For several weeks now I’ve been almost consciously avoiding reading any of the stories about how Obama is handling both the existing set of “detainees” and how his administration is handling demands for transparency and possible criminal prosecution for people who authorized the use of torture. I’ve been avoiding it because all signs point to an endless cascade of disappointment for me, and I just didn’t want to deal with that.
However, as usual, Russ Feingold is willing to Man Up and say what needs saying. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, were I an American I would be insanely proud to have Feingold represent me. Were I an American from any other state, I would be a little jealous of people in Wisconsin.
You may remember Feingold as the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act (on grounds that it infringed civil liberties), was one of only 23 to vote against authorizing Bush to go to Iraq, etc. You might not remember that he was the only Democrat to vote against dismissing the impeachment case against Clinton–because he wanted the people to see everything and to remove any possibility of partisan coverup. You also might not remember that he was the one who introduced resolutions to censure Bush, on more than one occasion, for his trampling on the rights of Americans, notably including the warrantless wiretapping stuff.
And now, while supporting the good stuff from Obama’s recent speech, he’s calling out Obama on his recent speech about “preventive detention”:
While I recognize that your administration inherited detainees who, because of torture, other forms of coercive interrogations, or other problems related to their detention or the evidence against them, pose considerable challenges to prosecution, holding them indefinitely without trial is inconsistent with the respect for the rule of law that the rest of your speech so eloquently invoked. Indeed, such detention is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world.
You tell him Russ.
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