The Caucus: Campaigns Turning Focus To Borders

President Barack Obama addressed the rash of sexual assault criminal cases against U.S. military servicemembers on Friday, exhorting the graduating class at the Naval Academy to do better. “Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong,” Obama said during the annual naval commencement ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland. “That’s why we have to be determined to stop these crimes. Because they have no place in the greatest military on Earth.” Obama’s remarks were a doubling-down of his vow on May 7 that sexual offenders would face accountability for their actions. That same day, a study released by the Pentagon indicated more than 70 daily reported sexual assaults against service members and more than 26,000 reported cases in 2012. The month of May 2013 has also seen at least three officers in charge of programs tasked with preventing such assaults be arrested for stalking or sexual assault charges. According to NBC News, Obama also used the speech to touch on topics like the recent allegations of misconduct against the Internal Revenue Service and to decry the federal sequester, the latter of which was underscored by the cancellation of the traditional fly-by by the Blue Angels squadron, which has been shelved for the remainder of 2013 for budgetary reasons. Watch Obama’s remarks to the graduating class, in video posted Friday by Agence France-Presse, below.

Independent investigative journalist Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now" and author of The Silenced Majority, a magnificent look at diverse groups of Americans engaged in resistance to plutocrats and jingoists. She wrote this column before President Obama gave his global war on terrorism speech Thursday; so she does not mention it. But what was said at the National Defense University by the president does not make any of her criticisms obsolete. There were, however, some encouraging words hinting at a fresh initiative that will move U.S. policy at least partway on some issues in a good direction. Words must now spark actions. By Amy Goodman In a remarkable but little-noticed oversight hearing last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee looked at “The Law of Armed Conflict, the Use of Military Force, and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.” The 2001 AUMF is the act passed by Congress on Sept. 14, three days after the al-Qaida attacks on the United States.  
Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, opened his questioning of the military officials before him by stating: “Gentlemen, I’ve only been here five months, but this is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution here today.”
  
 King’s statement followed the questioning by longtime South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who recently pushed to have the Boston bombing suspect—a U.S. citizen accused of a violent crime on U.S. soil—named an “enemy combatant,” denying him his constitutional rights. Graham enjoyed unanimous agreement from the panelists to his series of questions:
  Amy Goodman “Do you agree with me that when it comes to international terrorism, we’re talking about a worldwide struggle?”
  
“Would you agree with me the battlefield is wherever the enemy chooses to make it?”
  
 “And it could be anyplace on the planet, and we have to be aware and able to act.”
  
The message was clear from the Pentagon: The world is a battlefield.
  
 The AUMF reads, in part, “the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
  
 Only one member of Congress voted against that 2001 bill. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said from the floor of the House of Representatives: “I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. Some of us must urge the use of restraint and think through the implications of our actions today, so this does not spiral out of control.”
  
Clearly, Sen. Angus King thinks things have spiraled out of control. As does journalist Jeremy Scahill, whose new book, “Dirty Wars,” is subtitled, “The World Is a Battlefield.” Scahill told me: “The concept of ‘The World Is a Battlefield’ actually is a military doctrine called ‘Operational Preparation of the Battlespace,’ which views the world as a battlefield. [If] the military predicts that conflicts are likely or that war is a possibility, [they] can forward deploy troops to those countries to prepare the battlefield. And under both Bush and Obama, the world has been declared the battlefield.” His film “Dirty Wars,” based on the book and directed by Richard Rowley, opens in theaters nationally this June.
  
Close to 12 years later, the AUMF remains in force, giving the Obama administration and the Pentagon carte blanche to wage war, to occupy nations, to kill people with drone “signature strikes,” based not on guilt but on a remote analysis of a suspect’s “patterns of life.” As these wars become increasingly hidden, it becomes even more important for journalists to go to where the silence is, to hold those in power accountable.
  
 Which is why the Obama administration seems to be waging low-intensity warfare on journalists at home, with dragnet surveillance of reporters to uncover protected sources, and targeting of whistle-blowers with unprecedented use of the espionage act. More than 100 prisoners at the U.S. base on Guantánamo are engaged in a life-threatening hunger strike. Most of them have never been charged and are cleared for release, but remain in that American gulag, with no hope, no change.
  
 Memorial Day, while for many not much more than a three-day weekend, will be marked by many solemn ceremonies. At the time of this writing, the most recent U.S. deaths in Afghanistan were two soldiers from the Pacific island of Guam, Sgt. Eugene M. Aguon, 23, and Spc. Dwayne W. Flores, 22, killed by a so-called improvised explosive device on May 16. Unreported by the Pentagon are the hundreds of soldier and veteran suicides, which now account for more deaths than combat. The backlog at Veterans Affairs, as of May 20, was more than 873,000 benefits claims pending, 584,000 of which were pending for more than 125 days.
  
 Thomas Paine wrote in the March 21, 1778, edition of his pamphlet The Crisis, “If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of willful and offensive war he who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.” © Amy Goodman 2013 Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Goopers can't handle the burden: We already knew this, but it's nice to get confirmation anyway. "It's extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government," says Hastert spokesman John Feehery Given that 60+ percent think the country is going in the wrong direction, and that every decision made the last four years has been made by Republicans, we know that they can't handle the task. So it's time to give Democrats a shot. Incidentally, what Feedery is really trying to say is that it's tough to place blame on Democrats for the Republicans' shortcomings when they control all three branches of government. Tweet of the Day: History is considerably easier to revise than resubmit. — @NeinQuarterly via Twitter for iPhone High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

Via Media Matters, if Fox News made a sexual harassment video, it would be a "how to" not a "how to avoid." Open thread below.

California has spent billions retrofitting its bridges for earthquakes, but critics say the state is still lagging behind most states in the quality and age of its structures. But thousands of its bridges are classified as “structurally deficient” by federal bridge authorities.

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