Obama vs. McCain: Progressive Voter Guide to Human Rights and Civil Liberties

AlterNet. Posted October 11, 2008.

Download this Voter Guide as a .PDF

There's no question the Bush administration has presided over some of the most sweeping expansions of executive power in our country's history. Most of them, like the government's secret spying program, can be traced back to September 11. The terrorist attacks changed the rules of the counterterrorism game by bestowing the president with a perceived, and then actual, authority to dictate the rules. As Vice President Dick Cheney famously told the late Tim Russert days after 9/11, "A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

The words are chilling still, especially after seeing hundreds of innocent men wrongly detained Guantanamo and the torture photos at Abu Ghraib. But it is important to remember that the expansion of executive power for counterterrorism has been a bipartisan project. Many of the programs that comprised the post-9/11 rule changes were in the works before the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The CIA's extraordinary rendition program, for example, in which terror suspects are kidnapped and flown to other countries to be interrogated and tortured, actually began under the Clinton administration. George W. Bush dramatically escalated the practice in the name of the so-called "War on Terror." As Election Day nears, as the question of what the new president would do to roll back some of these powers becomes all the more pressing, it is critical to remember that as David Cole recently wrote, "Government officials do not as a rule like to give up power." It is critical that we not assume Barack Obama would necessarily roll back Bush's power grab. For those who truly wish to see change in a new administration, casting a ballot in this election should be a first, not last, step. Fortunately, whereas once it was deemed unpatriotic to criticize the Bush administration's "War on Terror," more recently, its excesses are more widely acknowledged. "Growing consensus," writes Cole, "recognizes that the Bush administration's post-9/11 actions have not only compromised some of our most fundamental principles, but have actually made us less safe."

The project to restore the Constitution and reclaim our democracy must begin the moment the next president takes office. Luckily, there are writers, thinkers and activists who have spent years working to design blueprints for how to accomplish this. The Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU, Amnesty International, and the Brennan Center for Justice are just a few critical resources that can show us how we might restore the checks and balances that once defined the United States. AlterNet has culled information from these organizations, examined the candidates' voting records and created an election guide to help you distinguish between Barack Obama's and John McCain's positions on some of the most important human rights and civil liberties issues facing us today.

1. DOMESTIC SPYING

Following the path laid by the PATRIOT Act, which included a broad provision authorizing "roving" wiretaps for domestic intelligence gathering, in 2002, under presidential order, the National Security Agency began secretly monitoring the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans, without a warrant. After the program was revealed by the New York Times on Dec. 15, 2005, the Bush administration, with the help of Congress, simply legalized the illegal activity, passing the Protect America Act in 2007, which granted the president sole discretion on whether to wiretap U.S. citizens. The FISA Amendments Act followed this past summer, granting legal immunity to the telecoms that enabled the spying.

• Solution: Repeal the FISA Amendments Act and replace it with legislation that imposes the proper checks and balances on administrations to come. Repeal the PATRIOT Act, particularly its roving wiretap provisions.
• Obama's position: Obama's record on domestic spying is mixed. Until recently, Obama was a critic of Bush's warrantless wiretapping. He voted against the Protect America Act and vowed to support a filibuster of legislation granting immunity for telecoms. But he voted for the FISA Amendments Act. He has voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act, despite saying he would repeal it, but voted against extending the PATRIOT Act's wiretap provision.
• McCain's position: McCain was absent for both the Protect America Act and the FISA Amendment Act votes, but he, too, was critical of the NSA spying program until recently. After a campaign spokesperson suggested that the senator wanted hearings on telecoms' role in the program, McCain disavowed the statement, and his campaign delivered a line on the issue that that is the same as the Bush administration's: "Neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001." McCain voted for the PATRIOT Act and its re-authorizations. Unlike Obama, he also voted to extend the PATRIOT Act's wiretap provisions.

See more stories tagged with: torture, death penalty, supreme court, guantanamo, civil liberties, human rights, domestic spying, signing statements, wrongful convictions

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Election 2008! Sign up now »