Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Last FISA Post. Probably.
Based on the lack of comments, it's clear no one but Biche & me feel like talking about this anymore. But in case you think I'm being hysterical, check out what noted constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley thinks about this CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY PERPETRATED RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR FACES BY BOTH PARTIES. And signed off on by Mr. Yes-We-Can (Eliminate your civil liberties and 10% of the Bill of Rights)!
History will look back at this as proof that we as a people have been so anesthetized by comfort that our bought-and-paid-for public representatives don't even need to hide their odious behavior anymore. Idiocracy, here we come!
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UPDATES:
Here's what Senator Russ Feingold - who actually is the man Barack Obama claims to be - has to say:
"The government absolutely must be able to wiretap suspected terrorists to protect our security, and every member of Congress supports that. With this bill, however, for the first time since FISA was adopted 30 years ago, the government would be authorized to collect all communications into and out of the United States without warrants. That means Americans e-mailing relatives abroad or calling business associates overseas could be monitored with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing by anyone. This bill overturns the laws and principles that have governed surveillance for the past 30 years."
and here's Stanford professor and all-around cool cat Lawrence Lessig:
"Policy wonks inside the campaign sputter policy that Obama listens to and follows, again, apparently oblivious to how following that advice, when inconsistent with the positions taken in the past, just reinforces the other side's campaign claim that Obama is just another calculating, unprincipled politician.
The best evidence that they don't get this is Telco Immunity. Obama said he would filibuster a FISA bill with Telco Immunity in it. He has now signaled he won't. When you talk to people close to the campaign about this, they say stuff like: Come on, who really cares about that issue? Does anyone think the left is going to vote for McCain rather than Obama? This was a hard question. We tried to get it right. And anyway, the FISA compromise in the bill was a good one.
The Obama campaign seems just blind to the fact that these flips eat away at the most important asset Obama has. It seems oblivious to the consequence of another election in which (many) Democrats aren't deeply motivated to vote (consequence: the GOP wins)."
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7 comments:
The month in review:
Everyone should carry a gun
Civil liberties are optional
Gas is more than $4/gallon
Cheney tried to destroy the environment
Well, maybe if people vote for someone they have a crush on instead of someone they want to have a beer with things will work out.
The FISA thing certainly does suck, and the government has already been vacuuming up every email and phonecall and analyzing the patterns for several years and had wanted to do since before 9/11 (it's true, I read it somewhere!) and this just codifies the whole thing.
I don't like compromises and I do think this is the wrong call, but ... on the other side we have a guy who just today described exactly how Social Security does and should work and called that an "absolute disgrace."
The damage was done by the current administration, and one of these two guys is running for an 8 year extension of that. That person is McCain.
There are huge, substantial differences between the two people running and the policies they would pursue or allow, and I am not going to walk away over one thing. It's big, but it's not that big.
By no means i am saying we shouldn't care ... but there's also no way a President McCain would roll back any of this nonsense - there still remains a chance Obama could.
So yeah, that's my hope.
What ever happened to actively rejecting the injustices in this country? It's sickening the way we as citizens have allowed things to happen to us over the last 40 years with barely a word in objection: the lack of a response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, wiretapping, etc., to name some of the most recent ones. This stuff just keeps happening day after day and we lay down and take it, so of course they're going to keep taking advantage. Would protests, rallies and devices like that be effective or even be allowed to happen anymore? Maybe not, but at least we would have tried something.
What worries me is that Obama has sold himself as the ultimate change agent, but he seems to be backing down already. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come on other issues. Though McCain won't get my vote, this isn't a confidence booster.
Settling for the lesser of two evils has been a way of life for a while now. Compromise and collaboration is valuable when creating universal health care. But can we compromise on civil liberties? Where are those "living constitution" justices on this issue?
I think the larger issue might be that 9/11 was the nail in the coffin of the 4th amendment. Our fear of attack coupled with the Internet age of limitless information, leaves no room for privacy. As a culture we no longer have an understanding of what the bill of rights can mean (oh , yeah, except for the gun part, we love the gun part).
I'm currently reading a book about Robert Kennedy's campaign in '68, the details of which I knew little about, and it was really striking how much of RFK's very successful campaign and rhetorical playbook (pre-bullet) BO had been borrowing. Until now.
BO is off the reservation right now, and I don't know what will bring him back, given his tack for the last couple weeks.
At this rate, he will single-handedly bring McCain from the far-right back to the mainstream, and ensure that there will be even more legacies of Bush II that outlast his term, no matter who wins.
(ps would HC have voted or spoken differently than BO has if she was the nominee and not just a senator? discuss.
Hillary would have offered to sift through all the communication herself, then invade Iran and Syria before Labor Day.
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