A whopping 70,000 questions poured into Change.gov over the past week, in response to the Obama transition team's call for citizen queries to the president-elect. After votes from about 100,000 people, the top ranked question asks Obama whether he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture and illegal surveillance by the U.S. government.
I've been working with activist Bob Fertik to organize support for the question, and several progressive bloggers urged readers and Obama supporters to vote for it last week. Digby, who has written extensively about the Bush administration's abuse of the rule of law, recently reported on the progress:
I wrote a post about [an] initiative spearheaded by Ari Melber of The Nation and Democrats.com to ask President-elect Obama if he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes in the Bush administration over at Change.gov. (In a previous round, it was the sixth most asked question...) This time, through their efforts, it's number one. This is particularly important, since the press has only asked Obama about this one time, last April. And a lot has happened since then, most obviously the fact that Vice President is all over television admitting to war crimes as if he's proud of it.
Then The New York Times picked up the news:
[T]he number one submission on the popular "Open for Questions" portion of the site might seem more than a little impolitic to [President Bush]: "Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor -- ideally Patrick Fitzgerald -- to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping," wrote Bob Fertik of New York, who runs the Web site, Democrats.com.
Though the Obama team has promised to answer some of the top questions as early as this week, they have not said whether they will respond to Mr. Fertik's, which has received more than 22,000 votes since the second round of the question-and-answer feature began on Dec. 30. The site logged more than 1.5 million votes for 20,000-plus questions... The second highest-ranked submission, which is about oversight of the nation's banking industry, is several thousand of votes behind the query about a special prosecutor. Mr. Fertik's question has been pushed to the top, in part, by a coalition of liberal bloggers...
The national press corps has not raised this issue with Obama since his victory. (When it surfaced in April, Obama said he would order his attorney general to "immediately review" the potential crimes.) And while leading question in the last Change.gov forum was dispatched breezily -- Will you legalize marijuana? No. -- this one is far more challenging, both substantively and politically.
The Times notes that Obama's team has "not said" whether it will even answer Fertik's question, though ignoring the question that came in first out of 74,000 would turn this exercise into a farce. A terse, evasive answer would be similarly unacceptable. After all, there would be little point in this online dialogue if it reiterates things we already know, (Obama is not in N.O.R.M.L.), and refuses to provide new information.
That's why this may be the first big test for Change.gov as a genuinely interactive dialogue.
Thousands of Americans are asking whether President Obama will order an independent investigation to ensure our laws are enforced -- in an era when powerful people in government have engaged in criminal conduct and relentlessly tried to make their behavior off limits for media and political discussion. We expect a "yes," "no" or detailed explanation of how and when Obama and his aides will make this decision. Time is running out, of course, because the question must be answered, for Congress and the public, before Eric Holder's confirmation hearing. He must explain how he will restore independence, professionalism and the rule of law to a Justice Department that politicized U.S. attorneys and covered up torture and warrantless surveillance.
Law professor Jonathan Turley, a nonpartisan legal analyst who testified before Congress in favor of President Clinton's impeachment, recently explained that Holder simply should not be confirmed if he is not prepared to enforce the laws banning torture. "Eric Holder should be asked the same question that Mukasey refused to answer in his confirmation hearing: is waterboarding a crime?" Professor Turley stated. "If he refuses to answer or denies that it is a crime, he should not be confirmed. If he admits that it is a crime, he should order a criminal investigation." According to Change.gov, the crowds agree with the experts on this one.
I do feel a little disgusted with the prosecution of Illinois governor Blagojevich. His arrest is needless drama: That he was about to flee (the laws involved being federal laws) the country was unlikely. The released telephone tapes are interesting and even amusing but not clear evidence of any crime. No doubt other recordings of interest exist, but these are all grand jury evidence and their release before a trial is unethical and, perhaps, illegal. Laws about grand jury evidence are meant to protect the subjects from "trial by publicity," a notoriously political tactic.
Democrats should be different and more tolerant than Republicans whose policies of class or culture hate often recoil upon them. Similar investigations of the Bush White House amount to a constitutional crisis harsher than impeachment because while they undermine federal authority in the same way, they can represent pure bias in the judiciary. After the Civil War, Confederate officials got some benefits of a general amnesty despite that this was the most murderous war according to a proportion of the population in American history.
If administration officials have been more competent in shredding evidence than they have been in running the government, it may not be possible to prove deception before a court, but that is a poor reason to quash an investigation before it begins, simply in the name of a dubious “unity”. An overly light hand on former Confederate officials after the Civil War allowed white supremacy movements to continue to fester in America for more than a hundred years after the supposed end of the conflict.
Once it starts, Obama and Biden won't be involved. They can do their jobs while an independent investigation goes on. And because Obama has NOT gone out there shaking his fist and shouting for a tribunal, no one will be able to mistake the trial for any personal or professional attack. Obama may be the smartest president we've ever had.
Rachel Maddow raised a huge, as-yet-undiscussed issue connected to the inevitable war crimes investigation: If we don't launch a thorough and real self-examination, other countries will. And if members of Bush's cabinet or their families travel in any of those countries, they might be held for questioning. We must accept responsibility for cleaning up our own mess by insisting on a legal investigation here in the U.S. Otherwise we have no moral sway in any other part of the world from now on.
get tortured....
No, we don't behead people but I would like to hear the complainers
come up with a "humane" way to try to get information out of prisoners.
After all, in war time, if you need info, how can you get it unless you
use scare tactics. I know it isn't easy to think about, but if America
gets information, think about how many lives are saved in our Military as well in the U.S.
Bleeding hearts don't want any kind of monitoring...this is great for people who break the law...they love it because it gives them a free ride.
FREEDOM WITHOUT FENCES WILL NOT WORK ...
Some prisoners have been let go without giving any info and then
go out and plot terrorist attacks again.
Then we wait (remember 9/11) and run out and buy flags and fill the
churches until we think it is safe (thanks to the Government) for
watching out for us, then forget all too soon what it was like and that
it could possibly (God forbid) happen again.
Hopefully it won't happen where I live or you happen to live because
you will surely be singing a different tune then.
And I wonder why keeping someone locked up and torturing them regularly for YEARS is effective?
That is the antithesis of a "community developer!"
I'm with you.There are no good excuses to let these war crimes go without prosecution. If Obama turns the other cheek, I will vote him out in 2012. I supported him and helped to get him elected--as did most progressives.He simply can't let this go--he can't.
For example, I have big concerns about reducing the payroll taxes for FICA when social security is already predicted to to go bankrupt. And I feel disappointed that I will not receive ANY tax cut, though we make way way under $250,000 a year because we live on my husband's pension. I lost my IT job in 2001and just gave up. Now, the guy I voted for to give us a tiny break is not delivering for us.
It would be great if the communication could be somehow two-way, even if only through forums like this. I feel he will never hear my concerns and no one else will either. At least if there is a forum, others (like the MSM) may pick up an idea for a 'special comment' to get some attention for one's idea.
:You can safely go after Bush and other high ups for financial corruption. Anything else is a political minefield. Bringing such charges would dominate the news and politics for months. The Republicans will view this as a personal attack. They will level a blistering attack with the theme that the Democrats are trying to punish Republicans for being a little too rough on terrorists. You guys think that is a winner for Obama and the Democrats? Do you think that most people in this country care about waterboarding suspected terrorists? (Maybe you also think that the citizenry turned against the Iraq war because of all the Iraqi casualties.)
The Republicans will paint the Democrats as soft on security, and soft on terrorists. They will paint the Dems as going after U.S. officials who were only trying to keep us safe under difficult circumstances. They will blast them for prosecuting such men for partisan political advantage and for satisfying political grudges.
The Dems have enormous political advantages at present. They can use it to change policy. Or they can burn it up in a political fire that will burn long and hot. They can't do both.
We are AMERICANS. We do not torture. We signed the Geneva Accords. Period. Any person or persons representing our country who authorized or engaged in torture MUST be held accountible and face the consequences of their actions. Period. This is a moral issue not a political one. It goes to the very core of what we stand for as a nation. Obama is savy enough to address this issue without using up any of his political capital.
Wish what you will, it won't make it so.
The definition for "dialogue and communications" is capacity to have two way, back and forth exchanges. "Broadcasting", on the other hand, means throwing out seeds far and wide in hopes that some will grow. The PTT turns around the broadcast method, not to exchange views with the grassroots about Obama's policies, but rather to let the grassroots throw out a lot of information,ie.,questions, some will be answered and most will not. And, they think this is public or citizen participation?
What is the process for interaction on some of their policies and appointments? The misuse of the Internet means they will keep control by throwing out far and wide, a challenge "give me a question" and maybe one out of a few thousand will get an answer. It omits or obfuscates, the need for the chaotic stuff where citizens with a particular, specific interest share their thinking and reactions to specific decision making and policies.
It is disappointing after all the talk and it's continuing about grassroots and community organizing, openness and acccountability. Despite the claims this is a very, very closed transition process.
Faulty on two counts, both related to a misunderstanding of the nature of Republicans. First, they're not into reciprocity. Their culture is all about a posture of strength, which means they only recognize dominance and submission. Second, "small government" is essential to their identity (even if frequently hypocritical). The major issue before Obama now is "big government", and asking Republicans to get on board is asking them to commit political suicide. He's not going to get anything by "playing nice".