AZJoe
11-21-2016, 11:37 AM
Obama’s Executive Power Legacy
What Trump could do with Obama’s Dangerous Executive Power Precedents
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-trump-could-do-with-executive-power/
The near-unrestrained executive power claimed by the Obama administration … will be handed to the president-elect.
Assassinations
Obama legalized, formalized, and normalized drone assassinations on a global scale, including the killing of American citizens without due process … The only real restraint he imposed was self-restraint. …
Guantanamo
Obama never closed the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as he promised. … Obama instead normalized indefinite detention as a policy of the United States, and alongside that (as with torture and drone assassinations), the use of often secret and convoluted legal opinions to justify such executive powers.
Espionage Act
Obama prosecuted more federal whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous United States presidents combined. He sent to jail people who exposed torture and people who allegedly leaked information to journalists showing American complicity in dangerous acts abroad. He had Chelsea Manning prosecuted for exposing war crimes in Iraq. He used the Espionage Act to destroy the lives of others who under any definition except his own would be considered political heroes. Obama and his Justice Department created the playbook for how to use the previously obscure 1917 Espionage Act to do these things. …
Torture
Obama did not prosecute or discipline anyone for torturing people on behalf of the people of the United States. He did not hold any truth commissions, and ensured almost all of the significant government documents on the torture program remain classified. He did not prosecute the Central Intelligence Agency official who willfully destroyed [evidence] … [Obama] has not specifically outlawed secret prisons and renditions, just suspended their use. … Because of these failures to act, President Trump can … restart the torture program. … if another major terror attack takes place, people at the Central Intelligence Agency will almost certainly be lining up to conduct the torture, as they did last time, knowing it is wrong, but that they will not be held accountable.
Freedom of Information Act
The Obama administration set a record (77 percent) for redacting government files or denying access to them in fiscal year 2014 under the Freedom of Information Act. More than any previous administration, Obama’s took longer to turn over files, said more often it could not locate documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over time-sensitive files quickly …
National Security Agency
Obama never realistically reigned in the National Security Agency after the Bush-era Patriot Act allowed them to turn surveillance tools on the homeland. [Obama] , following his predecessor, kept this spying largely secret until whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed it. Absent a few cosmetic changes, the National Security Agency continues to gather the full spectrum of Americans’ communications in violation of the Fourth Amendment, abetted by the secret Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court and vaguely Constitutional tools such as National Security Letters and parallel reconstruction. Information lives forever, and the National Security Agency is building bigger data warehouses to keep storing it. …
What Trump could do with Obama’s Dangerous Executive Power Precedents
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-trump-could-do-with-executive-power/
The near-unrestrained executive power claimed by the Obama administration … will be handed to the president-elect.
Assassinations
Obama legalized, formalized, and normalized drone assassinations on a global scale, including the killing of American citizens without due process … The only real restraint he imposed was self-restraint. …
Guantanamo
Obama never closed the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as he promised. … Obama instead normalized indefinite detention as a policy of the United States, and alongside that (as with torture and drone assassinations), the use of often secret and convoluted legal opinions to justify such executive powers.
Espionage Act
Obama prosecuted more federal whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous United States presidents combined. He sent to jail people who exposed torture and people who allegedly leaked information to journalists showing American complicity in dangerous acts abroad. He had Chelsea Manning prosecuted for exposing war crimes in Iraq. He used the Espionage Act to destroy the lives of others who under any definition except his own would be considered political heroes. Obama and his Justice Department created the playbook for how to use the previously obscure 1917 Espionage Act to do these things. …
Torture
Obama did not prosecute or discipline anyone for torturing people on behalf of the people of the United States. He did not hold any truth commissions, and ensured almost all of the significant government documents on the torture program remain classified. He did not prosecute the Central Intelligence Agency official who willfully destroyed [evidence] … [Obama] has not specifically outlawed secret prisons and renditions, just suspended their use. … Because of these failures to act, President Trump can … restart the torture program. … if another major terror attack takes place, people at the Central Intelligence Agency will almost certainly be lining up to conduct the torture, as they did last time, knowing it is wrong, but that they will not be held accountable.
Freedom of Information Act
The Obama administration set a record (77 percent) for redacting government files or denying access to them in fiscal year 2014 under the Freedom of Information Act. More than any previous administration, Obama’s took longer to turn over files, said more often it could not locate documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over time-sensitive files quickly …
National Security Agency
Obama never realistically reigned in the National Security Agency after the Bush-era Patriot Act allowed them to turn surveillance tools on the homeland. [Obama] , following his predecessor, kept this spying largely secret until whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed it. Absent a few cosmetic changes, the National Security Agency continues to gather the full spectrum of Americans’ communications in violation of the Fourth Amendment, abetted by the secret Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court and vaguely Constitutional tools such as National Security Letters and parallel reconstruction. Information lives forever, and the National Security Agency is building bigger data warehouses to keep storing it. …