The worst civil liberties president in US history?....

[Chakravartin]

michaelb wrote: Generally, you don't have "constitutional rights" when you are out of the country.

You do insofar as as actions by the U.S. government are concerned. Nothing in the Constitution exempts citizens from
constitutional protections while traveling.

...Except for 100 miles inland from every border of the U.S. (The Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security claims that they have a mandate that includes this region, allowing them to conduct warrantless searches and to indefinitely detain any suspect in this region, covering roughly 2/3rds of the population of the U.S.)

http://www.aclu.org/national-security_te...-free-zone
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_...on,00.html
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0...es-aboard/
http://chronicle.com/article/Far-From-Ca...ve/125880/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/28...-Free-Zone

[max]

True dat....

[vision63]

max wrote:
True dat....

Every president we've ever had was an a$$hole and every president we ever will have will be an a$$hole. You're topic is worthless. You're looking for angels? Good luck finding one.

[mick e]

That's a real weak copuout for failing to digest or deal with this topic.

[vision63]

mick e wrote:
That's a real weak copuout for failing to digest or deal with this topic.

If anyone here wants to have a substantive discussion regarding civil liberties as it relates to a particular president, then have one. This isn't one. This is just somebody throwing a ball in the arena and everyone jumping on it. That's what makes it worthless.

[michaelb]

Chakravartin wrote:
[quote=michaelb]Generally, you don't have "constitutional rights" when you are out of the country.

You do insofar as as actions by the U.S. government are concerned. Nothing in the Constitution exempts citizens from
constitutional protections while traveling.

...Except for 100 miles inland from every border of the U.S. (The Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security claims that they have a mandate that includes this region, allowing them to conduct warrantless searches and to indefinitely detain any suspect in this region, covering roughly 2/3rds of the population of the U.S.)

http://www.aclu.org/national-security_te...-free-zone
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_...on,00.html
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0...es-aboard/
http://chronicle.com/article/Far-From-Ca...ve/125880/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/28...-Free-Zone
As authoritative as those sources are on constitutional law, none of them stand for what you are suggesting, all are about how you don't have any constitutional rights at the border (and that extends 100 miles inland). None of them address the rights of a US citizen killed for terrorist activities in Yemen or for piracy in Sudan. I will give you some leeway here though, the reason for that is the constitutional questions about killing terrorists outside the US is unknown and unresolved and is likely not reviewable by a US court, so we will never know.

Your beef with Obama is not that he is denying "constitutional rights" to terrorists (since they have none), but that he is continuing an unlawful expansion of executive power that was adopted by Bush.

[max]

vision63 wrote:
[quote=mick e]
That's a real weak copuout for failing to digest or deal with this topic.

If anyone here wants to have a substantive discussion regarding civil liberties as it relates to a particular president, then have one. This isn't one. This is just somebody throwing a ball in the arena and everyone jumping on it. That's what makes it worthless.
The inconvenient truth, lets stick our head into a sandpile...

[michaelb]

max wrote:
[quote=vision63]
[quote=mick e]
That's a real weak copuout for failing to digest or deal with this topic.

If anyone here wants to have a substantive discussion regarding civil liberties as it relates to a particular president, then have one. This isn't one. This is just somebody throwing a ball in the arena and everyone jumping on it. That's what makes it worthless.
The inconvenient truth, lets stick our head into a sandpile...
I have been trying, you just have not been following along. So I will recap:

1) you are wrong about the legal issues;
2) the article is poorly written and doesn't say what you think it says;
3) any suggestion that Obama is the worst president on civil liberities is ridiculous.

[deckeda]

mick e highlighted some things. I don't agree most of them happened, at least not in the way he sees them. He and max will think that's crazy because they're looking at literal events and assigning them equal weight with things that run our daily lives.

I want to see some groundswell of the disturbance, some daily condemnations, some additional feedback, criticism and reports before I get in line behind a few constitutional theorists.

[mick e]

The point that mick e has made is that Obama had an opportunity to make things right and restore the system of governance that existed before W Bush. Because he chose to go the other way, he has ruined the system that was put in place by the founders.

This may sound like hyperbole to you, but since he failed to act in the ways he stated he would leading up to the 2008 election, any hope of restoring the constitutional protections that we had enjoyed for most of our lives is lost. The genie cannot and won't be put back in the bottle at this point.

This means more tracking and surveillance, less freedom to travel - even within the country's borders. The systematic domination and suppression by the government over it's people is well underway.

Obama could have outlawed all domestic spying programs and arrested and tried the Bush Administration for their blatant flouting of constitutional law. He could have made statements condemning these programs and anything like it that intrudes on individual rights. He could have been a hero to the nation, but instead he decided to be its undertaker.