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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

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Mostrando postagens com marcador Barak Obama. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Barak Obama. Mostrar todas as postagens

domingo, 28 de setembro de 2014

Geopolitica: Reagan ou Obama, quem enfrenta os maiores desafios? - TomFriedman

Para o colunista do NYT, é Obama, pois o Reagan "só" tinha um império decadente, mas com endereço e telefone, para derrotar. Obama, ao contrário, tem uma miríade de não-estados bandidos, pipocando aqui e ali.
Se eu quiser ajudar a Dilma a "dialogar" com o Estado Islâmico, eu telefono para quem, para onde?
Pois é...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Who Had It Easier, Reagan or Obama?


Thomas L. Friedman
OVER the past few weeks I’ve been reading Ken Adelman’s fascinating history “Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War.” Adelman, who led Reagan’s arms control agency, was an adviser at Reagan’s 1986 Iceland summit meeting with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Using some newly declassified documents, Adelman fills out the extraordinary dialogue between the two leaders that set in motion a dramatic cut in nuclear arms.
You learn a lot about Reagan’s leadership in the book. For me, the most impressive thing was not Reagan’s attachment to his “Star Wars” strategic defense initiative, which is overrated in ending the Cold War. What is most impressive about Reagan is that he grasped that Gorbachev was a radically different kind of Soviet leader — one with whom he could make history — long before his intelligence community did. That made a big difference.
These days there is a lot of “if-only-Obama-could-lead-like-Reagan” talk by conservatives. I’ll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president. But what I’d argue is this: In several critical areas, Reagan had a much easier world to lead in than Obama does now.
“Easier world, are you kidding?” say conservatives. “Reagan was up against a Communist superpower that had thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at us! How can you say that?”
Here’s how: The defining struggle in Reagan’s day was the Cold War, and the defining feature of the Cold War was that it was a war between two differentsystems of order: Communism versus democratic capitalism. But both systems competed to build order — to reinforce weak states around the world with military and economic aid and win their support in the Cold War. And when either Moscow or Washington telephoned another state around the world, there was almost always someone to answer the phone. They even ensured that their proxy wars — like Vietnam and Afghanistan — were relatively contained.
Obama’s world is different. It is increasingly divided by regions of order and regions of disorder, where there is no one to answer the phone, and the main competition is not between two organized superpowers but between a superpower and many superempowered angry men. On 9/11, we were attacked, and badly hurt, by a person: Osama bin Laden, and his superempowered gang. When superempowered angry men have more open space within which to operate, and more powerful weapons and communication tools, just one needle in a haystack can hurt us.
Most important, Reagan’s chief rival, Gorbachev, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for doing something he never wanted to do: peacefully letting go of Eastern Europe. Obama’s foes, like the Islamic State, will never win the Nobel Peace Prize. Reagan could comfortably challenge Gorbachev in Berlin to “tear down this wall” because on the other side of that wall was a bad system — Communism — that was suppressing a civilization in Eastern and Central Europe, and part of Russia, that was naturally and historically inclined toward democratic capitalism. And there were leaders there — like Lech Walesa, another Nobel Peace Prize winner — to lead the transition. We just needed to help remove the bad system and step aside.
“The countries of Eastern and Central Europe were forcibly part of a Communist empire but culturally were always part of Western civilization,” explained Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy specialist and author of “The Road to Global Prosperity.” “They never saw themselves as Communist, but rather as Westerners who had been kidnapped.” After Gorbachev, under pressure from Reagan and the West, released them, “they ran as fast as they could to embrace Western institutions.”
In the Middle East, which has consumed so much of Obama’s energy, the people tore down their walls — their systems — but underneath was not a civilization with the suppressed experience, habits and aspirations of democracy and free markets. Instead it was a toxic mix of Islamism, tribalism, sectarianism and an inchoate aspiration for democracy.
Reagan’s leadership challenge was to bring down a wall and then reap the peace dividends by just letting nature take its course. Obama’s challenge is that on the other side of the wall that the Arabs took down lies the world’s biggest nation-building project, with a civilization that is traumatized, divided and often culturally hostile to Western values and institutions. It’s an enormous job that only the locals can lead.
The one time that Reagan faced the miniversion of Obama’s challenge was in Lebanon. After Israel toppled the Palestinian ministate there, Reagan hoped it would unleash a naturally democratic order, with just a little midwifing help from American Marines. But after 241 U.S. servicemen were blown up in Beirut in 1983, Reagan realized that the civilization there was a mix of Islamists, sectarian Christians, Syrians, Shiite militias, Palestinian refugees and democrats. It required a lot more than us just standing guard. It required nation-building. And what did Reagan do? He left.
I was there to wave goodbye to the last Marines on the beaches of Beirut.
So comparing Reagan with Obama in foreign policy is inevitable. But when you do, also compare their respective contexts. The difference is revealing.

sábado, 5 de julho de 2014

Historia: entre o o fato e a versao, esta tende a prevalecer

A matéria se refere à imagem que ficará da presidência Obama -- passavelmente medíocre pelo seu desempenho efetivo, salvo na retórica do próprio - na História, mas ela também pode servir para o Brasil, onde temos a mesma propaganda maciça a favor dos companheiros, isto porque dois quintos dos jornalistas e dos acadêmicos são governistas, por razões que não têm nada a ver com a realidade e sim com a predisposição desses indivíduos que influenciam a opinião pública de modo decisivo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Eye on the News

MATTHEW HENNESSEY
Obama and the Verdict of Posterity
Thanks to liberal historians, the 44th president will probably get much higher marks than he deserves.
The City Journal, 4 July 2014

Conservatives have a low opinion of President Obama. So low, in fact, that most are convinced his presidency will ultimately be viewed as a failure—and at least one recent poll gives them good reason to feel confident About that. They see a moribund economy and Obamacare’s many snafus and presume historians will call the Obama administration incompetent. They see chaos in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine and think future generations will judge his foreign policy a disaster. They see the Bowe Bergdahl and IRS/Lois Lerner affairs—not to mention the Benghazi and V.A. administration episodes—and expect the Obama years to be remembered as scandal-plagued. Conservatives think history will be unkind to President Obama, but they’re wrong. History will more likely revere the first black president, ignoring his failures and amplifying his successes.
Journalism, it’s often said, serves as the rough draft of history, and American journalists, to an overwhelming degree, adore Obama. Their first drafts of the history of the Obama years will likely be laudatory. But more important, in the long term, than the opinion of today’s journalists is the attitude of historians—most of whom make their living in academia. It’s no secret that the American college campus is a bastion of leftism. A 2005 survey of faculty members at 183 four-year colleges found that 81 percent of politics professors and 77 percent of historians considered themselves liberals. The watchdog group Campus Reform examinedFederal Election Commission data and found that 96 percent of political donations by faculty and staff at Ivy League colleges went to Obama in 2012.
Some say history is written by the victors. That may have been true in antiquity, but in the modern world, history is written by left-wing journalists and professors. And the presidential historians of tomorrow will likely give Obama credit for attempting to reform the American health-care system, even if that reform proves costly, inadequate, or disastrous. They will praise him as the president who ended George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if those countries ultimately revert to authoritarianism (as they seem to be doing). They will hail him for trying to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and pass comprehensive immigration reform, even if those campaign promises go unfulfilled. When it comes to his failures, history will say that it wasn’t Obama’s fault. History will say that Obama tried. Don’t believe me? Check your history. History has done it before.
Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court and subvert the checks and balances that our political system has always relied on to keep presidents from behaving like kings. Some say his economic policies prolonged the misery of the Great Depression. While FDR has been justly lauded for his military leadership during the Second World War, his administration hadprior warning about the possibility of a Japanese attack in the Pacific and perhaps could have prevented the deaths of 2,400 Americans on December 7, 1941. FDR also issued an executive order forcing more than 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. Yet, FDR is routinely ranked by historians as one of our greatest presidents. Why? Because history is written by historians, and historians love the New Deal and the welfare state.
John F. Kennedy’s presidency was abbreviated by assassination; he didn’t live to complete three full years in office, during which his accomplishments were slim. Yet in 2012, he showed up in a Newsweek survey of historians selecting the 10 best modern presidents. (Also on that list? Barack Obama, of course.) Why should Kennedy rank among the twentieth-century’s best? Because JFK is the personification of compassionate, paternalistic liberalism, and American journalists are, for the most part, compassionate, paternalistic liberals.
Consider, too, how history has treated Lyndon B. Johnson. The architect of military escalation in Vietnam, Johnson left the presidency in disgrace. He was so despised by the Left that his own party hounded him into surrendering the nomination in 1968. But many on the Left have lately forgiven LBJ for the sins of Vietnam, because he gave us the Great Society and the War on Poverty. So LBJ gets a pass. Instead, Richard Nixon gets blamed for Vietnam, when he isn’t taking heat for everything from the Clinton impeachment to the obesity epidemic. History hates the Republican Nixon, who got us out of Vietnam. History loves the Democrat LBJ, who gave us the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Funny how that works.
Think I’m exaggerating or cherry-picking? Compare the recent media commemorations of the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights Actand the Great Society with those of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Vietnam War. Actually, you won’t find many articles commemorating the start of the Vietnam War—possibly because those articles would have to acknowledge how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations entangled us in that bloody and controversial conflict. Best to wait until the Nixon-era anniversaries start rolling around for a full-color spread on Vietnam and its tragic legacy. History likes to keep things tidy.
Conservatives expecting the light of history to illuminate Barack Obama’s missteps and expose his presidency as a failure should prepare to be disappointed. If history is any guide, history will love this guy.

sábado, 29 de março de 2014

O paradoxo da politica externa de Obama - Robert Kagan (WP)

Opinions

President Obama’s foreign policy paradox

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He writes a monthly foreign affairs column for The Post.
Whether one likes President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy or not, the common assumption is that the administration is at least giving the American people the foreign policy they want. The majority of Americans have opposed any meaningful U.S. role in Syria, have wanted to lessen U.S. involvement in the Middle East generally, are eager to see the “tide of war” recede and would like to focus on “nation-building at home.” Until now, the president generally has catered to and encouraged this public mood, so one presumes that he has succeeded, if nothing else, in gaining the public’s approval.
Yet, surprisingly, he hasn’t. The president’s approval ratings on foreign policy are dismal. According to the most recent CBS News poll, only 36 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing on foreign policy, while 49 percent disapprove. This was consistent with other polls over the past year. A November poll by the Pew Research Center showed 34 percent approval on foreign policy vs. 56 percent disapproval. The CBS poll showed a higher percentage of Americans approving of Obama’s economic policies (39 percent) and a higher percentage approving his handling of health care (41 percent). Foreign policy is the most unpopular thing Obama is doing right now. And lest one think that foreign policy is never a winner, Bill Clinton’s foreign policy ratings at roughly the same point in his second term were quite good — 57 percent approval; 34 percent disapproval — and Ronald Reagan’s rating was more than 50 percent at a similar point in his presidency. That leaves Obama in the company of George W. Bush — not the first-term Bush whose ratings were consistently high but the second-term Bush mired in the worst phase of the Iraq war.
Gallery
Gallery
Nor are Obama’s numbers on foreign policy simply being dragged down by his overall job approval ratings. The public is capable of drawing distinctions. When George H.W. Bush’s overall approval ratings were tanking in the last year of his presidency, his ratings on economic policy led the downward trend, but his foreign policy ratings stayed above 50 percent. According to the CBS poll, Obama’s overall approval rating is 40 percent, four points higher than his foreign policy rating.
So we return to the paradox: President Obama is supposedly conducting a foreign policy in tune with popular opinion, yet his foreign policy is not popular. What’s the explanation? I await further investigation by pollsters, but until then I offer one hypothesis:
A majority of Americans may not want to intervene in Syria, do anything serious about Iran or care what happens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt or Ukraine. They may prefer a minimalist foreign policy in which the United States no longer plays a leading role in the world and leaves others to deal with their own miserable problems. They may want a more narrowly self-interested American policy. In short, they may want what Obama so far has been giving them. But they’re not proud of it, and they’re not grateful to him for giving them what they want.
For many decades Americans thought of their nation as special. They were the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world,” the “indispensable nation,” the No. 1 superpower. It was a source of pride. Now, pundits and prognosticators are telling them that those days are over, that it is time for the United States to seek more modest goals commensurate with its declining power. And they have a president committed to this task. He has shown little nostalgia for the days of U.S. leadership and at times seems to conceive it as his job to deal with the “reality” of decline.
Perhaps this is what they want from him. But it is not something they will thank him for. To follow a leader to triumph inspires loyalty, gratitude and affection. Following a leader in retreat inspires no such emotions.
Presidents are not always rewarded for doing what the public says it wants. Sometimes they are rewarded for doing just the opposite. Bill Clinton enjoyed higher approval ratings after intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo, even though majorities of Americans had opposed both interventions before he launched them. Who knows what the public might have thought of Obama had he gone through with his planned attack on Syria last August? As Col. Henry Stimson observed, until a president leads, he can’t expect the people to “voluntarily take the initiative in letting him know whether or not they would follow him if he did take the lead.” Obama’s speech in Europe Wednesday shows that he may understand that the time has come to offer leadership. Whether or not he does in his remaining time in office, perhaps his would-be successors can take note.

sábado, 1 de março de 2014

Ucrania e o duelo geopolitico EUA-Russia: alguem acredita no Obama? (Le Monde)




La Maison Blanche a affirmé que toute intervention militaire russe en Ukraine aurait un « coût », et agité la menace d'une annulation du sommet du G8 à Sotchi en juin.

Ukraine : Obama met la Russie en garde

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Barack Obama le 28 février à Washington.

Il est très inhabituel de voir Barack Obama un vendredi soir dans la salle de presse de la Maison Blanche. Peu après 17 heures, le président américain est venu au podium délivrer une mise en garde à la Russie. Toute intervention militaire en Ukraine aurait un « coût », a-t-il dit.

M. Obama s'est laissé une marge de manœuvre. Il s'est abstenu de confirmer les informations sur la présence de militaires russes en Crimée, ou d'utiliser le terme d'« invasion ». Mais aussitôt après son intervention, la Maison Blanche a agité la menace d'une annulation du sommet du G8 à Sotchi en juin, si la Russie persistait dans son opération.
C'était la première intervention solennelle de M. Obama depuis la chute du président Ianoukovich. Jusque là, le secrétaire d'Etat John Kerry et le secrétaire à ladéfense Chuck Hagel s'étaient chargés d'appeler la Russie à éviter toute« provocation ».
« INTERFÉRENCE PROFONDE »
« J'ai parlé il y a quelques jours avec le président Poutine et mon administration a été en contact quotidien avec les officiels russes, a rappelé M. Obama. Nous avons clairement dit qu'ils peuvent être partie prenante de l'effort de la communauté internationale pour encourager la stabilité et le succès d'une Ukraine unie, ce qui n'est pas seulement dans l'intérêt du peuple d'Ukraine et de la communauté internationale, mais aussi dans l'intérêt de la Russie. »
Se déclarant « profondément préoccupé » par les informations sur « des mouvements militaires » russes en Ukraine, M. Obama a noté que la Russie a « une relation historique avec l'Ukraine », ainsi qu'une base militaire en Crimée.
« Mais toute violation de la souveraineté et de l'intégrité territoriale de l'Ukraine serait profondément déstabilisatrice, ce qui n'est pas dans l'intérêt de l'Ukraine, de la Russie ou de l'Europe. Cela représenterait une interférence profonde dans des sujets qui doivent être déterminés par les Ukrainiens. Cela constituerait une claire violation de l'engagement de la Russie àrespecter l'indépendance, la souveraineté et les frontières de l'Ukraine, ainsi que du droit international ».
Juste après les Jeux olympiques, a-t-il assuré, une telle action « appellerait la condamnation » internationale. « Et les Etats-Unis seront aux côtés de la communauté internationale pour affirmer que toute intervention militaire en Ukraine aura des coûts », a-t-il promis.
Le président a conclu en indiquant que le vice-président Biden s'était entretenu avec le premier ministre ukrainien pour l'assurer du soutien des Etats-Unis et le féliciterpour sa « retenue »« Nous allons continuer à nous coordonner avec nos alliés européens », a-t-il souligné. Et nous tiendrons la presse et les Américains informés. »

LE SOMMET DU G8 DANS LA BALANCE
Après l'intervention, un haut responsable a expliqué à la presse que le président américain pourrait difficilement participer au G8 de Sotchi si les troupes russes avaient effectivement envahi le voisin ukrainien. Ce qui revient à mettre le sommet dans la balance, les autres occidentaux risquant de s'aligner sur la position des Etats-Unis.
La veille encore, les responsables américains excluaient que M. Obama puisseboycotter le tête-à-tête prévu avec M. Poutine en marge du sommet. L'an dernier, il avait déjà annulé l'entretien, à cause de la position russe sur la Syrie. Même pendant la guerre froide, aucun président américain n'a évité les rencontres prévues plusieurs fois de suite.
Le sénateur républicain John McCain a estimé que Vladimir Poutine cherchait à« rebâtir l'empire soviétique » et que Barack Obama a été « un peu naïf » sur les ambitions du président russe. Regrettant que M. Obama n'ait pas été plus précis sur les « coûts » qui pourraient être infligés à Moscou, il a proposé diverses mesures de rétorsion, telles que la reprise du programme de défense anti-missile en République tchèque, annulée devant l'opposition russe, ou l'accélération de l'intégration de laGéorgie dans l'OTAN.
Le sénateur, qui compte parmi les faucons de Washington, a regretté que M. Obama n'ait pas défendu avec plus de vigueur les « valeurs de base » des Etats-Unis. « Poutine a vu ce qui s'est passé en Syrie quand la ligne rouge devient rose », a-t-il grincé.

quarta-feira, 29 de janeiro de 2014

Presidencia imperial de Mr. Obama - resposta republicana ao State ofthe Union

OPINION

Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama

In the nation's history, there is simply no precedent for an American president so wantonly ignoring federal law.

Ted Cruz
The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2014

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
The president's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.
At a White House reception for U.S. mayors, Jan. 23.Reuters
Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: "If you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat" of electoral accountability.
President Obama has a different approach. As he said recently, describing his executive powers: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone." Under the Constitution, that is not the way federal law is supposed to work.
The Obama administration has been so brazen in its attempts to expand federal power that the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Justice Department's efforts to expand federal power nine times since January 2012.
There is no example of lawlessness more egregious than the enforcement—or nonenforcement—of the president's signature policy, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama has repeatedly declared that "it's the law of the land." Yet he has repeatedly violated ObamaCare's statutory text.
The law says that businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will face the employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014. President Obama changed that, granting a one-year waiver to employers. How did he do so? Not by going to Congress to change the text of the law, but through a blog post by an assistant secretary at Treasury announcing the change.
The law says that only Americans who have access to state-run exchanges will be subject to employer penalties and may obtain ObamaCare premium subsidies. This was done to entice the states to create exchanges. But, when 34 states decided not to establish state-run exchanges, the Obama administration announced that the statutory words "established by State" would also mean "established by the federal government."
The law says that members of Congress and their staffs' health coverage must be anObamaCare exchange plan, which would prevent them from receiving their current federal-employee health subsidies, just like millions of Americans who can't receive such benefits. At the behest of Senate Democrats, the Obama administration instead granted a special exemption (deeming "individual" plans to be "group" plans) to members of Congress and their staffs so they could keep their pre-existing health subsidies.
Most strikingly, when over five million Americans found their health insurance plans canceled because ObamaCare made their plans illegal—despite the president's promise "if you like your plan, you can keep it"—President Obama simply held a news conference where he told private insurance companies to disobey the law and issue plans that ObamaCare regulated out of existence.
In other words, rather than go to Congress and try to provide relief to the millions who are hurting because of the "train wreck" of ObamaCare (as one Senate Democrat put it), the president instructed private companies to violate the law and said he would in effect give them a get-out-of-jail-free card—for one year, and one year only. Moreover, in a move reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's looking-glass world, President Obama simultaneously issued a veto threat if Congress passed legislation doing what he was then ordering.
In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking private companies to do the same. As my colleague Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa asked, "This was the law. How can they change the law?"
Similarly, 11 state attorneys general recently wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying that the continuing changes to ObamaCare are "flatly illegal under federal constitutional and statutory law." The attorneys general correctly observed that "the only way to fix this problem-ridden law is to enact changes lawfully: through Congressional action."
In the past, when Republican presidents abused their power, many Republicans—and the press—rightly called them to account. Today many in Congress—and the press—have chosen to give President Obama a pass on his pattern of lawlessness, perhaps letting partisan loyalty to the man supersede their fidelity to the law.
But this should not be a partisan issue. In time, the country will have another president from another party. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unilaterally change the law? Imagine a future president setting aside environmental laws, or tax laws, or labor laws, or tort laws with which he or she disagreed.
That would be wrong—and it is the Obama precedent that is opening the door for future lawlessness. As Montesquieu knew, an imperial presidency threatens the liberty of every citizen. Because when a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.
Mr. Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, serves as the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights.