Because President Obama passed a bill that allows American citizens to be detained indefinitely without due process then I can not vote for him to be re-elected since he has shown that he has no concept of what our democracy is about. Instead I am going to write in Senator Bernie Sanders in the write in candidate section at the bottom. Senator Sanders seems to be the only Representative that is representing real people instead of imaginary corporate people and as such is the only person that I will vote for.
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Great!
Everyone turn against Obama!
Later when the scales fall from your eyes, you'll see how badly you got stung by the political world of subterfuge and artifice.
The sad truth is that, despite the soaring rhetoric of his campaign, President Obama is a pretty typical Democratic politician. I share your disgust regarding the idea of indefinite detention and the fact that Obama signed the bill this isn't exactly a black and white issue. Remember that the offensive language was actually bi-partisan. It was put in by John McCain and Carl Levin. As Thom pointed out on the show today the "Patriot Act" (there's an Orwellian term) already contains a provision that says you can be considered a terrorist if you interfere with commerce (you've gotta know that the Repubs slipped that one in so that they could go after environmental activists and groups like Greenpeace) which displays just how far afield things had already gotten before Obama signed this bill. We know that the detention of an American citizen as an enemy combatant has already been done (with Jose Padilla) and since the amendment put into the defense authorization bill says that the language inserted into the bill doesn't change existing law what we're left with is the same fight for the restoration of civil liberties that has been going on for years. Remember that things which get written into law can also get written out of law so we need to view this as a larger battle that includes re-making Congress so that it complies with the will of the people.
Obama is a kind of victim himself in this since not signing the bill would have subjected him to unrelenting criticism from the right that the Republican nominee would never have let go of. And the Dems suffer from a fear (justified or not) of being labelled weak when it comes to law enforcement and the military. He was between a rock and a hard place. The truth is that Democrats are very little better when it comes to hawkish policies. Hard core militarization has become an addiction for the U.S. and we will only be able to supress it by creating a groundswell demand that begins at the grassroots. But we can make the dems return to their tradition of being concerned about the protection of civil liberies by making a lot of noise whereas with Republicans it has always been about authoritarianism.
So you had better think twice about throwing away your vote because that's what it is. At least for so long as we have a two party system and those two parties consist of Democrats and Republicans you'd better understand that a vote that is not for a Democrat is the same as voting for a Republican. That might actually be the effect you're going for but if not I really hope you'll give the situation some more thought.
Don't forget about Darcy Richardson 2012 running for democrat bid '12.