I don't recall Obama specifically promissing he would prosecute telecoms or even that he would prosecute previous members of the Bush Admin..
this isn't the type of trancparency obama was promising anyway. we know what his policy is, under bush we didn't even know what was going on. if you want to complain about him continuing the policy, that's great, but linking it to break a promise about transparency is reaching.
I have not projected any such promises on Obama specifically; rather, they have been directed at the democrats as a whole, particularly the DOJ under Obama's command. It would be utterly ridiculous to indemnify Obama from his own adminstrations activities - particularly for you, pgabs, as you (like many others) routinely criticized Bush for the same failings. Democrat and Obama apologists can weiner-weasel out of the "understood agreement" when the telecom immunity action was taken, but it is absolutely indefensible of the Obama DOJ to use (virtually verbatim) the Bush defense of illegal wiretapping - and then expand it in such a way as to basically imply that illegal activity is unprosecutable under any federal statutes provided the state-secrets mantra is enacted. That's not even worthy of the sham-tastic american definition of democracy.
Bull****. He has verbatim copied the Bush admin defense and expanded it. The whole point of those complaining is that despite the fact that Obama routinely criticized the "state secrets" methodology of defense and the wiretapping program as whole - he's now endorsing it. NPR summed this up nicely:
I've really never criticized Obama much on FISA because I don't understand FISA that much. I have said the telecom's shouldn't be prosecuted even back in July becuase of political pressure to wire allow access after 9-11.
its still loosely linking. states secrets is a priviledge from before bush was born. obama's gonna use on some issues.
I did not agree with that then, as the telecoms are very much aware of the legal requirements for wiretaps. But I, like the EFF, grumbled along with the immunity provision due to your exact same logic - they were under considerable pressure by the Bush Junta to cooperate - the focus of investigation and prosecution should be the designers of the offending wiretapping strategy. But now Obama's DOJ has resolidified the Bush position and expanded it. That's indefensible. And promises from Obama or congressional democrats are really just gravy in my position - fundamentally the ire is directed at the democrats (Obama included) for ignoring a blatant violation of constitutional rights for the sake of petty politics. Democrats have always lacked the balls to act on convictions - apparently even when they control the executive and legeslative branches of the government. And that's just maddening. What could be a more basic "betrayal of the public trust" then actively subverting the freaking constitution? And yet, the Obama DOJ is defending and endorsing exactly such activity.
Obama's DOJ is at it again.... (unrelated to wiretapping, but apparently the "Obama covers the Bush Adminsitration's ass" DoJ methodology is becoming the standard modus operandi)
It's things like this that make me laugh at people for arguing democrats v republicans. So long as a president or congress is elected in and from a two party system there will never be any accountability. Our current government is a scam and somehow satisfies people ignorant of what's really going on 4 to 8 years at a time. This is the reason for the civil war 150 years ago, not slavery like most history books teach today keeping generation after generation pointing the finger to the other person/side as the reason things are wrong. So long as people keep arguing politics and their differences, things will never change.
Power corrupts. No president is ever going to willingly give up the ability to abuse the office. The type of people who would are not the type that run for office and succeed to that extent.
This is damn depressing. There's tons of cryptography tools available to make wiretapping largely useless against the determined.
