Two more points

[nancylebov]

The reason I'm shocked by that bill is that I don't want such stuff to be publicly acceptable as a policy proposal.

Hypocrisy has the advantage of offering a little chance of leverage, and if the plainest tyranny is presented as acceptable, it's necessary to build up a moral system from scratch. I guess it is, anyway.

The Overton Window is a concept from political theory-- policy isn't decided from among all possibilities, it's decided from what people consider to be worth imagining. A lot of work going into shifting the window-- this can be seen recently in regards to gay marriage. To my mind, S3801 is giving the window a hard yank in a bad direction.

********

The other point: this doesn't fit with the usual narrative of partisan politics. If George Bush tried to expand the power of the presidency, that's ordinary status-seeking.

However, as you may have heard, Obama is a Democrat with Republicans in congress as a bunch of very pointy stones in his shoes, but the supporters of that bill are 9 Republicans and 1 Independent.

Here's an interesting theory:

I've heard someone posit that McCain and Lieberman intend to put this bill as a rider on the health insurance reform reconciliation bill or some other bill they know Obama won't dare veto. I haven't found any confirmation for this, and I don't know why they'd bother. Obama has already announced his plans to hold between twenty and sixty of the current Guantanamo Bay prisoners forever without trial, so that part of the bill obviously wouldn't bother him at all. And as for banning trials of any such prisoners in the future... well, all signs currently point to Obama backing down on Holder's attempt to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian courts.

At present, I can honestly see Obama signing this bill and praising it as a regrettable but necessary tool in the ongoing (and eternal) war on terrorism.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

I find it galling that the newest senator, Scott Brown, is one of the sponsors. I was pleased in a reserved way that he was elected, because it significantly decreased the chance of the Democrats' pushing anything they like through the Senate. But if he's going to contribute so strongly to the suppression of civil liberties, an area where Republicans stand a good chance of attracting enough Democrats to push stuff through and of getting Obama's signature, I'm seriously wondering whether I can even consider it a tactical win.

Which is pretty much the same series of reactions I had, with the parties reversed and the issues somewhat different, to Obama's election.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I've heard someone posit that McCain and Lieberman intend to put this bill as a rider on the health insurance reform reconciliation bill or some other bill they know Obama won't dare veto.

That would only work if the bill first passed the House and the Senate. It won't - it has zero chance of passage. Anything regarding the healthcare bill is also irrelevant to that bill, since 0 Republicans are voting for the healthcare bill. I can think of at least a dozen examples of similar sorts of political grandstanding over the last 15 or so years, this is merely another example of that phenomena.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

This bill (proposed bill?) is profoundly alarming in and of itself. I want to know what I can do to remove those who proposed it from office.

The idea that such a bill might be proposed without being intended seriously I find equally outrageous and alarming for different reasons. Am I to understand that, called to order for proposing a decline into open tyranny, the purported defense is; "we were just joking around and/or we thought we'd embarrass the president or try to derail other legislation by getting him to dress up in a Stalin moustache"? Again, I'd like to remove anyone who plays such games from office.

And it's just "grandstanding"? Nothing to see here, part of how the system works? There should be a price for this kind of thing.

So. What can we do to remove them from office? I've watched this country's laws being shredded for 10 years as an outsider, now I'm a citizen, in theory I'm supposed to have some sort of voice. Now I know what I should use it for.