Is It Reasonable to Consider JFK a Model For Obama's Right of Center Accomodation?

[Guest Tom Scully]

I just finished viewing a 1999 documentary, a biography of US historian Howard Zinn, narrated by Matt Damon. Highlights were Zinn observing that authority attacks anti-war protestors for "disturbing the war", and a one point, he asks, "where is the outrage?" I ask the same question, I don't even see much of it on these boards, even more of an absence of enthusiastic objection to our "rigged game" producing endless war, acute wealth concentration, no accountability of the elite, under the law, a press that sides against Assange and wikileaks, demanding the criminalization of investigative journalism, state sponsored gun obsession, endorsement of execution, open practice of torture...etc...etc....

I got here because a brief glimpse of a JFK era newspaper clipping I spotted in the Zinn documentary, mentioned JFK appointed, "segregationist judges". I went looking, and adding this to my many other uncertainties over the records of service of both JFK and RFK, I'm asking if JFK's presidency was truly any more of a departure from Eisenhower's, as Obama's has been from Bush's? Frankly, I see more obvious changes from Clinton's to Bush's, than in any other recent administration change. The other era of obvious change was Ford to Carter, and then, Carter to Reagan.

I don't see enough difference between Eisenhower and JFK, or Bush and Obama, to get enthusiastic about, when many issues and decisions are considered. Was JFK's Mississippi moment, really more impressive than Eisenhower's Little Rock?

I didn't trust Time's spin, so I looked for myself. This is anecdotal, but it is what it is. I resent the right rewriting history, but that does not push me into the JFK advocacy camp. I'd like to think the jury is still out.

I want to carry around a reasonably accurate POV. Isn't it reasonable to regard James O. Eastland as comparable to accomodating a republican leader today, as Obama as now notorious for doing? Was JFK's re-election an important enough reason to backtrack on civil rights?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876409,00.html

Courts: Those Kennedy Judges

Friday, Nov. 06, 1964

It was no accident that John F. Kennedy appointed more federal judges than any other President. For years, congressional Democrats had refused to expand the overworked federal bench—saving for a Democratic Administration a bumper crop of 73 judicial nominations.

But all that judicial patronage was liberally sprinkled with problems.

Because they deal largely with the law of the state in which they sit, and they understandably reflect the dominant social patterns of that state, district judges are drawn from their own localities. The judges were approved by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, but he knew that all candidates, and especially those for the Southern bench, would have to be "traded out" with the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Mississippi's Segregationist James O. Eastland.

Even so, Kennedy may have thought he was doing well. His first district judge, for instance, Mississippi's William Harold Cox, took office in 1961 with the American Bar Association's highest endorsement of "exceptionally well-qualified." The tall, stern son of a County sheriff, Cox was a stickler for detail and had been a first-rate trial lawyer in Jackson. Other Kennedy appointees seemed equally qualified, and the Administration heaved a sigh of relief.

Rearguard Justice. Unhappily, some of those promising district judges have turned out to be so devoted to segregation that they may be the greatest obstacle to equal rights in the South today.

Now entrenched for life on Southern benches are such men as Louisiana's Judge E. Gordon West, who has upheld the Supreme Court's 1954 school ruling while calling it "one of the truly regrettable decisions of all time," and Georgia's Judge J. Robert Elliott, who once said, "I don't want those pinks, radicals and black voters to outvote those who are trying to preserve our segregation laws and traditions." Armed with tight control over their calendars, certain Southern district judges have delayed civil rights cases for months and years, played cat and mouse...

(2 of 3)

It was a strange contempt proceeding that threatened Negro voting throughout Mississippi, but it should have been no surprise. Once on the bench in a state where only 5% of adult Negroes are registered to vote, Judge Cox, 63, has consistently refused to find any pattern of discrimination. Moreover, he has filled trial transcripts in rights cases with gratuitous obiter dicta. At a hearing last March, he referred to a Negro voting registration drive as "grandstanding"; he repeatedly described 200 applicants as "a bunch of niggers" and called them "chimpapzees" who "ought to be in the movies rather than being registered to vote." Fit for Jail. The latest case to cast Cox as a judicial Horatio at the segregation bridge began in 1962 when two Negro witnesses told of being denied the right to register seven years before.

They said that on that day they had seen a white man allowed to sign the registration book. As it turned out, the white man in question had been present, but he had actually registered elsewhere. "Outraged" at this revelation, Judge Cox accused the Negro witnesses of perjury.

The Government declined to prosecute on the ground that the Negroes were guilty only of an insignificant slip of memory. But Cox persisted, and last fall the Negroes were indicted by a state grand jury. The Government countered by arguing that states cannot prosecute alleged federal perjurers. Cox tried a new tack when a federal grand jury began looking into civil rights violations throughout Mississippi. Somehow that jury was persuaded to see things Cox's way. It indicted the Negroes, and then Cox ordered U.S. Attorney Robert E. Hauberg to prepare and sign the indictment.

With tears in his eyes, the towering Mississippi-born Hauberg "most humbly" refused on direct orders of Acting Attorney General Katzenbach. "I do judge you to be in civil contempt," intoned Cox, ordering Hauberg to jail "until you decide to comply." Cox then ordered Katzenbach "to show cause why he should not be adjudged guilty of contempt."* Irreparable Damage. Faced with an unprecedented challenge, the Justice Department last week petitioned the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a writ of prohibition against Cox's order on the ground that the U.S. Attorney General has sole authority for initiating all federal prosecutions. This does not prevent Cox's grand jury from issuing indictments with an outside lawyer's help, but it does free the Government from participating in "unwarranted indictments" against the very Negroes it seeks to help. In short, says the Justice Department, Cox cannot usurp the U.S. prosecutor's job....

http://openjurist.org/342/f2d/167/united-states-v-w-cox-e-hauberg

....United States Attorney for

the SouthernDistrict of Mississippi, and the

Honorable Nicholas deB. Katzenbach,

ActingAttorney General of the

United States, Appellants,

v.

Honorable W. Harold COX, United States District Judge of the

United StatesDistrict Court for the Southern

District of Mississippi, Appellee.

Nos. 22018, 22019.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Jan. 26, 1965, Certiorari Denied June 1, 1965, See 85 S.Ct.

1767.

1

On October 22, 1964, an order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, signed by Harold Cox, a judge of that Court, was entered. The order, with caption and formal closing omitted, is as follows:...

3

'WHEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED AND ADJUDGED by the Court that Robert E. Hauberg, United States Attorney, is guilty of civil contempt of this Court and in the presence of the Court for his said refusal to obey its said order and he is ordered into custody of the United States Marshal to be confined by him in the Hinds County, Mississippi, jail, there to remain until he purges himself of this contempt by agreeing to conform to said order by performing his official duty for the grand jury as requested in the several (about five) pending cases before them on October 21 and October 22, 1964.

4

'IT IS FURTHER ORDERED by the Court that a citation issue to Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, Acting Attorney General of the United States, directing him to appear before this Court and show cause why he should not be adjudged guilty of contempt of this Court for his instructions and directions to the United States Attorney to disregard and disobey the orders of this Court in the respects stated.

5

'The United States Attorney requested a stay of enforcement of this order and further proceedings herein for five days after this date to enable him to apply to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for a writ of prohibition and such request is granted; and these proceedings and enforcement of this order in its entirety is stayed for five days, subject to the further orders of the United States Court of Appeals on said application; and for the enforcement of all of which, let proper process issue.'

6

The United States Attorney, Robert E. Hauberg, and the Acting Attorney General, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, have appealed from the order and they, joined by the United States, seek a writ of prohibition against the District Judge from enforcing the Court's order, and from asserting jurisdiction to require the Attorney General or the United States Attorney 'to institute criminal prosecutions or to take any steps in regard thereto.' The facts recited in the order are uncontroverted. No further facts are essential to a decision of the issues before this Court. Although the issues here presented arose, in part at least, as an incident of a civil rights matter, no civil rights questions are involved in the rather broad inquiry which we are called upon to make.

7

The constitutional requirement1 of an indictment or presentment2 as a predicate to a prosecution for capital or infamous crimes has for its primary purpose the protection of the individual from jeopardy except on a finding of probable cause by a group of his fellow citizens, and is designed to afford a safeguard against oppressive actions of the prosecutor or a court. The constitutional provision is not to be read as conferring on or preserving to the grand jury, as such, any rights or prerogatives. The constitutional provision is, as has been said, for the benefit of the accused. The constitutional provision is not to be read as precluding, as essential to the validity of an indictment, the inclusion of requisites which did not exist at common law.

8

Traditionally, the Attorney for the United States had the power to enter a nolle prosequi of a criminal charge at any time after indictment and before trial, and this he could have done without the approval of the court or the consent of the accused. It may be doubted whether, before the adoption of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, he had any authority to prevent the return of an indictment by a grand jury. There would be no constitutional barrier to a requirement that the signature of a United States Attorney upon an indictment is essential to its validity....

10

The judicial power of the United States is vested in the federal courts,3 and extends to prosecutions for violations of the criminal laws of the United States. The executive power is vested in the President of the United States,4 who is required to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.5 The Attorney General is the hand of the President in taking care that the laws of the United States in legal proceedings and in the prosecution of offenses, be faithfully executed.6 The role of the grand jury is restricted to a finding as to whether or not there is probable cause to believe that an offense has been committed. The discretionary power of the attorney for the United States in determining whether a prosecution shall be commenced or maintained may well depend upon matters of policy wholly apart from any question of probable cause.7 Although as a member of the bar, the attorney for the United States is an officer of the court, he is nevertheless an executive official of the Government, and it is as an officer of the executive department that he exercises a discretion as to whether or not there shall be a prosecution in a particular case. It follows, as an incident of the constitutional separation of powers, that the courts are not to interfere with the free exercise of the discretionary powers of the attorneys of the United States in their control over criminal prosecutions.8 The provision of Rule 7, requiring the signing of the indictment by the attorney for the Government, is a recognition of the power of Government counsel to permit or not to permit the bringing of an indictment. If the attorney refuses to sign, as he has the discretionary power of doing, we conclude that there is no valid indictment. It is not to be supposed that the signature of counsel is merely an attestation of the act of the grand jury. The signature of the foreman performs that function. It is not to be supposed that the signature of counsel is a certificate that the indictment is in proper form to charge an offense. The sufficiency of the indictment may be tested before the court. Rather, we think, the requirement of the signature is for the purpose of evidencing the joinder of the attorney for the United States with the grand jury in instituting a criminal proceeding in the court. Without the signature there can be no criminal proceeding brought upon an indictment. Substantial compliance rather than technical exactness meets the requirement of the rule. There seems to be no authority for the statement that the absence of a signature is not fatal. 4 Barron & Holtzoff Federal Practice & Procedure 61, 1913.

11

If it were not for the discretionary power given to the United States Attorney to prevent an indictment by withholding his signature, there might be doubt as to the constitutionality of the requirement of Rule 48 for leave of court for a dismissal of a pending prosecution.9

12

Because, as we conclude, the signature of the Government attorney is necessary to the validity of the indictment and the affixing or withholding of the signature is a matter of executive discretion which cannot be coerced or reviewed by the courts, the contempt order must be reversed. It seems that, since the United States Attorney cannot be required to give validity to an indictment by affixing his signature, he should not be required to indulge in an exercise of futility by the preparation of the form of an indictment which he is unwilling to vitalize with his signature. Therefore he should not be required to prepare indictments which he is unwilling and under no duty to sign.

13

Judges Tuttle, Jones, Brown and Wisdom join in the conclusion that the signature of the United States Attorney is essential to the validity of an indictment. Judge Brown, as appears in his separate opinion, is of the view that the United States Attorney is required, upon the request of the grand jury, to draft forms of indictments in accordance with its desires. The order before us for review is in the conjunctive; it requires the United States Attorney to prepare and sign. A majority of the court, having decided that the direction to sign is erroneous, the order on appeal will be reversed.

14

So much of the order of the district court as adjudges the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi to be in contempt is a final order, appealable as such, and for the reasons here assigned, is reversed. That part of the order of the district court as would require the Acting Attorney General to show cause why he should not be held in contempt is interlocutory and not appealable, and the appeal of the Acting Attorney General will be dismissed.

15

There remains for our consideration and disposition the petition of the United States, the Acting Attorney General and the United States, for a Writ of Prohibition to prohibit the Respondent District Judge from enforcing the order. The reversal of the order as to the United States Attorney makes unnecessary, so far as he is concerned, any consideration of the application for a Writ of Prohibition. There has been no citation issued for service on the Attorney General requiring him to show cause. He has not yet been put in jeopardy. Our disposition of the appeal makes it improbable that such citation will be issued and served. It does not appear that there is any necessity at this time for the issuance of the discretionary Writ of Prohibition. The petition will be denied.

16

We are of the opinion that whenever a United States Attorney is under a legal duty which he has been directed to perform by a valid order of court, his refusal to perform such duty and comply with such order will not be justified or excused by instructions from the Attorney General to disregard his duty and disobey the order. Thus the way is open for relief if a further order is entered with respect to the rendering of assistance to the grand jury by the United States Attorney in the preparation of indictments.

17

The respondent-appellee has challenged the right of the United States to join in the petition for a Writ of Prohibition. We find it unnecessary to pass on this question.

18

The Court's mandate will issue forthwith. Appeal dismissed as to Katzenbach, Acting Attorney General. Order on appeal reversed as to Hauberg, United States Attorney. Petition for writ of prohibition denied....

[John Dolva]

I wasn't surprised your post went on to mention Cox.

What is of note here is the fact that this ruckus involved Katzenbach. : Kennedya' Enforcer.

Meredith was entering a previously segregated University. Good ole' Miss. The constant phone calls betewn the 'war room' in the White House and Katzenbach and Eastland was a powerplay. Mississippi folded law wise., but only after he was informed that all the phonecalls had been taped by RK. Yet, Walker and Eastland called for 10, 000 armed men from all states to come to the ais of Mississippi. Many came. Kennedy through Katzenbach imposed the Supreme Court ruling to the max short of killing anyone. Walkers supporters killed and wounded a number, aided and abetted by the Mississippi Highway Patrol and Inflammatory Rhetoric from figures like Eastland.

When it became Alabamas turn the blocking by Bull was just for show.

Little Rock was different. Nine children sought to enrol.

Walker kept the peace, albeit as he would say later, unwillingly.

Within a short time most of the black youngsters and their families had been driven out of school and sometimes home.

Cox was a deal.

"Was JFK's Mississippi moment, really more impressive than Eisenhower's Little Rock?" - Yes!

The other q. : The Civil Rights bill that Johnson got through in '65 was not Kennedys' '63 bill.

Johnson then set about dismantling its enforcement structure and the Segregated states found new ways to get around it for many years.

HAD Kenneys '63 bill (which was so vigorously fought in all sorts of ways, many horrendoulsly illegal) become law and IF he had enforced as vigorously as he had shown willing to do a huge status quo would have to be dismantled and people in all layers of society affected. Ultimately the ordinary person cares more about their wallet than moral issues, so yes, the implementation of Kennedys' bill and the enforcement of it would probably have left os with a different world than the one we have now.

IMO : a better one. (btw has anyone seen Hoover versus Kennedy : The second Civil War. I have part of the script in bookform but haven't read it yet, is ther a good review available?)

Kennedy was the first president to say that "the time of waiting" is over. ( description of what blacks wer being told; by successive governments. :"Wait" )

Six months later he was dead and Johnsons dimatlling of his bill started.

I think some thought should be given to the growing prison industrial complex and the disparity of color incarceration rates, crack versus powder which was/is the rich polls toy, as well as the Vietnam war as a meat grinder, again disproportinately black victims.

[Guest Tom Scully]

if the "deal" with Eastland you refer to, John, has to do with the appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the federal bench, it happened more than a year after the appointment of Cox, and there is no record I can find of a quid pro quo related to the Cox appointment.

As Obama has consistently done, JFK appointed wingers to his most important cabinet positions, compromised with them at every turn, except maybe on Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missle Crisis, and got himself killed, for his trouble.

JFK made tax policy noises that were more regressive than Eisenhower's record. I am no fan of Eisenhower. I've read that one of his favorite golf partners was the lizard from.... I mean the Senator from Connecticut, Pres Bush!

Obama seems to have gotten killed, politically, and achieved nothing from his appointments and concessions to the extreme right.....Bush Sr. CIA director/Bush Jr. Sect'y of Defense, Robert Gates, is STILL on the job... and Obama's compromises with the right have gained him...what... huge new deficits, vs. letting all tax cuts sunset and...blaming republicans while strengthening the federal finances, putting a tiny extra burden on the folks who still are employed in exchange for Y2K tax levels on the income of the wealthiest, and on their estates.

The numbers, racial makeup, wealth levels, of the US prison population scream out as an offense to the sensibilities of anyone who studies the curious US disparity with the rest of the ODCs. If looks like a broken system, walks like a broken system.... Obama doesn't go there... say much on that mass injustice, he just wants to grab the power to put and keep anyone in a cage, merely on his and his successor's say so!

Edited January 9, 2011 by Tom Scully

[John Dolva]

I think the Cox thing had a pre period.

IMO I think the most worthwhile re the assassination is a comparison between Ole' Miss, Little Rock and Kennedy's versus Johnsons Civil Rights Bill. Without delivering A Civil Rights Bill imo Johnson would have been committing politial suicide. It enabled him to do evrything else he set out to do. He didn't seriously escalate in Vietnam till after his real election.

edit add re Cox. It's a bit like JE Day, appointed by Kennedy but answering to the CIA while a Cabinet member and replaced by Gronowski ( about the same time as the mid '63 speech ( a couple of hours after which Medgar Evers was assassinated and RFK flew to his side. ) ) who then went ahead and refused to participate in the illegal CIA mail shenanigans.

Edited January 9, 2011 by John Dolva

[Guest Robert Morrow]

This is such BS.

No one can understand JFK's civil rights policy unless you read Bernstein's Promises Kept.

Kennedy understood from the start that he had to build everything toward a Civil RIghts bill that would supercede both southern state laws and the tradition of acceding to local senators for judge selections.

So for the first two years, he did all he could by executive action. For example, Meredith at Ole Miss, calling out Abrams at Tuscaloosa.

He waited very cagily for the right moment to begin the big push for the legislation.

It happened at Birmingham.

DIck Gregory was there and he got home very late at the end. His wife was still up. She said the WH called and wanted him to phone no matter how late he got in. It was around midnight so the switchboard was down. Kennedy picked up the phone himself and wanted a full report. After it was over, he said words to the effect: Good, this will be it. They overplayed their cards.

So in 1963 he did two things.

1.) He made the greatest speech any president ever had on civil rights. The day that Evers was killed.

2.) The SCLC could find no white politician to back their March on Washington. At a press conference in July, JFK blurted out that he would be backing it. Much to RFK's surprise. He then called in Bobby and said words to the effect , Now that we are behind this, it has to come off perfectly. If not, our enemies will use it to destroy us.

It did come off perfectly. This provided the ballast to pass the Civil RIghts act. Which JFK said was going to pass in early 1964. He finally had the votes.

Kennedy did more for civil rights in three years than Truman or Ike did in 15.

This is why when McCarthy declared in early 1968, King's advisers urged him to back him. King said no. They would wait for RFK to declare, since he would be a great president.

Scully is auditioning for a job at Counterpunch. He might get it. HIm and Cockburn know more than that idiot King.

I am from Tuscaloosa, AL. They FINALLY integrated the public high schools there in 1979.

John F. Kennedy, although he trampled states rights, ... DID move the ball forward on civil rights for blacks and thus all Americans. In fact the blacks in America AT THAT TIME were extremely aware and greatful for this. Many black families kept 3 pictures in their home living room: Jesus, John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

There is a reason for that.

[Cliff Varnell]

As Obama has consistently done, JFK appointed wingers to his most important cabinet positions, compromised with them at every turn, except maybe on Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missle Crisis, and got himself killed, for his trouble.

In 1961-62 the American military/foreign-policy establishment wanted to put 60 thousand troops into Laos to close off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Kennedy sought the "neutralization" of Laos instead, enlisting blue-blood capo di tutti capi W. Averell Harriman to negotiate the Geneva Agreement in '62.

JFK also was working toward an eventual "neutralization" of Vietnam but was out-maneuvered by Harriman in '62-'63, leading to the overthrow of Diem, an outcome Harriman intensely desired.

Harriman and Kennedy bucked the US Establishment on Laos, and then Harriman bucked Kennedy on back-door peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Debra Conway did an excellent presentation on this at the 2005 Lancer:

http://jfklancer.com/dallas05/ppt/conway/versions.ppt.htm

Harriman pursued his own SE Asia policy, and held the upper hand over Kennedy.

Although Barack Milhous Obama is no Jack Kennedy, I don't see either man as truly in charge.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Cliff Varnell

[Guest Tom Scully]

Jim DiEugenio, thank you for educating me. The Time magazine, Nov., '64 spin on JFK's judicial appointments record was as I suspected it was, intentionally incomplete, anti-Kennedy.

I sympathize with your frustration, it probably seems to you that you even have to preach to someone who doesn't seem to get it, but who logically should already be in the choir.

You've done the research, you've been published on a variety of topics related to it, you are not skeptical about the Kennedy brothers' agenda and decisions, and you can support your conclusions, as you just did with your gem quality examples.

I should have sent you a PM after encountering the headline critical of the Kennedy judicial appointments in the Zinn biography and in the Nov, '64 Time "hit piece". This is a discussion/debate forum. I hope you'll agree it was beneficial to cover this controversy.

I still don't know what to make of RFK's silence about the WC's appointment of mob labor lawyer, Albert Jenner, and Obama creaps me out even more than I think he still has the capacity to.

If you think Reagan's rule prohibiting ever speaking ill of a fellow republican is appropriate for a former progressive democrat to follow in the consideration of his fellow party members, please confirm it in a post.

To sum it up, Jim, if I am not someone you consider a worthy and curious student of your work, who do you think is? I know just enough to be dangerous because you let me see that I antagonize you at times. I never set out to develop and post negative hunches about the Kennedy record that you show me I don't have enough knowledge to be posting. I want to believe JFK and RFK were or grew more progressive than I've given them credit for. Gems like the ones you shared in your last post are helping me

to see what you already know.

What is your overall impression of the accomplishments of Howard Zinn, by the way?

[Tony Frank]

Obama will never be anything like JFK.

Obama is the most segregationist President in history. He and the left wing elite have gotten rich telling African-Americans to segregate themselves based on skin color and not integrate themselves into society. The attitude of Obama and the far left toward African-Americans can only be characterized as putting them down and keeping them down.

JFK was a pragmatic President who tried to do what is best for America. Obama is an opportunist who has criticized the Constitution and who is opposed to the free market.

[Robert Howard]

 I would like to insert a comment unrelated to the debate, but I will make an unpopular comment on the topic at hand; I believe our culture has become

not, a nation of whiners, as one politician recently phrased it, but a culture that is never satisfied with the way things are. I am not saying that the comments

and facts cited about Obama are not accurate, nor that we should be satisfied in light of the current political/cultural state of affairs

<br><br>What I am saying is that the political assassination of the 1960's, especially JFK and RFK caused a serious distortion of the political landscape, in stripping our country

of a mainstream liberal base, and by 1972, the liberal movement was outside the mainstream. That has a direct relationship to what the liberal wing of the

Democratic Party is in 2011.

<br><br>That is simply my viewpoint, I would also like to mention the shootings in Tucson, Arizona and make a point about them.

President Kennedy was quoted as saying.

"There will always be dissident voices heard in the land expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor,

perceiving gloom on every side, and seeking influence without responsibility."

Is it not worth mentioning that those words, are just as timely in 2011 as they were when President Kennedy

uttered them over 45 years ago.

The person who murdered these innocent people, and put a bullet in the head of a beloved

person Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is responsible for his own actions, but consider the comments

of NY Times columnist Paul Krugman......

<i>You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to

make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re

going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create

a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the

hate-mongers.

</i>Religion and philosophy can be a slippery slope as any topic that tried to analyze

an event through a particular spectrum. But I am not ashamed to quote Stevie Wonder

as his commentary on the way things were, in 1974, as also relevant.

Tell me people

Why can't they say that hate is 10 zillion light years away

Why can't the light of good shine God's love in every soul

Why must my color black make me a lesser man

I thought this world was made for every man

He loves us all, that's what my God tells me

And I say it's taken Him so long

'Cause we've got so far to come...

Edited January 11, 2011 by Robert Howard

[Guest Tom Scully]

Robert,

I have never witnessed a president as duplicitous as the current one, and I have

never experienced anything like this, described in my most recently post thread "Branded"...etc.:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17234&pid=217247&st=0entry217247

...A government can guarantee all the political liberties in the world on paper (free speech, free assembly, freedom of association),

but if it succeeds in frightening the citizenry out of exercising those rights, they become meaningless.

...That a large percentage of those brutalized by this system turned out to be innocent

-- knowingly innocent -- is a feature, not a bug: that one can end up being subjected

to these lawless horrors despite doing nothing wrong only intensifies the fear and makes it more effective. ...

I adamantly believe that, this time, it really is different, and that there are no solutions to propose.

I believe the right has won, and as far as I am concerned, they can have it. They've made it almost ugly enough

to render it unrecognizable, but give them time.

Maybe we can talk Obama out of assassination lists of fellow citizens with no due process, not even criminal charges

filed as a prelude, or maybe he'll see it our way on the issue of arbitrary, pre-emptive, indefinite detention by

executive whim. Maybe it is so difficult to wrap ones mind around these clearly impeachable offenses that trying to

make any sense of it becomes a futile exercise.

If looking at it this way, especially after Obama has come in and ratified it all and carried it to even further extremes,

amounts to whining, I am a whiner!

[Robert Howard]

Robert,

I have never witnessed a president as duplicitous as the current one, and I have

never experienced anything like this, described in my most recently post thread "Branded"...etc.:

http://educationforu...=0

...A government can guarantee all the political liberties in the world on paper (free speech, free assembly, freedom of association),

but if it succeeds in frightening the citizenry out of exercising those rights, they become meaningless.

...That a large percentage of those brutalized by this system turned out to be innocent

-- knowingly innocent -- is a feature, not a bug: that one can end up being subjected

to these lawless horrors despite doing nothing wrong only intensifies the fear and makes it more effective. ...

I adamantly believe that, this time, it really is different, and that there are no solutions to propose.

I believe the right has won, and as far as I am concerned, they can have it. They've made it almost ugly enough

to render it unrecognizable, but give them time.

Maybe we can talk Obama out of assassination lists of fellow citizens with no due process, not even criminal charges

filed as a prelude, or maybe he'll see it our way on the issue of arbitrary, pre-emptive, indefinite detention by

executive whim. Maybe it is so difficult to wrap ones mind around these clearly impeachable offenses that trying to

make any sense of it becomes a futile exercise.

If looking at it this way, especially after Obama has come in and ratified it all and carried it to even further extremes,

amounts to whining, I am a whiner!

I just want to be clear, I don't agree with the characterization of American's as whiners, as I said; and I also agree that

solutions don't seem to be around the corner, it's just that if you give up then persons can fall into the hopelessness

that is a paralysis, of sorts. That's all I am trying to say.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Robert, if either of us was even half a generation younger than we are now, I'd be more inclined to agree with you, because you are right. Do you know much about Belize? I am attracted to it because it seems a warmer place to live than in Canada.

"...As in Kennedy's case, Obama's response to the entrapment established the pattern of his presidency, but in a direction opposite to Kennedy's...."