Intrinsic goodness ...

But these actions -- these contradictions between what he said and what he is doing, the embrace of the very powers that caused so much anger towards Bush/Cheney -- are so blatant, so transparent, so extreme, that the only way to avoid noticing them is to purposely shut your eyes as tightly as possible and resolve that you don't want to see it, or that you're so convinced of his intrinsic Goodness that you'll just believe that even when it seems like he's doing bad things, he must really be doing them for the Good. ...

What intrinsic goodness could there be in attempting to firmly establish the right of kingship for US presidents. Even if Obama were intrinsically good, a condition for which there is no evidence of at this point, his successor, like his predecessor before him, may not be.

Absolute power and secrecy -- that's called tyranny, not democracy.

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Today's QUOTES:

What's more interesting to me is that the right is managing to work the refs on this and get them to adopt this premise that it's Obama's fault that Republicans are assholes. That we are dealing with this question just a couple of months after the inaugural lovefest just shows how quickly the worm can turn. And I also suspect they are aiming some of this rhetoric at Obama himself, trying to provoke him into bending ever more to the right in order that nobody see him as being too partisan --- hoisting him with his own post-partisan petard. Let's hope that's not going to have any effect. (Clinton had a bad habit of contining to seek their approval even after they went into full character assassination mode --- and it got him the second impeachment in American history.) --Polar Bores by digby, Hullabaloo

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Fascism entrenched ...

One sure way for the fascist minded to keep control of the government is to pass control of intelligence gathering and covert operations to 'hired' contractors.

Outsourcing intelligence by James Carroll

... The Washington Post reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency is transferring "core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection" to private contractors -- up to a billion dollars worth. This raises the prospect that hired guns, instead of sworn officials, will be conducting covert operations, spying missions, interrogations, "renditions," surveillance -- the whole dangerous complex of shadow activity that began as the government's most sensitive responsibility.

Given the often shocking record of what US intelligence officials have done over the years, why does it matter if such activities are carried out by contractors? The answer patently goes to the question of accountability. Public servants who are bound by oaths to the Constitution and the law understand what the measure of behavior must be, even if they fall short of it. Activities involving the surreptitious, especially, have properly been reserved to public institutions subject to political oversight. Private parties, bound by contract, operate at remove from such limit and accountability, which may be why borderline activities like interrogation or rendition are increasingly farmed out to them. ...

The Bush Administration protects us by hiding 100 year old government documents ...

The Bush Administration is removing willy-nilly millions of pages of historical documents from public view. Some of the document being removed are over a hundred years old.

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