What Is Happening To America?

There are days when I wonder what has become of logic, reason, ethical standards, and just plain honesty in America.  Today is one of those days.  Here's a small sample.

Obama presses for more secrecy

The Left cheered as George Bush left office, as they believed him to be scornful of the Constitution and obsessed with secrecy.  Barack Obama promised to bring a new era of openness, one in which the government would no longer hide intelligence programs from court scrutiny.  Secret surveillance would become a thing of the past!

They should have asked Jim Geraghty about expiration dates.  As the Washington Post reported yesterday, not only has Obama reneged on that particular promise, he's actually arguing for a broader state-secrets privilege than Bush did:

Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House.

The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity suspected of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff — proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them. …

In his campaign plan to "change Washington," Obama criticized the Bush administration, saying that it had "ignored public disclosure rules" and that it too often invoked the state-secrets privilege, according to his Web site.

Now, Obama's claim of state secrets has prompted criticism.

How much outrage will we hear from the Left over this?  Not too much, I suspect.  A few like Glenn Greenwald, who has made this a particular focus, will blast Obama for falling back on his promise for openness.  The rest had little real interest in the topic outside of a chance for some serious Bush bashing.

Non-existent transparency

More than a month ago, Tim Geithner announced a new website: financialstability.gov. "The website will give Americans the transparency they deserve," he promised. As of today, however, the website is still under construction.

Are you feeling more confident about the adminstration now?

Being non-political

Democrats complained endlessly about the supposed "politicization" of the Bush Justice Department. When asked about this at his confirmation hearing, Eric Holder piously pledged that his Justice Department would "serve justice" and "not the fleeting interests of any political party." America, he intoned, was "in dire need of a less political and more independent Justice Department."

But an e-mail and flyer recently circulated to Justice Department employees indicate Attorney General Holder has an interesting definition of what it means to be "less political." The flyer invites all employees to attend a speech in the main Justice building on Pennsylvania Avenue. In fact, it notes, all "[s]upervisors are encouraged to grant official time to employees to attend this event."

And what pillar of the legal profession will be lecturing Justice employees to help them "serve justice" in a "less political" way? Why, none other than Donna Brazile, whose own website biography describes her as a "[v]eteran Democratic political strategist" and a Vice Chairman at the Democratic National Committee." Brazile is marketed by more than one speaker's bureau at a cost ranging from $10,000 to $20,000. The flyer doesn't say how many taxpayer dollars are going to pay a Democratic political consultant to speak to career employees at the Justice Department (sounds like a good FOIA request). Good thing the Department is no longer politicized.

Democrats keep Madoff money

From the Hill:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has apparently decided to keep $100K in contributions from Bernie Madoff, who faces up to 150 years in prison for swindling billions from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick in a massive Ponzi scheme.

In campaigns, one side often calls on the other to return money for one reason or another. Sometimes it's valid, sometimes not. Regardless, it's Campaign 101. But when the contributor in question is the single biggest financial criminal in history, there can be no question that those illicit funds should not remain in campaign coffers.

Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gave thousands in Madoff donations to charity. Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) are doing the same.

Given the economic uncertainty our nation faces and that Madoff not only fleeced the rich and famous but major corporations such as HSBC — in other words, Madoff swindled all of us — the DSCC's decision is shockingly tone-deaf.

However, what's almost equally surprising is the virtual silence from the media.

I'm not at all surprised by it.  The mainstream media is a fully integrated house organ of the Democrat party, and has essentially no will on its own aside from what Obama and the Democrats want them to say.  And, if you look at these other stories, there's a clear trend toward an incomprehensible dichotomy in how they report and think about things.

Since we're on the subject of thinking, allow me to bring up the concept of doublethink.  It's a term from Orwell's 1984, and it is defined as "the act of conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.  To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies."

I don't know about you, but that smacks of Obot-ism to me.  This blog is littered with shining examples of doublethink by liberal Democrats.  Since this was written almost 60 years ago, I'm beginning to wonder if Orwell was some sort of prophet.  At the very least, he is looking more and more prescient with every day that passes under the Obama administration.

There's my two cents.