{"id":138844,"date":"2014-09-03T19:35:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T19:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=138844"},"modified":"2014-09-03T19:35:25","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T19:35:25","slug":"obama-makes-bushism-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/obama-makes-bushism-new-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Makes Bushism the New Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #222222;\"><em>DAN FROOMKIN<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">In a lot of ways, we\u2019re worse off today than we were under George W. Bush.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">Back then, Bush\u2019s extremist assault on civil liberties, human rights and other core American values in the name of fighting terror felt like an aberration.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">The expectation was that those policies would be quickly reversed, discredited \u2013 and explicitly outlawed \u2013 once he was no longer in power.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">Instead, under President Barack Obama, they\u2019ve become institutionalized.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">There will be no snapping back to a pre-Bush-era respect for basic human dignity and civil rights. Thanks to Obama, it\u2019s going to be a hard, long fight.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">In some cases, Obama has set even darker precedents than his predecessor. Massively invasive bulk surveillance of Americans and others has been<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/jun\/09\/us-surveillance-expanded-obama-hayden\">expanded<\/a>, not constrained. This president secretly\u00a0<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/national-security\/targeted-killings\">condemns people to death<\/a>\u00a0without any checks or balances, and shrugs as his errant drones<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thebureauinvestigates.com\/category\/projects\/drones\/drones-graphs\/\">massacre innocent civilians<\/a>. Whistleblowers and journalists who expose national security wrongdoing face\u00a0<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nieman.harvard.edu\/reports\/article\/102806\/The-Big-Chill.aspx\">unprecedented<\/a>\u00a0criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\">In a few cases, Obama publicly distanced himself from Bush\/Cheney excesses, but to little effect. He forswore torture, and promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But by actively covering up what happened in the U.S.\u2019s torture chambers, and by refusing to hold the torturers and their political masters in any way accountable, he has\u00a0<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/dan-froomkin\/torture-report-obama-media_b_3099792.html\">done nothing<\/a>\u00a0to make sure that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, it won\u2019t all happen again. And Gitmo, which he treated as a\u00a0<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/03\/30\/with-greg-craig-out-of-th_n_517417.html\">political<\/a>\u00a0rather than moral issue, is<a style=\"color: #df3f3d;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/09\/01\/us\/politics\/decaying-guantanamo-defies-closing-plans.html\">still very much open<\/a>\u00a0for business.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #222222;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2014\/09\/03\/froomkin-blogs-again\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DAN FROOMKIN In a lot of ways, we\u2019re worse off today than we were under George W. Bush. Back then, Bush\u2019s extremist assault on civil liberties, human rights and other core American values in the name of fighting terror felt like an aberration. The expectation was that those policies would be quickly reversed, discredited \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-138844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}