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Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’

Omar Khadr being interviewd by CSIS in 2003. Photo by: The Canadian Press

Friday was an extremely busy day and things did not all go Stephen Harper’s way. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, held in part an appeal brought forth by the Prime Minister in regards to the ongoing detainment by the US of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr. Previously, a Federal Court had agreed with Mr. Khadr’s petition to the court that his rights guaranteed under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been violated, and ordered the government to begin to seek his repatriation. This ruling was upheld at the Federal Court of Appeals, leading to the appeal by the Government which was ruled upon on Friday. The Court held that the rights accorded to Mr. Khadr under the Charter have been violated but that directly ordering the government to seek his return to Canada was not appropriate, at this time. In sum, the Court decided to “grant Mr. Khadr a declaration that his Charter rights have been infringed, while
leaving the government a measure of discretion in deciding how best to respond.”

So, while the government does not have to immediately seek the return of Mr. Khadr, they are expected to respond in some manner to the Courts ruling that his Charter rights were and indeed continue to be violated. The Globe and Mail described the Courts ruling as a challenge to the Harper government saying that “a legal fist lies beneath [the ruling's] velvet glove.” In it’s ruling, the Court cited both the consistency of “the separation of powers and the well-grounded reluctance of courts to intervene in matters of foreign relations” but also noted that “courts are empowered to make orders ensuring that the government’s foreign affairs prerogative is exercised in accordance with the constitution.” All of this is to say that the matter of the ongoing detention of Omar Khadr is not over. I previously suggested that perhaps President Obama was looking for Prime Minister Harper to help him out in one small matter by seeking the return of Mr. Khadr. And why not? All other western nations, concerned with what we now know were entirely credible allegations of abuse and torture at Guantanamo sought, and received the return of any of their citizens being held in the black site. There is no reason that Canada should not, even at this late time, follow suit.

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Sarah 'Esther' Palin, during her resignation speech last July (Image: AP)

On Friday I wrote the following:

[...] socially conservative, right wing political factions in the US have truly earned the label ‘noise-machine’. Social conservatives in the States are vocal, well organized, well funded and extremely active in all levels of politicss [They] recycle talking points through an endless echo chamber that greatly increases the media attention given to what are often fringe opinions. The huge media saturation that these groups are able to attain inflate their perceived strength.

While I do believe this to be true, it is just barely so. The Obama adminisration is still less than a year old, and prior to January 20th, 2009 the leader of the US was a man, who after countless disgraces,  is still adored today by a third of the populace. Even with the majorities in Congress that Democrats gained in 2006 and strengthened in 2008, passage of any legislation is still a tenuous and delicate balancing act. With a large majority in the House of Representatives and a vaunted (at least in most media circles) ‘supermajority’ of 60 of the 100 seats in the Senate, any and all legislative victories are still extremely hard won, as the GOP, masters of legislative procedural abuse (tactics Canadians are also becoming more familiar with) are also very good at rejecting, in unison, every single policy proposal that attempts to wend it’s way through Congress. It’s also further worth noting, that were it not for a few hundred voters in Minnesota who pulled the lever for Al Franken, the Democrats would have ‘only’ 59 seats in the US Senate (a body that hilariously refers to itself as ‘the greatest deliberative body on the planet’) and the House and Senate majorities, along with Obama in the White House, would not have been sufficient enough to pass anything this past year.

It also seems that on the day I decided to write about over perceptions of ‘conservative’ strength, events had conspired to highlight how strong and pervasive it truly is.

Last week it was announced that Sarah Palin would be joining Fox News Channel on a multi year deal to provide “political commentary and analysis.” She also made her debut on the ‘fair and balanced’ broadcaster, and from a ratings stand point, was a smashing success, as nearly 4 million people tuned in to her appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor”, double the combined audiences of MSNBC and CNN. Those who love Palin really love her. Andrew Sullivan, who at his blog The Daily Dish has written about Palin in near abject horror since she was thrust onto the national stage by a desperate John McCain, commenting on the ongoing fusion of Fox News Channel and the Republican National Committee, noted the following after watching her interview with Glenn Beck:

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The title ‘Naive Me’ has so much breadth and depth that it would probably make for a good regular feature, but in this particular case I am referencing Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight on Christmas Day. After my initial sigh of relief that this was a failed attempt, resulting in no casualties, I feared the impending drum beat of how unsafe we are, how if this attack had been successful it would have been ‘devastating’ and of course, how all of it inevitably was the fault of President Barack Obama. Matt Yglesias had a post up that had a very cogent response to the attack which also illustrated the potential for misuse of the incident for partisan political gain:

Obviously, people shouldn’t be lighting anything on fire inside airplanes. That said, all the big Christmas airline incident really shows to me is how little punch our dread terrorist adversaries really pack. Once again, this seems like a pretty unserious plot. And even if you did manage to blow up an airplane in mid-air, that would be both a very serious crime and a great tragedy, but hardly a first-order national security threat.

And then there’s Peter King:

“This was the real deal,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident and said something had gone wrong with the explosive device, which he described as somewhat sophisticated. “This could have been devastating,” Mr. King said.

Ultimately, it does no favors to anyone to blow this sort of thing out of proportion. The United States could not, of course, be “devastated” by anything resembling this scheme. We ought to be clear on that fact. We want to send the message around the world that this sort of vile attempt to slaughter innocent people is not, at the end of the day, anything resembling a serious challenge to American power. It’s attempted murder, it’s wrong, we should try to stop it, but it’s really not much more than that.

Exactly. Rep. Pete King has demonstrated time and again that he is an unserious moron not deserving of the media platform his office gives him and Matt voiced a perfect response to his nonsense. The Canadian media seemed to report on the incident as it happened and it received no more attention than it deserved. I didn’t notice too much other trumped up hyperbolic speak on the ‘dread terrorists’ from the American media and usual suspects on the right, and very prematurely figured that perhaps the US had grown and matured, responding in a responsible manner to this criminal act.

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Writing in the Jurisprudence column at Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick has an excellent article up regarding the Obama administrations decision to try some Gitmo detainees in federal court, while continuing to try others before military tribunals and how that mess intersects with the plight of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr that we discussed below.  Her writing is superb and very enjoyable to read.  I’ll only excerpt briefly as you really should go read the whole thing, but it did prompt me to pose a question.

While discussing the ongoing case before the Supreme Court of Canada whose aim is to decide if the Canadian Government is to be compelled to advocate for Khadr’s release to Canadian authorities, Lithwick wonders:

If today’s oral arguments aren’t enough to convince the Canadian Supreme Court to intercede on Khadr’s behalf, maybe Holder’s announcement will be.

One can only hope that the facts alone are enough for the court to find in Omar’s favour; this is a man who was a 15 year old youth when initially captured.  He has languished in legal limbo for coming up on 8 years now.  We know that he has received serious mistreatment while in captivity and that that mistreatment may well qualify as torture.  I am not a lawyer and am not certain where the breach of this man’s charter rights occur.  Both the Federal Court of Appeals and Justice O’Reilly though have found this to be the case already.  It is now left to the Supreme Court to hopefully concur with their judgement.

In my earlier posting on this subject I was critical of Barack Obama for the two tiered system him and his attorney general have elected to go forward with; some cases moving to federal court, with others staying before the newly minted military tribunals.  Dhalia’s musing above has lead me to wonder if Obama/Holders motive in keeping Khadr before the tribunal is at least partially rooted in hoping to force Canada’s hand into taking Khadr into custody.  Are they intentionally signalling that our man will not receive a fair chance at justice, leaving the Canadian Supreme Court no option but to uphold the lower court decisions?  The US administration can no doubt use any help it can get in getting the detainees out of Gitmo.  Perhaps Obama is scratching his head wondering how much they’ve got to do to this guy before his government will step up to the plate for him.  Not enough so far anyways.  If the lower courts ruling is upheld it will be very interesting to see what the Harper Government’s response is.

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