environmental experts said, was the decision to fight the gulf oil spill with huge quantities of potentially toxic chemical dispersants despite advice to examine the dangers more thoroughly.

And the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based organization, said it had received complaints from scientists in key agencies about the difficulty of speaking out publicly.

“Many of the frustrations scientists had with the last administration continue currently,” said Francesca Grifo, the organization’s director of scientific integrity.

Will we react the same way to this news as we did when the president’s name was George W. Bush?

In 2005, Irregular Times responded to the Bush administration’s plans for lifetime detention without criminal charges or trial, writing an essay calling George W. Bush “The Quiet Dictator”:

It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration is planning to keep people as prisoners for their entire lives, even though there is no evidence that those people have committed any crime against the United States. The lack of evidence against these people is so striking that the American government does not even have enough grounds to bring them before a form of military tribunal that has been set up by George W. Bush precisely for the purpose of evading the standards of justice set by the United States Constitution….

In the old, pre-Homeland, United States of America, a person had to be convicted of murder, by a jury of peers, in a public, open trial, on the basis of evidence without a reasonable doubt, and with the opportunity for fair representation and appeal to the justice system to rule out mistakes and prosecutorial fraud. Oh, but that was before The Homeland was created, and as we’re told over and over again, in the Homeland, everything changed.

At first, it was a scandal that the President of the United States had claimed the power to set up his own courts, outside of the judicial branch of government, to force people through military tribunals that would be little more than kangaroo courts. Now, it appears that Mr. Bush, the Master of our Homeland, has decided that he does not have to give prisoners any trial at all, ever. He can just lock them up, forever….

It is a sad day for those Americans who actually care about freedom, to see the American President give himself the power to convict people and punish them with life sentences without any need of evidence or even the formality of a show trial. This power is at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that George W. Bush has seized it, he is nothing more than a dictator….

The saddest thing of all is that most Americans just don’t care. So long as they are not taken prisoner, they don’t care if other people are. So long as they are not tortured, they don’t care if other people are. So long as they are able to live safely in their homes, they don’t care if other people, in other countries, are killed in their homes.

There is a new nonchalance in America about the withering of freedom. Freedom has now become an abstract concept for most Americans, something that is to be given only to some people, but not to others. Now, under the shadow of The Homeland, Americans seem to like the idea that only good people that the government approves of have the privilege of freedom. Gone are the days when freedom was regarded as a universal human right. Americans seem to want only security and vengeance.

It’s five years later and George W. Bush is no longer in the White House. But have matters changed? Barack Obama, the new Master of our Homeland, has agreed with the old Master that he does not have to give some prisoners any trial at all, ever. He, too, can just lock them up forever.

On what basis does Barack Obama justify his seizure of dictatorial powers? The Obama Administration says that the people it is imprisoning are suspected of providing support to “terrorist organizations.” But at the same time, the Obama administration’s own task force declared in 2010 that:

Notably, the principal obstacles to prosecution in the cases deemed infeasible by the Task Force typically did not stem from concerns over protecting sensitive sources or methods from disclosure, or concerns that the evidence against the detainee was tainted. While such concerns were present in some cases, most detainees were deemed infeasible for prosecution based on more fundamental evidentiary and jurisdictional limitations tied to the demands of a criminal forum….

Generally these detainees cannot be prosecuted because either there is presently insufficient admissible evidence to establish the detainee’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in either a federal court or military commission, or the detainee’s conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense in either a federal court or military commission.

In plain English, what does this mean? It means that the Obama administration is maintaining the Bush administration practice of detaining people without end when there is not sufficient evidence to actually convict them of terrorist acts, or terrorist support, or even terrorist affiliations.

The Guantanamo Review Task Force, consisting of officials from six branches of the Obama administration, was unanimous in making these declarations. In its unanimous report, the Guantanamo Review Task Force approvingly placed the following fig leaf over the indefinite detention of people who have insufficient evidence of guilt and whose conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense:

Significantly, the Executive Order does not preclude the government from prosecuting at a later date someone who is presently designated for continued detention. Work on these cases continues. Further exploitation of the forensic evidence could strengthen the prosecution against some detainees. Other detainees may cooperate with prosecutors. If either the Department of Justice or the Department of Defense concluded in the future that prosecution of a detainee held without charges has become feasible in a federal court or in a military commission, the detention decisions made in the course of this review would permit the prosecution to go forward.

You read that right: the Obama administration wants to keep these people locked up because one day some new evidence might come up that connects these people to prosecutable crimes, and just in case the government wants to keep them handy.

It is another sad day for Americans who care about freedom but see the American President give himself the power to punish people with a life in detention without any need for evidence, without even the formality of a show trial. Such power is still at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that Barack Obama has taken that power, we might as well call him what he is: a dictator.

American liberals long warned that George W. Bush was leading America toward dictatorship. But Barack Obama has taken the same dictatorial powers for himself. Bush may be gone, but the dictatorship is still here.

You might want to update your activist calendar a tad more often if you find it still contains this daily reminder:

Call GOP contributor and war contractor General Electric Corporation at 203 373 2211 and ask for the public relations department. Tell the person in public relations that you want the GE CEO to get Bush to end the war in Iraq and then Bush resign with Cheney and until that happens you will not buy any GE products and that you will tell your friends about this.

Back during the oh-so repressive era of George W. Bush, Ben Metcalf was driven to write in Harper’s to ask whether, for having the audacity to declare “I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands” he could be imprisoned.

Now, during the oh-so enlightened era of Barack Obama, an American citizen has actually been targeted for death — without warrants, without hearings, without a trial. This is not because the American citizen has actually gone out and harmed anyone. No one is claiming that he has. Rather, it is because the American citizen has made a public declaration that he would like others to take up arms against the United States.

For this speech, the Obama administration has put this American citizen on a list of people to be killed. Not to be arrested. Not to be brought to trial on some charge or another. Simply to be killed.

What do you think of that?

Last night I stumbled upon this political cartoon Irregular Times whipped up in criticism of the policies of the Bush administration back in 2001:

With a little updating, it’ll be as good as new:

Barack Obama will require his appointees who lead the Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. Videos of meetings will be archived on the web, and the transcript will be available to the public. Obama will also require his appointees to commit to employ all the technological tools available to allow average citizens not just to observe, but to participate and be heard on the issues that affect their daily lives. Obama will require Cabinet officials to have periodic 21st Century Fireside Chats, restore meaning to the Freedom of Information Act, and conduct regulatory agency business in public.

–Obama Campaign position paper, September 22, 2008

Hold 21st Century Fireside Chats: Obama will bring democracy and policy directly to the people by requiring his Cabinet officials to have periodic national broadband townhall meetings to discuss issues before their agencies.

–Obama for America Blueprint for Change: Ethics (current)

We learned earlier this week that Barack Obama’s campaign commitment regarding the Freedom of Information Act has not been met — he’s denied Freedom of Information requests in greater numbers than George W. Bush. But there was more to Obama’s campaign commitment than Freedom of Information requests. What about his other measurable commitments for the heads of his departments in the executive branch? Are videos of executive branch meetings being archived on the web? Are transcripts being posted? Are the various branch heads holding “21st Century Fireside Chats”?

Over the next few days, we’ll assess the performance of various departments in the Obama administration in meeting these campaign pledges. Today, we’ll look at the Department of Justice.

21st Century Fireside Chats at the Department of Justice
On January 27, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder (the cabinet-level head of the Department of Justice) posted a video to DOJ web page entitled “The Attorney General’s Report to the American People.” Tested on multiple computers, the video does not play in the Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google. In any case, this video does not satisfy the Obama administration’s definition of a “21st Century Fireside Chat” as a “national broadband townhall meeting to discuss issues before their agencies,” since in a townhall meeting discussion citizens have the opportunity to ask questions.

DOJ department meeting videos and transcripts
The Department of Justice “videos” page features 8 videos, none of which is of a department meeting in which agency officials “debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society.” Apart from transcripts of 2002 departmental meetings on DNA backlogs, no DOJ departmental meeting transcripts are available on the department’s website either by search or through the DOJ Office of Public Affairs list of publicly available documents.

DOJ Verdict:
21st Century Fireside Chat commitment not met
Departmental meeting webcast commitment not met
Departmental meeting transcript commitment not met

“Obama will require Cabinet officials to have periodic 21st Century Fireside Chats, restore meaning to the Freedom of Information Act, and conduct regulatory agency business in public.”

- Obama for America, September 22 2008

“Our work is not done. We will continue to work toward an unmatched level of transparency, participation and accountability across the entire Administration.”

– President Barack Obama, March 16 2010

Oh, President Obama’s reached an unmatched level of transparency, all right. It’s just not in the direction he promised. An Associated Press report reveals that Barack Obama is refusing Freedom of Information requests in even greater numbers than George W. Bush did.

“That’s not change. That’s more of the same!”

- Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden, August 27 2008

In a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois noted a small piece of history that is nevertheless important for understanding the path history has taken. Regarding the confirmation hearing of Jay Bybee in 2001, Dick Durbin noted:

We saw what happened when Mr. Bybee was head of the Office of Legal Counsel. I might remind my colleagues that in 2001, this committee held a hearing on the nomination of Jay Bybee to head this office. One member of the committee, Senator Kohl, one, was present at the hearing. Mr. Bybee was asked six questions. Six questions. Then unanimously confirmed.

“All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” So said somebody or other in history, unattended now because the source is lost. When good men, or good women, or even mediocre men and women absent themselves, they make it more likely for bad decisions to proceed unchecked. After his confirmation to lead the OLC, Jay Bybee wrote legal memos that declared federal laws against torture to be inapplicable because to outlaw torture would negate Bybee’s imagined power of the president as Commander-in-Chief to do whatever he sees fit to protect the country. Bybee further proclaimed that, despite clear standards to the contrary in federal law and treaty agreements, in any case no act to be torture unless it produced sensations of major organ failure or death. Bybee’s legal memos led to the erection of a system of torture in which doctors participated in order to keep detainees on the right side of the border between life and death and, among other things, in which just one man was drowned 183 times.

How does torture happen? Yes, the Bush administration had to decide to engage in it. But the Congress also had to decide not to watch, not to ask, not to trouble about it. Indeed, most of the Senators tasked with reviewing Bush’s nominees decided not even to show up.

Anyone who watches congressional hearings will notice that most of the seats reserved for committee members are empty most of the time. What’s being missed today?

The Executive Order Integrity Act, S. 2929, isn’t the sort of bill that a member of Congress just up and decides to write on the spur of the moment. The bill, sponsored by Senator Russell Feingold and cosponsored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, requires the president to make formal notifications of executive orders and changes to executive orders — to the public through the Federal Register if the subject is unclassified and to security-cleared congressional committees if the subject is classified. Executive orders are directives with the status of semi-law issued by a President to instigate a course of action, and the more power a president has, the more important executive orders become.

A bill regulating the transparency of their modification is a very specific piece of legislation responding to a very specific problem in government. The conditions under which Feingold and Whitehouse originally introduced the Executive Order Integrity Act in the 110th Congress are well-known: George W. Bush had been caught issuing, revoking and changing around multiple executive orders granting himself and his administration multiple new powers. The only way that Americans found out about these executive orders was through investigative journalism and the occasional leak.

With the election of Barack Obama as President, President George W. Bush became an ex-president and no longer needed to be reined in. Apart from hyperbolic conservative Christian declarations of “secret Obama executive orders” at the beginning of his administration that … um, were published in the federal register … what secret executive order problem has there been in the Obama administration?

Well, Senators Feingold and Whitehouse seemed to agree with that sentiment, refraining from reintroducing their legislation with a new 111th Congress and a new Obama administration. But that sentiment changed last December, when the pair decided it was time to bring their bill back from the dead for fresh consideration.

What prompted Feingold’s and Whitehouse’s change of heart? There’s a lot that could. The two senators are placed on both the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over constitutional matters, and the Intelligence Committee, which deals with all the secret shenanigans we citizen people aren’t to be told.

I don’t know what prompted the reintroduction of S. 2929, and the overwhelming conservative chatter about more recent “secret executive orders” by Obama that were actually made quite public really isn’t helpful as I to figure this out.

The offices of Senators Feingold and Whitehouse are mum about why S. 2929 needs to be reintroduced under the Obama administration. If you know something about the bill’s context pertaining to our new president, don’t be secretive. Let us know.

It’s been known for some time that the presidential administration of George W. Bush brought on lawyer John Yoo in order to write legal justifications for the U.S. Government to torture people it had detained. It’s less widely-observed but also known that John Yoo articulated the power of the President to nullify freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

And now comes something altogether new: page 64 of the Justice Department OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report reveals that John Yoo asserted the power of the President to order the massacre of a village full of civilians [ellipses and bracketed comments are part of the original report, not added by Irregular Times]:

Yoo was asked to explain how the torture statute would interfere with the President’s war making abilities, and gave the following answers:

Q: I guess the question I’m raising is, does this particular law really affect the President’s war-making abilities…

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: What is your authority for that?

A: Because this is an option that the President might use in war.

Q: What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred?… Is that a power that the President could legally –

A: Yeah. Although, let me say this. So, certainly that would fall within the Commander-in-Chief’s power over tactical decisions.

Q: To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?

A: Sure.

The Bush administration vigorously defended John Yoo as he asserted the president’s right to order torture, nullify free speech, obliterate the free press and, yes, massacre a village full of civilians.

The Obama administration has recommended that for his conduct, John Yoo should receive no punishment in criminal court, in civil court, or even by the Bar Association. This despite clear constitutional provisions and federal laws against such things. The constitution and the law just aren’t what they used to be.

And how has John Yoo reacted to his get-out-of-jail card from the Obama administration? With outrage, rolling out his lawyer to demand that the people who revealed John Yoo’s conduct should be disbarred and jailed.

Because torture, cancelling free speech, destroying a free press and massacring a village is all right… but revealing the truth about John Yoo and the Bush administration is simply unforgivable.

The Obama administration has decided that John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Bush administration lawyers who wrote George W. Bush cover letters telling him there was no problem with America torturing its detainees, will get off scot-free from criminal charges for the felony offense of conspiracy to commit torture. They won’t be taken to civil court either. Heck, the U.S. government won’t even forward on their names to the Bar Association for consideration of professional sanctions against the two. For their role in the consummated government conspiracy to commit torture, Yoo and Bybee will get off scot free with no criminal, civil or professional punishment whatsoever.

Their reaction? Proclamations that they have been treated shabbily. “No public servant should have to endure the type of relentless, misinformed attacks that have been directed at Judge Bybee,” said Bybee’s attorney and spokeswoman. “The only thing that warrants an ethical investigation out of this entire sorry business is the number of malicious allegations against Professor Yoo and Judge Bybee,” said Yoo’s attorney and spokesman.

You know, when one has acted to unleash the massive bureaucratic machinery of the government to torture people, drowning just one man 183 times, perhaps one would have more class than to trot out one’s attorney to complain about shabbily one has been treated.

Actually, no. I take that back. That’s exactly the sort of behavior we should expect.

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.

It may be hard to remember, but way, way back, there was a time when the majority of Americans agreed that George W. Bush was a great leader, sexy in a flight suit, and even a smart guy. Donald Reise was never in that majority. Back on March 16, 2002, he posted this message at Irregular Times:

George Bush is a stupid, stupid man. Part of the fun of this web site is that George has done so much of the work (of exposing himself as a moron) himself: everyone *knows* he’s an idiot! But wait–maybe that’s not fair; maybe not everyone agrees he’s a dolt. I have to say, though, in all my arguments with people who support His Fraudulency, not one person has made a viable argument, articulated in clear English, as to why it’s *inaccurate* to say George is stupid. Not one. So I want to hear it. Where are the people who think George W. Bush is *not* very, very dumb? Post your messages here. Convince me. Bring it on. You’ll fail.

We used to get quite a few e-mails on the subject back when Bush was president, but we haven’t received any for some time now. People seem largely to have forgotten the matter of George W. Bush.

An exception comes to us this morning from Kelly, who responds to Donald Reise’s challenge with the words of another president:

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Stupidity in the old sense of the word — short-winded stupor in speech — is the opposite of Eisenhower’s intellectualism. Eisenhower’s quote is a modern rephrasing of Lao-Tzu’s “those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.” But neither the converse of Lao-Tzu (that those who do not speak know) nor of Eisenhower (that those who speak in few words know) is necessarily true. We all can agree Bush wasn’t loquacious, but that doesn’t mean his mind was vivacious.

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?