> In the Sarasota case, the U.S. Marshals Service claimed it owned the records Sarasota police offered to the ACLU because it had deputized the detective in the case, making all documentation in the case federal property.
Usually a sign of third world government/justice system. In such countries they don't have to bother to hide their crimes because they know they have all the power and no one will do anything to them. Unfortunately many in the US law enforcement have started feeling like that, because in truth, usually nothing happens to them when committing crimes either.
Indeed. Usually the best accountability mechanism is internal to the organization (or the person), but George W Bush demonstrated unequivocally that if you absolutely refuse to hold yourself accountable, there's literally nothing anyone outside your organization can do. It was like discovering a superpower.
Loyalty is everything, principle nothing. So vilify whistleblowers, hold the line against criticism. The important psychology here when behaving unethically and illegally on behalf of your org is to remember that the org is defined to be good and if you criticize it, you will be defined to be bad and moreover, there will be real-life consequences on the order of lost career, imprisonment, or death. Another important feature these days is the use of secret interpretations of law that justify breaking it, providing a soothing balm to those who's consciences need it.
Did you mean Barack Obama? Or Bill Clinton? Or Ronald Reagan? Or Richard Nixon? Or Lyndon Johnson? Or Franklin Roosevelt?
They all abused their power, often to extremes.
The illegal war Kennedy and Johnson put us into in Vietnam was drastically worse than Iraq.
The only reason spy agencies under Nixon didn't do what they have under Bush and Obama, is they lacked the technology to pull it off. That's the sole reason it didn't happen sooner.
J Edgar Hoover was director of the FBI for 48 years, under numerous Presidents, all of which were complicit in the abuses that took place. They knew what he was and didn't stop him. Hoover would probably be doing worse today than anything the NSA is doing, he lacked the technology, not the willingness to violate the Constitution.
If FDR was willing to intern Japanese Americans during WW2, what kind of other vile police state measures do you think he would have happily gone along with had the technology existed to eg spy on every single American in 1941? He absolutely would have brushed the Constitution aside, all he lacked was the technology.
None of this mess began with Bush. And the Bush mentality is the opposite of unique among Presidents. He's just one of many involved over decades of abuses leading up to this point.
I've heard this argument before. But Bush really was different. Nixon resigned. Clinton was impeached (and eventually apologized) for lying about Lewinski. Kennedy never had a chance to answer for Vietnam, nor FDR for internment.
I don't know about Hoover, but my sense was that the presidents under which he worked could not have removed him even if they wanted to.
Bush was innovative not because he lied, or cheated, or did vile things as President, but because he chose to believe that he was right, no matter what anyone said, or the reasons they gave, or the arguments they made. He simply refused to accept facts that interfered with his own viewpoint, and incredibly this worked. He hacked a system that relies on powerful wrong-doers to cooperate with the prosecution to be effective. It's a kind of extra-legal 5th amendment right reserved for captains of industry and state.
As for Obama, I'd argue that as our first black President he's been swept up by the momentum of his predecessor, and has had to take very careful steps lest he lose the support of the Bush-era bureaucrats. Is James Clapper above executing an American coup? Clearly not, and Obama knows it. In essence, Bush created a 21st century, high-tech, distributed Hoover that's impossible to kill or even moderate, especially by a weak president.
This is pretty outrageous.