Precisely

Barack Obama makes the central moral point about what it means to deny habeas corpus.

Sen. Barack Obama, on provding the protections of habeas corpus to “war on terror” detainees:

That’s who we are as a people. We do things right, and we do things fair.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

5 thoughts on “Precisely”

  1. Thank you, JR. I'm really weary of Obama lecturing me about morality and leadership and reaching out to the religious right and on and on. I'm over it and I'm over him. For what it's worth, Deval Patrick here in Massachusetts is taking a page from the same playbook.

  2. Don't you see what Obama was doing? He was appealing to an aspirational America by insisting that it was and is the "true" America. That wasn't an empirical claim: it was an attack on Bush and his cronies for acting in a completely un-American manner.

  3. Then, for God's sake, have the courage of your convictions. Filibuster.
    This is not a bad piece of legislation. It is an atrocious piece of legislation. It is egregious legislative practice - rushed through in a week and a half with the transparent purpose of creating a partisan issue.
    At some point, the Democrats ought to be able to muster the moral courage to say this is wrong, and stand by it. If Rove, Bush and Cheney want to go into the elections saying that the President ought to have the authority to lock up anyone indefinitely on his own say so, they have to say "so be it. We welcome this fight."

  4. Jeez, all any Democrat needs to do is say "We'll treat them like we did the Nazi's."
    That will cover all bases on our side, and put the onus on the other side to prove that the detainees are a worse threat than the Wermacht.
    And it has the virtue of being direct and easily understood. Something my Dems have trouble with.

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