John Cusack on Obama's downside

I ran into this on HuffPo this morning with their typical baiting headline:

John Cusack: Obama Has 'Gutted' The Constitution

So I read the whole thing. It's a very good, very lengthy discussion between John Cusack, famous actor, fairly intellectual guy and Jonathan Turley, constitutional scholar and fairly intellectual guy. They make some pretty good points about our President, our former president and why we should be scared for our future from a civil liberties standpoint.

Or to quote the article:

Now that the Republican primary circus is over, I started to think about what it would mean to vote for Obama...

Since mostly we hear from the daily hypocrisies of Mitt and friends, I thought we should examine "our guy" on a few issues with a bit more scrutiny than we hear from the "progressive left", which seems to be little or none at all.

TL;DR: Obama used Bush's nebulous, undefined policies on torture and the kill/capture of Americans on foreign soil, defined it and made it far worse and an even more unconstitutional expansion of Executive powers. He also didn't prosecute war crimes to be able to use said policies, against international treaties that we, the US, defined in the first place.

A little more beneath the Orange Squiggle of Justice

What was unsaid though was that if Obama had decided to prosecute war crimes, he would have had to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rove and all the rest. It would have put the Executive Privilege established by Bush and company in jeopardy and we may not have been able to get Bin Laden in the first place. But he wouldn't have been able to codify the kill/capture of American citizens anywhere in the world and not just on foreign soil.

CUSACK: And the argument people are going to use is,"Look, Obama and Holder are good guys. They're not going to use this power." But the point is, what about after them? What about the apparatchiks? You've unleashed the beast. And precedent is everything constitutionally, isn't it?

TURLEY: I think that's right. Basically what they're arguing is, "We're angels," and that's exactly what Madison warned against. As we discussed, he said if all men were angels you wouldn't need government. And what the administration is saying is, "We're angels, so trust us."

I do trust that Obama wouldn't use this on American soil. I don't trust the warmongers attempting to take office, even if Obama seems to be on that side of the fence.

I won't recap the whole thing, because it is a very good read and you shouldn't think this is an anti-Obama rant. It's just something everyone should think about. Some of the better quotes:

CUSACK: Well, it gets to [the late] Raiders owner Al Davis' justice, which is basically, "Just win, baby." And that's where we are. The Constitution was framed by Al Davis. I never knew that.

CUSACK: I think that even Howard Zinn/Chomsky progressives, would admit that there will be a difference in domestic policy between Obama and a Romney presidency. But DUE PROCESS....I think about how we own it. We own it. Everybody's sort of let it slip. There's no immediacy in the day-to-day on and it's just one of those things that unless they... when they start pulling kids off the street, like they did in Argentina a few years ago and other places, all of a sudden, it's like, "How the hell did that happen?" I say, "Look, you're not helping Obama by enabling him. If you want to help him, hold his feet to the fire."

TURLEY: Exactly.

CUSACK: The problem is, as I see it, is that regardless of goodwill and intent and people being tired of the status quo and everything else, the information outlets and the powers that be reconstruct or construct the government narrative only as an election game of 'us versus them,' Obama versus Romney, and if you do anything that will compromise that equation, you are picking one side versus the other. Because don't you realize that's going to hurt Obama? Don't you know that's going to help Obama? Don't you know... and they're not thinking through their own sort of self-interest or the community's interest in just changing the way that this whole thing works to the benefit of the majority. We used to have some lines we wouldn't cross–some people who said this is not what this country does ...we don't do this shit, you had to do the right thing. So it's going to be a tough process getting our rights back, but you know Frankie's Law? Whoever stops fighting first – loses.

TURLEY: Right.