Since 9/11 the USA has shown that it does not follow the civil rules of law for non-citizens. Obama's DOJ has convened a secret grand jury investigating Assange under the Espionage Act[1]. Joe Biden has called him a terrorist [2]. Others have called for his assassination [3]. Sweden was involved in the CIA's illegal rendition program and sent people to be tortured in Egypt[4]. Assange has every reason to fear for his life.
but not all of the subpoenas are secret, certainly is it rare for them to include NSLs (as Appelbaum has indicated the FBI hinted) and rarely if never are the dockets themselves sealed (as Appelbaum's lawyer is currently fighting)
Let's not pretend that it's a problem only with the current administration and his political party. The previous one found the civil rules of law rather inconvenient also and waved them off just as easily.
I am not arguing with your statement (you have said nothing wrong) but I'd like to head off the potential "Obama/Democrats is/are the problem!" rants.
Yes. Obama ran on change but when he met the entrenched interests of executive branch Washington, he quickly refashioned himself into George Dubya Bush's third term. His civil rights policy, technology policy, tax policy, financial regulatory policy, and many others confirm it.
The only major difference is that Obama always really wanted to catch Bin Laden and Bush -- openly -- didn't care. Now that that's over, he seems to want to run for Bush's fourth term.
I emphatically disagree. Obama and his administration seems way more competent, and willing to hear many sides, than Bush.
Obama tried to close guantanamo for years (see politifact) before giving up. He tried to end the trickle-down economics that Bush had (such as ending tax cuts for the rich) but conceded to the opposition somewhere around the US debt ceiling crisis.
His administration's technology initiatives are far ahead of Bush's (witness http://data.gov for instance, and requirement for all agencies to have an API).
His social programs are better thought out and actually save us money. Compare for example Bush's Medicare act in 2003 vs the CBO's assessment of Obama's Affordable Care Act which actually will save a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Or compare Bush's "gotta go cya later" bailout to the TARP that happened under Obama. His administration even set up http://recovery.gov to "track the money". Or compare the success that they had in bailing out the automakers. I would say that this administration is much more conscientious than the one with Dick "Deficits Don't Matter" Cheney and co.
Where Bush basically attacked Iraq with no emergency or multinational support ("coalition of the willing" was a sham), US involvement in Libya under Obama is closer to a Just War in that there is an emergency (dictator bombing his citizens), and it was also merely part of a multinational response, including a UN resolution, to a situation decried by human rights groups.
Where I agree with you is Obama's cavalier attitude toward executive privilege and rights granted by the NDAA. This represents an erosion of CIVIL liberties and security in America, which I am not happy about.
It should be no surprise that PPACA saves money over 10 years, if the 10 years contain 10 years of PPACA revenue and only 6 years of PPACA spending. Perhaps we would do well to determine whether it saves or spends money in its eventual steady state, rather than pretending that the world will end in 2020.
As of the bill's passage into law in 2010, CBO estimated the legislation would reduce the deficit by $143 billion[185] over the first decade, but half of that was due to expected premiums for the C.L.A.S.S. Act, which has since been abandoned.[186] Although the CBO generally does not provide cost estimates beyond the 10-year budget projection period (because of the great degree of uncertainty involved in the data) it decided to do so in this case at the request of lawmakers, and estimated a second decade deficit reduction of $1.2 trillion.[180][187] ...
He promised a lot of those issues during his campaign and a lot of people voted for him. Yes, they are utterly stupid to believe that Obama can just sit down and start writing laws into the books, but that doesn't exactly prevent him from appearing as being a liar.
I agree, he did break promises, many of them due to encountering opposition he couldn't muster the political power/courage/recklessness to surmount. You can see a more in depth analysis here:
1) After getting into office, he actually addressed the fiscal and economic crisis that was developing, and we can definitely say that today the charts are a little higher than in 2008. That took some re-prioritizing.
2) All politicians promise something. Just hear Romney's promises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnaYOv0DZY ... so believing everyone's promises is silly. For me it's more about how competent the guy is to actually achieve/maintain the stuff I think we need as a country. And even so, I don't think the president can do that much these days. You should worry about the Senate, they have the lowest approval rating ever I think.
3) He has made some major reforms, the medical reform is a big one, perhaps one day he may tackle immigration reform. Also the JOBS act is bringing about some much-needed financial reform, but I can't give all the credit to Obama on this one. Actually here is what I think about the direction this country is headed: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=108
I'm amused by the notion that Assange has to somehow be extradited to Sweden if the CIA is going to rendition him. The CIA renditions people by kidnapping them off the street. They can do that in London just as well as anywhere else in the world. If the CIA wanted to rendition Assange, Assange would have been renditioned by now. The whole Sweden business would only get in the way of a rendition, not facilitate it.
The Obama admin has an active global program of executing US citizens that are labeled 'enemy combatants' or providing aid to E.C., with no judicial review.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11...
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/19/assange-high-tec...
[3] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40467957/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in...
[4] http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-b...