Change You Can Forget About
During his presidential campaign Barack Obama vigorously criticized Bush’s civil liberties abuses. Many of his supporters expected that, if elected, Obama would radically change federal policies regarding American liberty.
As of this past October, Obama had made no appointments to the oversight board. Rep. Bennie Thompson, then chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Jane Harman, then chairman of that panel’s subcommittee on intelligence, wrote Obama early last year urging him to speedily make appointments because “we believe that the Board will give an anxious public confidence that appropriate rights are respected.” Harman is best known as the sponsor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which could have spurred massive crackdowns on libertarians, constitutionalists, and others with nonmainstream ideas.
Many newspaper editorials have also complained about Obama’s failure to stock the oversight board. But this is perhaps the most honest action the Obama administration has taken regarding civil liberties. In area after area Obama has rubber-stamped Bush-era abuses and signaled that there would be no investigation or prosecution of official wrongdoers from the previous administration. Obama is also embracing Bush-style State-secrecy doctrines that prohibit disclosure of the rationale for U.S. government-planned assassinations of Americans.
The oversight board is far more likely to induce complacency than to protect liberty. Since 9/11, trampling the Constitution is a no-fault offense. In Washington nowadays, only “extremists” believe that federal officials should be jailed for violating citizens’ privacy. ...
... Washington vastly prefers the appearance of checks and balances to the reality of government under law. At a time when federal officials who violate Americans’ rights have nothing to fear from Uncle Sam, the existence of the oversight board is a cruel taunt to private citizens.
Perhaps the best epithet for the feds’ civil liberties record is the saying of Lily Tomlin: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” “I’m from the government, and I’m here to safeguard your privacy” is the post-9/11 version of the old joke. But American liberty cannot afford any more sham protections. Abolishing the oversight board would be the most honest step Washington has taken on civil liberties in this century.
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