I’ve been a fan of Salon since the day it started, and a paying subscriber as long as the company has offered that option. If you visit Salon often, you already know why.

So I’m delighted to be bringing some of my blogging there, including many of the items I’d normally be posting here. My arrangement with Salon gives them exclusive access for one week to new posts, after which they’ll appear here — as always, under a Creative Commons license from this site.

Here’s my first post.

But the more I watch Obama endorse and expand the Bush administration’s claims of essentially unlimited presidential power, the more I conclude that we have essentially one hope at this point.

Civil libertarians should hope, perversely, that Obama will abuse the powers he’s claimed — and which, given Congress’ craven acceptance, appear to be a bipartisan Washington consensus. Moreover, we have to hope that he’ll abuse them broadly, against people who support him as well as those who don’t. 

In the Clinton years, a significant number of Republicans hammered what they believed (accurately in many cases) was the White House’s tendency to claim executive powers that they were certain would be abused. For a time it was the GOP that defended civil liberties — hypocritical in the extreme in many cases, as it was mostly reflexive anti-Clinton paranoia, but useful nonetheless for those of us who were glad to see someone, anyone, pushing back.

Republicans and Democrats alike seem to have concluded that Obama won’t abuse his power, at least in ways they or their major supporters will find objectionable. In the case of Republicans, it’s unclear whether they figure he’s a wimp or naive about the “real world,” but the taunting by the right-wing pols and people like Limbaugh about “the regime,” and all the other alarm-ringing, is hollow at its core. Sure, it’s demagogic fear mongering, but I don’t believe most of these people really want their gun-laden supporters to actually use their weapons; that would harm their cause. Rather, they want these folks to get organized at protests and political meetings and ultimately in voting booths. Their goal is for Obama to fail, in ways that have historically led to right-wing surges, so they can get back all three branches of government again. Actual violence by their supporters would make that much more difficult.

If the Republicans don’t really fear Obama, the Democrats, have turned cowardice into an art form, seem to figure it’s okay to pander to fear and expand presidential power because a good person is in charge at the moment — and, as many have suggested, because lots of Democrats have deeply authoritarian impulses as well. The latter may actually be the more important motivation. But the Democrats’ hypocrisy — Patrick Leahy’s beyond-craven performance as one of Obama’s chief enablers in Congress is especially shameful, given his rhetoric during the Bush years — should surprise no one at this point. They demonstrated their total spinelessness during the Bush years. Why should we have expected them to change now?

But the political right is surely licking its chops, confident that when it returns to power there will be absolutely no constraints on their pro-authority (except for the 2nd Amendment) agenda. And Obama will have given them cover. He, as much as George Bush and Dick Cheney, will have laid the groundwork for a regime that goes all the way to the edge, if not over it.

Most depressing of all, the majority of the American people would probably welcome such a government. Our preference for the illusion of safety over the recognition and acceptance of risk has only grown. We are a society too afraid of our own shadows to confront reality, I fear. Someday, perhaps as soon as the next successful terrorist attack, we’ll get what we seem to want. 

Which is why I come back to my perverse hope that Obama will abuse his powers enough to pull enough scales from enough eyes, especially in Washington, that people understand what history teaches again and again: Untrammeled executive authority only seems like the easier road — until you’re in the way of the bulldozer.

State Press (Arizona State University):Interrupted Arpaio interview leaves questions unanswered Professors from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication were forced to cut short a panel interview with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Monday night when a group of protesters interrupted.

What’s the kindest word for these people? Ah. Morons.

Here’s what they accomplished: They killed the interview just as it was getting to the very issues they (apparently) are most worried about: Arpaio’s treatment of Latinos.

Again, morons.

A few minutes later one of the city’s parking police came up behind the line. I asked one of the valets what was up, and he said they were out of parking spaces, though one might come open again if someone left. But, he said, the city was starting to ticket cars waiting in line.

We waited a minute, hoping someone might leave, and then pulled out and found our own parking.

A few weeks later I received a notice from the city, saying we owed money for illegal parking that evening. I filled out the protest form, noting that no one had handed us any ticket or put one on our windshield, and, moreover, that we’d moved the car. To repeat: The parking cop never handed us this phantom ticket, nor did he/she put on the windshield — and we were sitting right there.

Months went by, with two more letters saying the city was looking into the situation. Then, a couple of weeks ago, we got another letter saying the city parking department had decided we did owe for illegal parking. In other words, whatever its own employee — remember, the one who never actually handed us any paper — told them was considered true. Or maybe they just figured they could get away with going ahead with this bogus ticket.

Well, they did. As the city knows from the vehicle registration, I’m living a majority of the time in Arizona and can’t possibly take the time or justify the expense of challenging this ticket. So I’m sending the $100. I’m tempted to send a pissed-off letter to the mayor, but realize what an empty exercise that would be.

Instead, for the next few months, when we’re at our Bay Area place and thinking about going out to dinner or a movie, or going shopping, we’ll head somewhere other than San Francisco. At some point we’ll figure we’ve avoided paying enough city parking and other taxes/fees, etc. (including the local version of the multiplier effect — spending causing more economic activity), to have denied the San Francisco treasury somewhere in the vicinity of the $100 its parking police docked us. I regret that this means some restaurants and stores in the city won’t be getting our business during this stretch, but they’ve chosen to be where they are.

I assume this kind of thing happens all the time. Parking tickets are a fabulous source of revenue for a city like San Francisco. I also wonder if the people who govern the city realize how annoyed they make people with such tactics. I assume they don’t care. In the long run that’s poor policy.

I usually aim it at something the United Way finds politically difficult to help directly, such as Planned Parenthood. My logic: I figured the umbrella group’s other recipients would do okay with the default selection by most folks.

This year, I’m sorry to say, the Valley of the Sun United Way (VSUW) in metropolitan Phoenix refused my directed gift, which I’d attempted to donate through Arizona State University, my employer.

At the end of many conversations, emails and research, VSUW said it wouldn’t pass along the money to the ACLU Foundation of Arizona. The reason? It wasn’t, in the opinion of VSUW, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization providing “health and human services” — the baseline requirement for a targeted donation. Instead, the VSUW told me, based on an employee’s check of the ACLU website, the ACLU is:

more of an advocacy group than a health and human legal aid organization. ACLU’s mission is more about protecting Constitutional rights and more about issues as opposed to serving individual people in need. The work is more driven by the issue or position than the need of the individual.

The VSUW contrasted this with an agency it does consider worthy under their guidelines:

Community Legal Services of Arizona, also known as The William E. Morris Institute for Justice qualifies as a “health and human service” agency.

The William E. Morris Institute for Justice is a private non-profit agency established in 1996 to provide services to the legal services community, to other community-based agency advocates, and to select low-income clients in Arizona. In 1997, the Institute added an attorney who provides Legal-Services-Corporation precluded legal representation to low-income clients on a variety of issues. The Institute conducts research, advocacy and training activities to enhance legal services provided to low-income households in Arizona.

If they’re right about Community Legal Services — definitely a worthy organization — they’re mistaken about the ACLU. I went beyond website PR and looked at the ACLU-Arizona IRS reporting forms, which to be fair I had to ask for from the organization.

The advocacy part of the ACLU operation is in the 501(c)(4) arm. The 501(c)(3) report clearly shows that the organization provides human services though legal representation and public education. I told this to the United Way and sent along the forms.

The United Way’s response: No again. They didn’t address the specifics beyond insisting that the ACLU did not, under their rules, qualify. (I probably hurt my case by asking if this was a political question more than anything else, given Arizona’s right-wing leanings. They furiously denied this had anything to do with it.)

So I’ve withdrawn my donation, which was a generous one, giving instead directly to the ACLU and (as I’ve already done) to one of the organizations the United Way does approve of. At this point, however, I’m not inclined to do anything with the United Way, or at least this branch of it.

Postscript: By the way, the Arizona ACLU was basically useless during this process. The organization made no attempt to intervene, as far as I can tell, with either the university or United Way. And afterward, when I suggested the ACLU work with ASU and UW to fix this problem so it could become a designated beneficiary for gifts, the response was essentially, “Hmmm, interesting idea.” I’ve seen no sign whatever that anyone bothered to pursue this. Who loses? The people who need the ACLU’s services the most. I hope the AZ ACLU’s legal services aren’t as dysfunctional as the fundraising.

The evidence is crystal clear that any potential risk from the vaccine is vanishingly small compared to the risks of not getting it.

Which is why I got my seasonal flu shot already, and will get an H1N1 vaccine when it’s available, because it’s selfish not to do so. This is not just about me: It’s about the people I might expose if I get the flu.

Since then, however, I’ve had several of purchases rejected by the card issuer. At least twice now, I’ve had to call the credit-card company and verify that, yes, I was the person making the purchase. Then the issuer unfroze the card, and I could try again to make the purchase.

When this happened earlier this week, I asked the person at the other end of line to simply cancel that card and issue me a new one with a different number. She refused, on the ground that since there was no actual fraud, there was no harm being done and therefore no need for the time and expense — to the company — of issuing the new card.

What about my time and expense? These calls to the card company are taking up time that is worth something to me. That, of course, is irrelevant to the card issuer.

Just one more hidden cost of credit in today’s world.