Obama Losing Voters Over FISA Support

Corrupt writes "I've admired Obama, but I never confused him with a genuine progressive leader. Today I don't admire him at all. His collapse on FISA is unforgivable. The only thing Obama has going for him this week is that McCain is matching him misstep for misstep."

Comments

You admire a politician?

[nurb432]

Man, you got more issues then you can even imagine.

Re:You admire a politician?

[voltel]

Man, you got more issues then you can even imagine.

Whatcha smoking? All politicians are honest, it says so right here in "All the government wants you to believe about Politicians". Now, I need to get back to rolling over and wagging my tail for the politicians who are fighting all thems terrorists.

Re:You admire a politician?

[packeteer]

I was under the impression that Obama is not perfect but that he would always admit if he was wrong and quickly qork towards the right direction. I think this will be a big test of him in my eyes. If he never turns around on this issue it means he is clearly as stubborn as the rest. If he can admit he is wrong then hes better than someone who started out agreeing with me more.

Re:You admire a politician?

[zappepcs]

Did you just say that if he screws you over, then says, oops I was wrong... it's ok? Put the crack pipe down! How is he going to fix this is the question, not whether he was wrong or not. wow.

Re:You admire a politician?

[MillionthMonkey]

While I despise them as a group there are a few I like. If you just have a fuzzy blanket hatred for them as a group, you're actually giving each one of them individually a pass- you basically have no opinion of them or their behavior. If your Congressman keeps voting for evil shit, it doesn't matter, because when the election comes you'll hate his opponent too.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Shakrai]

Man, you got more issues then you can even imagine.

You got a +5 for this?

I'm completely disillusioned with Obama right now but that notwithstanding I still don't think you deserved a +5, insightful for that comment. Admiring a politician means you have "issues"?

So I have "issues" if I admire Nelson Mandela?

Re:You admire a politician?

[DaveV1.0]

Unfortunately, the "right" direction depends on one's point of view.

On this issue, both you and "Corrupt" have a point of view that his direction is "wrong" while others believe it is right.

The problem is that, regardless of what you think, you don't get to determine right and wrong for everyone.

Re:You admire a politician?

[dreamchaser]

What gave you that impression in the first place, because he said so? All he's ever done is spout platitudes tailored to his audience. He preached hope and change and far left ideology to win the primaries, now he's taken a hard right turn to try and win the general election. He's Bill Clinton with far less experience, far less gravitas, and a better tan.

Re:You admire a politician?

[BlackCobra43]

What COULD he do? As a Senator, he could only do 3 things;
Vote for amendments eliminating the immunity provision (He did)
Vote against the bill, denying law enforcements precious tools (He didn't)
Vote FOR the bill and bide his time (He did)

Make no mistake, Obama has clearly stated he is against granting the telecoms immunity; there's simply nothing yuo can do when OTHER blue dog democrats with cushy incumbent seats wantto retain their fat lobbyist paychecks and vote with their wallets. rather than their constituent's values, defeating perfectly logical amendments.

Re:You admire a politician?

[The_K4]

Your missing one: He can vote "Present".

Re:You admire a politician?

[AmaDaden]

He did, kinda http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barack-obama/my-position-on-fisa_b_110789.html. He responded to the criticism but still held his stance. Basically it seems that to him it was more important to prevent future abuse then to vote for the power to punish past abuse.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court.

So basically he voted for this to undo things from the bill from last year. If this bill failed a worse one was in the works that the Bush gang would have liked to see get passed. So I'm guessing if Dems started to vote ageist it GOP members (who wanted the worse one) would have voted ageist this one. The dems might have been able to dead lock things but that might have meant that the NSA could continue to do wire taps with out restriction. Personally I'm not at all happy about this but I think he did the best he could and I still think that he will do more to undo the abuse once in office.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Divide By Zero]

What COULD he do? As a Senator, he could only do 3 things;
Vote for amendments eliminating the immunity provision (He did)

Good.

Vote against the bill, denying law enforcements precious tools (He didn't)

"precious tools"? The ability to spy on Americans, in violation of their rights guaranteed by Amendment IV to the United States Constitution? It's not like the requirements to get a FISA warrant (someone with a pulse to stand in front of a secret court and say "gimme" at some point not necessarily before you started spying) were exactly onerous.

Vote FOR the bill and bide his time (He did)

He could have voted AGAINST the bill, knowing full well that it'll pass, but sticking to what he said he'd do, and differentiating himself from his unpopular predecessor and his main competition.

He could have SPOKE against the bill, supporting the filibuster and calling out those members of his Party that were letting people off the hook for committing felonies and letting the Government off the hook for violating the Constitution. He really does speak well, and he chose not to speak here.

The man would not have lost political capital by opposing the least popular President ever (?) and he wouldn't have lost a lot of financial capital because he doesn't need AT&T's money. He could have gained both (for keeping his word) and he failed. This was a losing move for Senator Obama.

Make no mistake, Obama has clearly stated he is against granting the telecoms immunity;

And Bush clearly stated that he was a uniter, not a divider, and that's what counts, right? What a politician SAYS means exactly zero. What he DOES is what counts, and this is what he did. This kind of behavior is what you take to the bank, not a statement.

there's simply nothing yuo can do when OTHER blue dog democrats with cushy incumbent seats wantto retain their fat lobbyist paychecks and vote with their wallets. rather than their constituent's values, defeating perfectly logical amendments.

Sure there is. You can lead. You can say, "No, I won't gut the Constitution. You all can, but I won't." The man is running to be the leader of 300-some million Americans and can't successfully convince 51 Senators to uphold an oath they all took to defend the Constitution.

Obama, today, lost my vote (which will be a write-in, probably Kucinich, because he sticks to what he believes in, he shares beliefs with me, and his wife's got that wood-elf hot thing going), and a hundred bucks that I'll send to the EFF instead. Call it a futile gesture, but I'm doing what I can do.

Re:You admire a politician?

[ArcherB]

I was under the impression that Obama is not perfect but that he would always admit if he was wrong and quickly qork towards the right direction. I think this will be a big test of him in my eyes. If he never turns around on this issue it means he is clearly as stubborn as the rest. If he can admit he is wrong then hes better than someone who started out agreeing with me more.

How do you know that they won't change their views back once elected?

That's the dilemma that politicians face. If they change their views, they are "flip-floppers". If they don't, they are stubborn.

Ignore for a second how you feel about any particular politician and consider this example. Obama is being hammered for changing his views. Bush is hammered for NOT changing his views. They are damned if the do and damned if they don't.

Re:You admire a politician?

[numbsafari]

Unlike McCain... who was not...

Re:You admire a politician?

[MightyMartian]

Ah, I see, so it's all those other Democrat's faults. Obama is just selling out on liberty as a reasonable measure.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Demiansmark]

As I went through the thread, thinking high level thoughts about the nature of politics and my reaction to Obama's vote, I got completely thrown off by your comment... She IS friggin' hott! http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/kucinich%20and%20wife.jpg

Re:You admire a politician?

[jedidiah]

Claiming some morally superior position doesn't mean a damn
thing if you aren't willing to actually act on it.

Obama should have been willing to start the fillibuster himself.
He's supposed to be a leader rather than a follower. This is
true of him just in his role of Senator. Nevermind asking to
be President.

At the very least he should have voted no on the bill and made
a nice speech on CSPAN.

He was given an opportunity to be counted amongst those that are
as he describe himself "not merely a part of the status quo" and
he failed.

Now his "new and progressive and different" rhetoric has been completely "busted".

Re:You admire a politician?

[quantaman]

probably Kucinich, because he sticks to what he believes in, he shares beliefs with me

So you've both seen UFOs?

Re:You admire a politician?

[Bomarc]

Or he could...
... Start making a stink about that fact that these companies violated the law, violated our rights, and now after the fact are looking to get a deal for it.

This morning I heard on the news that one senator (sorry didn't get his name) was holding up that the companies did the "Patriotic" thing by doing what bush had asked for. My response to this: If they were to do the patriotic thing, they would have gone public with the illegal request in the first place.

Perhpas a bunch of them should watch A Few Good Men, "Dawson: We were supposed to fight for the people who couldn't fight for themselves."

Re:You admire a politician?

[soundhack]

Exactly. I couldnt have said it better myself. I didnt like Hillary too much, but with Bill (even the evil petty Bill that seems to have resurfaced) as "co-President" I would have had much more faith on the rebuilding of this country than this frankly all-flash-no-substance Obama. Didn't the country (much less Democrats) learn anything about voting for a cult of personality? Republicans (and Naderites) did for Bush, and look how that turned out

Re:You admire a politician?

[ishpeck]

The man is running to be the leader of 300-some million Americans and can't successfully convince 51 Senators to uphold an oath they all took to defend the Constitution.

He's not going to be the leader of the people. He's going to be the executive authority of the Union. He's going to lead the troops. But he has no direct authority over the law-abiding citizens of the country.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Qzukk]

"precious tools"?

Think Gollum.

Re:You admire a politician?

[MushMouth]

As the presumptive nominee of the majority party, he should have the power to stop any legislation. If not he is the wrong guy for the job. With any pressure by Obama this bill never makes it out of committee.

Re:You admire a politician?

[ishpeck]

Unfortunately, the "right" direction depends on one's point of view.

I'm curious to know how you could believe that a man going back on his word -- breaking an agreement -- is somehow justifiable in anybody's moral code.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Fast Thick Pants]

He's not just a senator anymore -- he's a de facto party leader, and gets as much press as he wants. People will pour over his every word. He could and should have used this opportunity to take a stand against widespread civil rights violations. Most democrats would have followed him, too -- nobody's gonna retract their endorsements at this point.

Instead he made a nominal fuss, then caved to the big money. Typical.

(Precious tools? Please...)

Re:You admire a politician?

[corbettw]

Obama has clearly stated he is against granting the telecoms immunity

He voted for the bill, ergo he favors telecom immunity. Case closed.

As someone once said, you can judge a man more accurately by his actions than his words.

Re:You admire a politician?

[aftk2]

2004 called. It wants its talking points back.

Re:You admire a politician?

[BlackCobra43]

Your ideals are noble but your efforts misguided. Rome wasn't built in one day and the US political system will not change overnight simply because Obama (or ANY politician) suddently decides to rage against the machine. Once elected, Obama can enact REAL change and retroactively remove the immunity if it is even worth it.

I personally don't believe single-issue voters have ever, or WILL ever decide an election and therefore Obama has made a shrewd political move insuring his electability. The Republican propaganda machine THRIVES on perceived fears of terrorism; giving them prime ammunition like "Obama voted against finding terrists!",while the bill is GUARANTEED TO PASS ANYWAY, achieves nothing.

Idealist never achieve anything; the only vote that has lasting effect is from the rooftop. The restis all decided by the leaders-that-be, and solely themselves.

Re:You admire a politician?

[AmaDaden]

Yes. People fail consider a possibility that a politician could be thinking and that the issue is a bit more complex then "i vote for this because i support everything it is about". Just think about how many times at work you have to say things like "well it's not that easy to do it that way..." when someone who does not know what's going on tells you you're doing something wrong. A lot of politicians are crooks and idiots but not all of them.

Re:You admire a politician?

[tmosley]

Or he could filibuster. Just the threat of a filibuster from the Democratic nominee should have been enough to kill the bill in the first place.

He certainly won't be getting my vote. Neither will McCain, though. I refuse to pick between the lesser of two evils. That's why I'm voting Cthulu.

Re:You admire a politician?

[roystgnr]

The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court.

FISA's authority here was already exclusive, as was recently reiterated in a Federal court by a Bush Sr. appointed judge. Obama voted for a meaningless provision. "I'll help you get away with doing something illegal this time, if you'll let me make it double-illegal for next time!" is not a compromise, it is idiocy. The only remaining question is whether Obama was dumb enough to believe this argument himself or just dishonest enough to try to trick his supporters into believing it.

My sympathies for those of you voting in swing states. Helping choose between John "I'd like to shred the Fourth Amendment" McCain and Barack "I'll shred the Fourth Amendment, but I'll feel sad about it" Obama is probably still important, but it can't be very fun.

Re:You admire a politician?

[roystgnr]

Obama is being hammered for changing his views. Bush is hammered for NOT changing his views.

Why do you think that's inconsistent? Perhaps what matters isn't whether they change their views or not, but what those specific views are and whether or not new information warranted changing them.

Re:You admire a politician?

[DoctorFrog]

Actually Kucinich made it clear that he was saying the same thing you did - it was an Object, Flying, Unidentified. He was then asked "What do you think it was?" and replied "I have no idea."

However, he has an in-law who's a fairly successful (in the sense of 'profit-making') astrologer, and she whomped it up horribly, going on about how he felt a great sense of peace and all the usual woo-woo.

Guess which version the media keeps harping on?

Re:You admire a politician?

[imipak]

Far left ideology? Man you Americans have some strange ideas about what left-wing ideology means. "hard left" where I live would mean slashing military expenditure to perhaps 5% of the current levels, instituting proper free healthcare everywhere, proper free education everywhere,.. actually HARD left would mean making private education illegal. Try googling "socialist workers party" for some hints at what "hard left" really means.

Re:You admire a politician?

[bsDaemon]

Nelson Mandela blew up government buildings under direction of the Soviet-backed African National Congress. Whether he did it for the right reason or not, is not the point. The point is that he used violence to affect political outcome. That makes him a terrorist.

Obama is not, as far as I can tell, a terrorist. He's just a politician - and that means saying and doing whatever is convenient at the time. It's the same now as it always was.

History has provided, from time to time, true statesmen - but they are are far and few between - and their status is usually guaranteed or denied to to political considerations at the time.

David Ben Gurion was a terrorist who blew up buildings and assassinated British soldiers and officers, yet he's the hero of Israeli independence. Michael Collins was the same for Ireland, and you have your Nelson Mandela.

Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist who blew up a government building hoping to start a revolution. Instead of an honourary doctorate and a country, he got executed. Everyone likes to admire a winner; only "fanatics" and "extremists" admire losers who use the same tactics.

Either way, trying to compare Obama to Nelson Mandela has got to be some sort of corollary to Godwin.

Re:You admire a politician?

[quantaman]

You've never seen something you couldn't identify? Whatever.

Of course I have.

The difference is I just didn't assume that just because I didn't know what it was that it must be intelligent life from another planet.

I have no idea what Kusinich saw, or thought he saw, but I'm pretty damn sure that he isn't one of countless people who've all seen real UFOs but have all been so spectacularly unlucky as to come away with no evidence.

That being said it's a mostly harmless belief, but it is almost certainly an unsound belief and its very existence suggests his decision making process isn't quite sound.

I used to be willing to believe that religion was also a mostly harmless belief, then I started to see how that belief caused some people to make very unsound decisions. Just look at Bush to see how bad that unsound basis can be in practice.

I don't know enough about Kusinich to know if he's one of "the best of the worst", but I consider the belief in UFOs to indicate a real vulnerability in his decision making process.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Shakrai]

The point is that he used violence to affect political outcome. That makes him a terrorist.

That definition also makes George Washington a terrorist.

Nelson Mandela blew up government buildings under direction of the Soviet-backed African National Congress.

I don't have a major problem with blowing up government buildings during a struggle for independence. I do have a bit of a problem with groups that blow up women and children in pizzerias -- we managed to win our independence without doing it -- but I'll stand by my earlier comments regarding the balance of ones accomplishments. Do the balance of Maldela's accomplishments outweigh the negatives? Most people would say that they do.

Either way, trying to compare Obama to Nelson Mandela has got to be some sort of corollary to Godwin.

Exactly where did I compare Obama to Nelson Mandela?

Re:You admire a politician?

[meringuoid]

far left ideology

Obama favoured the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange? Wholesale nationalisation of all industries? A centrally planned economy?

Or did he just favour adding a few half-arsed social safeguards to make corporate capitalism slightly more bearable for the workers?

Re:You admire a politician?

[AmaDaden]

Barack "I'll shred the Fourth Amendment, but I'll feel sad about it" Obama

You have the right to your opinion and considering what happened I can't say that I blame you for seeing him this way but consider this. He KNEW 20,000+ supporters HATED the idea of him voting yes on this. Additionally those supporters are his strong base that have been a hallmark of his campaign compared to, not just to other candidates this year, but in the past several elections. He changed his mind (flip-floping that McCain is all ready calling him out on) on an issue that his core wanted him to keep. If he was looking for votes with this move any idiot could tell you it was a bad plan. People are clamming he is pulling this because he is "just as bad as Bush/McCain". If that was true he would not have worked so hard to get the immunity in out of there in the first place. So logically I can't see any reason for him to have done this other then he thought it was the best course of action for us. If he is right or not is different story.

Re:You admire a politician?

[roystgnr]

Once elected, Obama can enact REAL change and retroactively remove the immunity if it is even worth it.

Wow, it's as if the Republicans' fantasies about unlimited executive power and the Democrats' fantasies about Obama's goodness had a baby. A baby with fetal alcohol syndrome, who will never even be able to comprehend the SchoolHouse Rock version of "how a bill becomes a law"...

therefore Obama has made a shrewd political move insuring his electability.

Absolutely. He was against telecom immunity before he voted for it. There's no way the Republicans will ever be able to use that against him. He's nearly as electable as John Kerry, now!

The Republican propaganda machine THRIVES on perceived fears of terrorism; giving them prime ammunition like "Obama voted against finding terrists!"

That could have been awful. Instead they're now stuck with second-rate ammunition like "Obama voted against the Protect America Act for finding terrists, but caved after we courageous Republicans showed him who was boss!"

Idealist never achieve anything

The Bill of Rights looks pretty idealistic. Just because it'll be completely dismantled in the end doesn't mean it wasn't a very good achievement for a very long time.

Re:You admire a politician?

[RAMMS EIN]

``It's not like the requirements to get a FISA warrant (someone with a pulse to stand in front of a secret court and say "gimme" at some point not necessarily before you started spying) were exactly onerous.''

And that's the problem we have gotten into since 9/11. We _had_ laws and mechanisms in place to get the Bad Guys. Now, we have let governments grant themselves the power and the legitimacy to go after everyone.

Re:You admire a politician?

[quanticle]

Basically it seems that to him it was more important to prevent future abuse then to vote for the power to punish past abuse.

Which would make sense, if this bill actually had measures to prevent future abuse. However, all this bill does is loosen restrictions and increase loopholes, making it more difficult to find and prosecute future abuse.

Re:You admire a politician?

[swillden]

Far left ideology? Man you Americans have some strange ideas about what left-wing ideology means. "hard left" where I live would mean slashing military expenditure to perhaps 5% of the current levels, instituting proper free healthcare everywhere, proper free education everywhere,.. actually HARD left would mean making private education illegal. Try googling "socialist workers party" for some hints at what "hard left" really means.

So how would you characterize a platform that slashes military spending to perhaps 1% of current levels; gets the government completely out of health care (Medicaid has arguably been a major source of the problems that exist); gets the federal government completely out of education, and encourages states to offer vouchers/grants for use at accredited schools (primary through post-secondary); legalizes drugs and regulates them similar to alcohol; and phases out social security, housing subsidies, etc., encouraging states to pick up those issues in the way they see fit?

Oh, and after balancing the budget and erasing the deficit, slashes taxes because all that money is no longer needed for military, welfare and education spending.

The lousy thing about the left/right continuum is that both ends are heavily statist. There's no room in it for those of us who love freedom and independence.

Re:You admire a politician?

[The Master Control P]

Goddamnit, there were no fucking "precious tools" that would be denied without this bill. If you can't get the rubber stamp of the FISA court to approve your warrant, you've got less than nothing.

This is 100% about covering up the most massive, vicious, and egregious violation of the fourth amendment in the history of this nation. It has absolutely fucking nothing to do with surveilling terrorists.

Re:You admire a politician?

[Free the Cowards]

So logically I can't see any reason for him to have done this other then he thought it was the best course of action for us. If he is right or not is different story.

Most politicians think that they're taking the best course of action for us. Bush thinks so. Clinton thought so. Bush's daddy thought so, Reagan thought so, and so on down the line. I really don't give a crap about this, because they all have it. You can bet your ass that McCain will do what he thinks is best for us, and Obama will do what he thinks is best for us.

I don't want a President who will do what he thinks is best for the country. I want a President who will do what I think is right.

Re:You admire a politician?

[hairyfeet]

You have part of it right,in that it's about perception. The problem Obama has is the perception that he is turning into a giant waffling black Hillary. The reason everyone hated Hillary was she would say whatever you wanted to hear,while her actions went where the money was. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Obama keeps up this waffling crap that we'll have President McSame and another 8 years in Iraq.

And for the above poster who complained about someone voting 3rd party? If someone with a little charisma would run 3rd party,Like Jessie Ventura or Ron Paul,then we might actually get some decent competition. But as long as we have dems VS repubs you're going to get "rich corporate ass kisser" A or B. I am personally proud that my vote helped elect some green party candidates in my home state. Now we just need someone better than Bob Barr to run as a 3rd party candidate.. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:You admire a politician?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

> How about vote to uphold the Consitution and the 4th Amendment:

Oh really. Please explain how wiretaps that cross international borders possibly violates the 4th? International mail has been searchable since forever and we tapped the hell out of international cables in WWII and even during the Cold War. There is a big difference between police activity and intelligence. No I don't think intelligence info should be (and generally isn't) admissable in court because spys ignore most of the safeguards to prevent tyranny but intelligence gathering isn't about arresting citizens.

First I don't see any such restriction on the 4th. Second they aren't just wiretaping international calls, they've been wiretapping everything they want to, domestic and international. They why the needed to grant the telcos immunity; its illegal.

Re:You admire a politician?

[WindowlessView]

Once elected, Obama can enact REAL change and retroactively remove the immunity if it is even worth it.

Sure, just like a Democrat controlled Congress was going to end the war, stand up to Bush, etc. That's the problem with the philosophy of doing all the safe things to gain power. Once you gain it, you still play it safe (or safer) to retain it. It becomes habit forming. It is Karma whoring writ large.

The Republican propaganda machine THRIVES on perceived fears of terrorism; giving them prime ammunition like "Obama voted against finding terrists!",while the bill is GUARANTEED TO PASS ANYWAY, achieves nothing.

It achieves the goal of showing that he is willing to lead. It gives him the opportunity to use those vaunted powers of persuasive speech everyone claims he has. It gives him the opportunity to show he can persuade the people rather than a bare majority of the congress on an issue. Persuasive argumentation versus back alley deals. How novel would that be?

Who supports FISA?

[seanadams.com]

Are there any American citizens (who understand what FISA is) that actually support it? I would think that even the right should be against it. If conservatives want to restore traditional American values, then surely preventing the government from using new technology to conduct widespread domestic spying is conducive to that goal.

With both congress and the president's approval rating hovering at below 20%, it is clear that the will of the people is not being represented. The only plausible explanation for FISA is that it is intended an means for the executive branch to seize an even greater imbalance of power, and/or to cover up widespread criminal activity that took place in the last eight years.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[martinw89]

Yes, and in the true sense of "conservative," one would want to LIMIT the power of the government. But the problem is that "conservative" today is a way to masquerade as someone one's not.

And don't get me started on the other side of the pond; they're just playing like they're fighting the bad politics.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[nomadic]

Are there any American citizens (who understand what FISA is) that actually support it? I would think that even the right should be against it. If conservatives want to restore traditional American values, then surely preventing the government from using new technology to conduct widespread domestic spying is conducive to that goal.

The right has this weird shifting thing going on. When they're in power the government is always right, and law enforcement should be able to do anything it needs to do. When they're not in power the government is eeeeevil, and law enforcement is made up of "jackbooted thugs."

Re:Who supports FISA?

[SputnikPanic]

Today's Republicans are not conservative, plain and simple. They're as "big government" as the Dems, the only difference is the flavor of said big government. I used to say that I leaned Republican and some issues, but now that's no longer accurate. I lean conservative on some issues, including this infuriating FISA bill.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Nimey]

Apparently so. Every time I see this discussed online, there are people who say things like "the telecoms shouldn't be punished for doing as the government asked", ignoring the illegality, that Qwest didn't go along, etc.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[qbzzt]

Are there any American citizens (who understand what FISA is) that actually support it?

You mean, outside of the congresspeople who voted for it, the telecom executives who authorized co-operation with the government in the first place, and the intelligence agents who ran the thing?

Probably people who think this is a crime committed to prevent a greater crime, a second terrorist attack on the US. You can argue this is not true, or that the cost wasn't worth it. But do you honesty think that people who believe this appeared necessary do not exist?

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Notquitecajun]

Here's what I, as a conservative, support. FISA may reach a bit too far:

1. National security is the realm of the Commander-in-Chief - NOT congress, and broad military issues should be left with strong leadership, not with bureaucracy. We don't need warrants against spies and those doing war against us.
2. International terrorism is primarily a military - NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT - matter. Its roots are in a conflict against governments and people as a whole, not against individuals, thus putting it in the realm of the military.
3. Communications of internationals, like it or not, are NOT covered by the US Constitution. Anything that travels across borders has ALWAYS been an open book to ALL countries. Most/all communications travel in this manner now...even when one international calls another, it can travel through US systems. We DON'T need a warrant to listen to that.

All this being said, we DON'T need to be listening to people who aren't on watch lists and the like. However, the military needs to do its job with as few roadblocks as possible.

We also need to protect US citizens' rights as guaranteed by the Constitution when they are not - nor intending to commit - acts of terrorism (or crimes, for that matter). We were dealing with a weird red-tape issue, and an administration that may have taken a step or two too far - allegedly, may I remind everyone, because we really don't know who they were or weren't listening to - in their zeal to fight terrorism. We forget that the current administration can have one of two interpretations - the whole "blood for oil" argument, but there are also MANY actions of this administration which have been zealously adamant about defending from international terrorism, with many mistakes, big and small, made along the way to achieve that goal.

Sorry, bit of a rant and rather a rough draft, but I wanted it to be said...

Re:Who supports FISA?

[QuantumRiff]

My parents were big time republicans, my dad was in the leadership for his city's republican party. They would always talk about how the government needs it, and the president wouldn't do anything bad, etc.. I would always ask (this was over a year ago) if they were then OK with Hillary Clinton having those abilities, (man do those republicans hate her!) and they would get really, really mad. I think it finaly sunk in to them that they can't trust one person to follow the laws we have created, but everyone from that day on. Seems to have really changed their opinions on the matter. (My dad even became gung-ho for Ron Paul!)

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Nutria]

2. International terrorism is primarily a military - NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT - matter. Its roots are in a conflict against governments and people as a whole, not against individuals, thus putting it in the realm of the military.

This I've got to partly disagree with, since GWOT needs a lot of detective work, and also a lot of spy work. The DIA would need to be greatly expanded, poaching in on the CIA's turf, and needing to learn investigative techniques from the FBI.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[rockout]

The problem is not who supports FISA or what FISA really means to the average American; the problem for Obama is one of perception.

If he votes against this bill, he loses far more votes in the middle of America (both the literal and political middle) than he's going to lose from the left (and the coasts) by voting FOR the bill. That doesn't excuse his vote for it, and I wish he had voted against it, but giving McCain and the right an easy attack point ("Look! He's soft on the terrerrsts!") probably isn't something he can afford at this point.

Sadly, the best we can hope for is change after he's actually elected president, because being perceived as soft on terror while he's running for president may actually cost him that position.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[morgan_greywolf]

Today's Republicans are not conservative, plain and simple. They're as "big government" as the Dems

• That's why I prefer the terms statist and non-statist. You either want a big government intervention or you don't.
• Democrats want the government to redistribute the wealth from the rich to the poor.
• Republicans want the government to redistribute the wealth from the poor to the rich.
• Democrats want the government to censor the politically incorrect.
• Republicans want the government to censor anything 'immoral' or 'indecent'.
• Democrats want a mommy state.
• Republicans want a theocracy.

Take your pick.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Shakrai]

I support the FISA amendment. It's a good compromise. Read the thing before judging.

Obama's own statement explaining why he supports it suggests otherwise:

"I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses."

Indeed. We've now set a precedent for the Executive Branch to violate the law and not be held to account. Nobody is going to be held accountable for past violations of FISA -- not the current administration, not the telecommunications companies, not the intelligence agencies, nobody. Given all that I'd really like to hear Obama explain why future administrations are going to follow the restrictions contained in this FISA bill?

This is a dark day.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[dreamchaser]

Don't confuse the right with Republicans. They aren't conservatives and haven't been for a long time now.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[TheGratefulNet]

republicans are democrats that 'got religion'.

nothing more.

I'll still always oppose the modern republicans. but I'm not so much a fan of the dems, right now, either.

come november, I'm staying home. I'm following george carlin's advice...

Re:Who supports FISA?

[OwnedByTwoCats]

National security is the realm of the Commander-in-Chief - NOT congress, and broad military issues should be left with strong leadership, not with bureaucracy.

Which is why the framers of the constitution left declaration of war to the House of Representatives. And approving treaties to the Senate.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Hatta]

Careful there. When you say FISA, I think you mean "the emasculation of FISA". Until yesterday FISA was supposed to provide judicial oversight of all domestic surveillance. This is what most Americans want. After yesterday, I don't know what FISA's supposed to do anymore.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[pla]

Every time I see this discussed online, there are people who say things like "the telecoms shouldn't be punished for doing as the government asked", ignoring the illegality, that Qwest didn't go along, etc.

Funny, that.

Most small-scale human-committed crimes occur either spontaneously or out of necessity. Killing a cheating spouse, stealing to make a living, downloading Chinese Democracy, that sort of thing. Harsh punishments thus do not act as a deterrent to such crime. Simple as that. People either do not consider the consequences before hand, or decide the benefits outweigh the risks.

Now here, with the telecoms, we have a situation where harsh punishment would very much deter similar future cooperation with illegal requests from the government... And yet, as far as I can tell, that seems like exactly the reason our congresscritters don't want to punish them? Because it might make them actually obey (or at least think twice about) the law next time a black helecopter lands in the CEO's back yard?

Sick.


I have to agree with the FP on this one... I weakly supported Obama as not too offensive to most of my views. I feel rather strongly on this issue, however, and his vote in this situations has reduced him from "passable" to the all-too-common "lesser of two evils".

Re:Who supports FISA?

[drmerope]

I would think that even the right should be against it. If conservatives want to restore traditional American values, then surely preventing the government from using new technology to conduct widespread domestic spying is conducive to that goal.

Apparently you do not understand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

This roe over domestic spying is a smear no more fair or accurate that the swift boat campaign against Kerry. It simply is not a true characterization of the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP). The whole idea behind TSP is that NSA intercepts communications over US based fiber infrastructure originating at foreign sources. Any intercepts of US persons are accidents and discarded. Further, no evidence accidentally collected on a US person may be used in court, nor may it be communicated to any officer of government investigating any crime but terrorism.

Calling this domestic spying does severe semantic damage to our language, and THAT is a danger to our freedom. Newspeak people.

FISA's role in this endeavor is whether TSP requires court orders preceding each and every intercept. The FISA courts cannot authorized "domestic spying". There is not a domestic spying component to these programs.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Wrath0fb0b]

While I strongly object to the telecom immunity provisions, I support the substantive amendments to FISA regarding the wiretapping provisions. Of course, I would certainly vote against the bill as-is.

The rationale for amending the substantive provisions of FISA is pretty straightforward: the original statute had a bug where purely international communications passing through the US could not be bugged on US soil without a warrant, but if you tapped the very same cable in int'l waters, it was legal. This distinction makes no sense whatsoever -- the location of the wiretapping equipment should not be relevant.

Secondly, neither the original FISA nor any other provision of law ever prohibited interception of a foreign to foreign phone call, even if the physical interception happens on US soil. That same foreign-to-foreign communication would require a warrant, however, if it was written in a email that was retrieved from storage inside the US. Again, a distinction that makes no sense -- the mode of communication ought not to be relevant.

Thirdly, the new bill still provides that a court order is necessary if a target is inside the country OR a US citizen. In fact, the old FISA did not require a warrant to target an American citizen outside the country, whereas the new bill does -- an expansion of protection for our citizens traveling abroad.

If anyone wants to show me any provision of this bill that provides for the warrant-less wiretapping of American citizens, I'd be glad to see it. Until then, that characterization is unfounded. See the analysis at Balkinization (who opposes the reforms, btw, so you can't accuse me of getting information from a friendly source!): http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/06/guide-to-new-fisa-bill-part-iii.html

Of course, it's utterly contemptible that Pres. Bush didn't go to Congress in 2001 and get the law fixed instead of just ignoring it. That fact, however, is strictly independent of the merits of the reforms. Simply pursuing a goal illegally (immorally and in unbelievable disregard for the rule of law) does not actually materially change the merits of the goal itself.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[martinw89]

And that's exactly my point. Politicians are striving for "looks" rather than the best interest of our country on both sides. In the primaries, when looks were not influenced by the political right as much, Jeremiah Wright suddenly became a problem for Obama. But Barack didn't do the best for his "looks" at first, he went to great lengths to not personally attack Wright. Anybody remember his speech? That speech inspired me a great deal; in fact a little of that hope caught on with me.

But now I see that Obama is not going to hold press conferences on important matters and deliver well written speeches. His biggest group of supporters did not want him to sign this bill yet it seems that his campaign put more thought into a crazy mega church preacher than our government spying on us. To them, it was a simple logical decision. This can be soft on terror, so don't do it. Yes Obama made that small attempt at amending the bill, but there was no big speech, there was no hope. It was literally "I'll try, but don't expect much. Sorry guys."

Re:Who supports FISA?

[truthsearch]

We were dealing with a weird red-tape issue

You call it red tape. I call it my constitutionally protected rights. And that's why most people here will disagree with you.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Undertaker43017]

You mean like since Lincoln? Oh wait, that was the "birth" of the current Republican party (not to be confused with Jeffersonian Republican's, who actually where for small government)

Lincoln Republican's are just left over Whigs, who were left over Federalists, and we all know what they stood for, just read a little about Mr. Hamilton's beliefs, if you aren't familiar.

At best, current Republican's are just for smaller government in comparison to nanny-state Democrats, which isn't saying much.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Snocone]

Yes, and in the true sense of "conservative," one would want to LIMIT the power of the government.

You misunderstand "conservative". The true sense of "conservative", and the only one it should retain for political discourse to have any objective meaning whatsoever, is to avoid change. Thus it is correct to label as "conservative" those who defended absolute monarchy against its removal, and those who defended the Communist Party of the USSR against its removal, although both of those are as far from limited power as one could imagine.

And, indeed, a great deal of the positions referred to as "liberal" in current U.S. political discourse are, in fact, conservative. A misunderstanding helped not in the slightest by the universal usage of "conservative" as a synonym for "evil" by those self-identifying as "liberal". And vice versa, of course.

Limiting the power of the government is most correctly -- or at least, most understandably -- referred to these days as a "libertarian" policy. This is also referred to as "classical liberal", to distinguish the original philosophy referred to as "liberal" from its current meaning, which it seems in the vast majority of cases works out to "utterly totalitarian, but in service of ends we feel are good, namely stomping out any disparity among individuals".

Re:Who supports FISA?

[fredrated]

"broad military issues should be left with strong leadership, not with bureaucracy"

          The founding fathers said congress declares war, not the president

"International terrorism is primarily a military - NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT - matter"

          As another has said, this requires investigation, not a military strong point

"We don't need warrants against spies"

          funny, the Constitution says nothing about exceptions for spies

"Communications of internationals, like it or not, are NOT covered by the US Constitution"

          sure it is, where it says we are not to be survailed without a warrent.

Why do you hate Americas freedoms?

Re:Who supports FISA?

[pla]

Take your pick

Okay, how about "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary..."?

Re:Who supports FISA?

[hey!]

I support FISA, but not the amendments made this year.

I support FISA becuase it's better to be realistic about what we're going to do in a situation and have rules governing that situation, than to pretend we're going to do something different and then make up the rules as we go along.

The Fourth Amendment, if you read it carefully, doesn't actually require searches to have warrants. It requires them to be reasonable. It also requires warrants to be issued by probable cause. This doesn't mean searches without warrants are automatically unreasonable. Common sense shows there are lots of situations where the police search without warrants that are reasonable and constitutional. Nobody objects to a SWAT team entering a private building if there is a sniper there.

It's the borderline cases that we have to watch; that's where civil liberties are nibbled away.

FISA is a critical law because it defines how the border between legal and illegal will be policed. It basically says, OK do what you have to in a hot pursuit situation, but be prepared to justify your actions afterwards in a court of law. FISA, in its original form, unlike the amendments passed this year, doesn't fundamentally alter the boundary between legal and illegal searches. It creates an accountability mechanism that allows legal searches to proceed unhindered while preventing the government slipping in a few illegal searches among them without somebody noticing.

The problem with the FISA amendments is that they create a de facto shift in what is allowable, not a de jure one. It's basically a license to break the law.

Almost all the ills of democratic government come from hiding the illegitimate with the legitimate, and then obscuring the two. You take your pork barrel favors for your friends and hide them in a bill everybody needs to pass. You take your political black bag jobs and mix them in with counter-terrorism. Even the PATRIOT Act has a lot of reasonable and important provisions in it. It's just that if you want to make democracy the tool of your private interests, you never let a piece of medicine go without carrying along its share of poison.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[King_TJ]

Quite so!

I've been saying the same for years now, but it's finally starting to become so blatantly obvious, people are starting to agree with me who I never thought would "see the light".

(One of my former co-workers, for example, emailed me recently, commenting about the old "political debates we used to get into during happy hour get-togethers". He used to be a strong Democrat/Liberal. He said after reading Ron Paul's book and keeping up with what's going on in politics lately, he simply wishes "he kept his mouth shut" back then.)

Right now, it's almost immaterial if we get a Republican or Democrat elected. Both parties are on course to dismantle our Constitution and build an authoritarian government that co-operates more "in step" with other nations of the world.

Will we really become the "American Union", merged with Canada and Mexico? I don't know ... but big changes of a similar magnitude loom on the horizon. National ID cards? Check! Unlimited federal govt. power to spy at will? Check! Special highway to deliver goods from Mexico to Canada, non-stop, through the U.S., yet not even U.S. owned? Check! Experiments at the state level with laws designed to force citizens to spy on each other or face criminal charges? Check! (See Texas and the new requirement you hold a Private Investigator's license and Criminal Justice degree to be a COMPUTER TECH!) See still more removal of individual freedoms at the state level to bring us closer to accepting a "police state"; EG. Austin, TX now allowing officers to FORCIBLY draw blood samples from anyone suspected of a DUI. Check!

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Notquitecajun]

Congress declares war, but does NOT direct the military and tell it how to do its job. They have one power - that's it.

The military is perfectly capable of investigation (CIA is semi-military, mind you, and cooperates highly with military - they're not strictly under a civilian umbrella).

I believe that, even during times of the founders, spies were often..dealt with. "Rights" have always been - in many countries - respected as long as the rules of civilized society were dealt with. Spies operate outside of those rules. Terrorists even moreso (Geneva conventions don't protect combatants not wearing uniforms, I believe). Terrorists abrogate rights by deliberately targeting known civilian populations - a position typically held in the Western world, and I believe upheld in Geneva.

Yeah, I thouroughly despise my right to free speech, press, religion, bear arms, voting. Hate 'em all.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[SputnikPanic]

I was at Monticello very recently, and I saw Jefferson's grave. If I had listened closely, I probably would have heard sounds of rotational movement emanating...

Re:Who supports FISA?

[DeadCatX2]

1. National security is the realm of the Commander-in-Chief - NOT congress, and broad military issues should be left with strong leadership, not with bureaucracy. We don't need warrants against spies and those doing war against us.

The legislature is supposed to write laws, and the executive is supposed to enforce them. For instance, if the Congress passes a law saying that President Bush cannot torture people (such as treaties like the Geneva Conventions or the Convention Against Torture), President Bush is required to enforce that law (specifically, the War Crimes Act of 1996).

The Congress should not tell the President what to do, but rather what cannot be done. Reasonably, I think you would agree with this.

Further, I would imagine that if the administration said "so and so is a spy", a warrant would be given in short order, so I do not see a warrant as an excessive burden of proof, especially given the extensive intelligence abuses of the 50s and 60s.

2. International terrorism is primarily a military - NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT - matter. Its roots are in a conflict against governments and people as a whole, not against individuals, thus putting it in the realm of the military.

I agree with this entirely. Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act removed the barrier between foreign intelligence and law enforcement, allowing evidence obtained from FISA warrants (or the lack thereof) to be used by the FBI. I think this sets a dangerous precedent whereby a future President could potentially have the FBI criminally prosecute someone for acts unrelated to terrorism that were uncovered co-incident with investigation into "terrorism".

3. Communications of internationals, like it or not, are NOT covered by the US Constitution. Anything that travels across borders has ALWAYS been an open book to ALL countries. Most/all communications travel in this manner now...even when one international calls another, it can travel through US systems. We DON'T need a warrant to listen to that.

You're exactly right, we don't need a warrant to listen in on communications between foreign entities. In fact, we never have. 50 USC Section 1802(a)(1) authorizes the Attorney General to eavesdrop on foreign-to-foreign communications without a court order.

We were dealing with a weird red-tape issue, and an administration that may have taken a step or two too far - allegedly, may I remind everyone, because we really don't know who they were or weren't listening to

Right, this is why John Ashcroft (when he was Attorney General), James Comey, and a significant amount of the top echelon of the DOJ were about to resign en masse during the Intensive Care Showdown on March 11, 2004.

What would make hardcore GWOT supporters threaten to resign over a program that was still not public at the time? One must wonder how horrific a violation of the law must be to motivate such dedicated followers to such extreme ends.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[jedidiah]

Bullsh*t.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for Obama to use
those keen public speaking skills and strike at the heart of
a matter very fundemental to notions of American Liberty and
fidelity. He could EASILY wrap the whole thing up in the sort
of rhetoric that a Kansas wheat farmer would just eat up.

He can merely choose to pander to all of our positive myths
about ourselves and our country rather than mongering fear.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[DeadCatX2]

I did read some of the bill...

Like the part where warrants are no longer given out for targets, but for programs. An entirely new class of warrant unprecedented in American history...that's a good compromise alright.

Immunizing people who broke a law that was written specifically for them to follow after the intelligence abuses of the 50s and 60s. Excellent compromise.

Like the exclusivity provision, that was already present in the previous FISA. Recall that Chief Judge Vaughn Walker has said FISA is and always has been the exclusive means of conducting foreign intelligence surveillance.

Like the Inspector General report, which is an example of the Executive branch investigating the Executive branch. Besides for that, they lack subpoena power.

Like the Bingaman amendment that would have actually been a real compromise, except that it stood no chance of being attached.

Like Sen. Bond said, "I think the White House got a better deal than they even they had hoped to get". Meanwhile, over 20,000 people assemble in about a week on Obama's own social networking site to protest his support, and my senator's voice mail box was full repeatedly (likely with complaints).

Oh, yes, this is the definition of compromise...one side gives up everything to the other side.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Free the Cowards]

Any candidate who bases his vote entirely on what he can "afford" is a candidate who will not be getting my vote in November.

I voted for Obama in the primary. I was planning to vote for him in November. Not anymore! As far as I'm concerned they can both go screw themselves.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[rthille]

The time when it is _most_ important to follow the law is when the Government is telling you to break it. If the government is breaking the law, then who will stand up for the law if not the citizens?

Re:Who supports FISA?

[Free the Cowards]

People who deliberately wage war against civilian populations typically aren't afforded protections in civilized societies.

Bullshit. Any civilized society will give such people the same protections as any other criminal. Look at the lone 9/11 hijacker who was captured. He wasn't tortured, or torn limb-from-limb, or thrown in jail without a trial. No, he was put on trial and convicted in a court of law just like any other criminal.

Criminals lose several rights as well (felons can't vote in the US).

The Constitution never says that the right to vote is to be universal. It lists many conditions which cannot be used to determine eligibility to vote, such as race, sex, age if at least 18 years old, failure to pay poll tax, etc. Nowhere does it say that criminals must be allowed to vote, and so this is allowed.

Conversely, nowhere in the bill of rights does it say that any of those rights are to be removed from criminals, so they still apply.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[cching]

But the President must call the shots *with respect to the law*. The President doesn't have carte blanche to ignore the law just because he's the Commander-in-Chief of the *military*. Some people seem to be confused and think that "Commander-in-Chief" applies to citizens. It does not.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[baffled]

but giving McCain and the right an easy attack point ("Look! He's soft on the terrerrsts!") probably isn't something he can afford at this point.

Have you ever seen Obama speak? Surely he can afford the opportunity to remind the public there are limits to what liberties we sacrifice in the name of security. It rather seems his actions are reflective of his position.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[quanticle]

The religious right isn't running the Republican party

I disagree. I think the religious right has far more influence now than it did in Reagan's era. Their consistent support, combined with their ability to turn out the vote on election day was a significant factor in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, increasing their influence considerably. This influence was solidified by their alliance with the neo-conservatives over the war in Iraq.

kooks on the far left are running the Democrat party.

Again, I beg to differ. The Democratic party of today is far more centrist, both on economic and social matters than it was before. Today, more than ever, you see Democrats that are questioning of issues that, in the past, would have been core Democratic principles. Issues like corporate tax breaks, pro-choice abortion stances, and affirmative action, to name a few.

The way I see it, its the Republican party that has become more extremist, while the Democrats have moderated many of their opinions.

Re:Who supports FISA?

[31415926535897]

If we have to put up with this kind of government, then maybe we can slap a few magnets on the founding fathers and take care of our energy crisis...

Re:Who supports FISA?

[reactionary]

Of course the "conservative" political label does and should not mean "opposing all change". This is a trite summary. It is true that both "conservative" and "liberal" mean something different than they used to and that their connotations in the US differ greatly than in Britain. It's true also that they have been polymorphed but that doesn't mean that they now should be reduced to their dictionary meanings. They're is more depth and history there that you're missing.

I do agree with the poster that we need some way to overhaul the political language. The Left is embracing the term "progressive" once more and maybe that will avoid the "classical-liberal" vis-a-vis "neo-liberal" confusion. "Neo-con" seems a fashionable way to label someone a crazy interventionist hawk (I disagree with that outlook mind you).

Bills

[pclinger]

When you vote for a bill you don't get to pick and choose what sections you are voting for. It's all or nothing.

Obama voted for an amendment which would remove the telecom immunity provision of the bill, but it didn't pass. So instead of voting to take a way a tool in our war on terror, he voted for the bill as a whole.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/07/10/MN3H11ME7C.DTL

As his campaign manager said:

Sen. Obama has said before that the compromise bill is not perfect. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, Sen. Obama chose to support the FISA compromise."

Opponents, including Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., argued that a legal exemption is at best premature, because details of the wiretapping program are not yet fully known. But a Dodd amendment that would have stripped out the immunity title received just 32 votes, all of them from Democrats, including Obama, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt.

Re:Bills

[BloodyIron]

"Our war on terror"? Don't you mean "Your government's blatant war profiteering, uncalled for war, and eventual enslavement of the general populous through degraded civil rights?" It's not your war, it's their war.

Or, did you actually want to go out of your way to start shit in the middle east, earn your government millions (probably actually billions) as well as their companies', as well as give up your civil liberties to fight the OH SO INSURGENT terrorists in the homeland?

Yeah, didn't think so.

Re:Bills

[Rinisari]

If you don't like the entirety of something, you shouldn't vote for it!

Why?

Eventually, someone will hold you responsible for the part(s) you didn't like, and all you can say is, "But I didn't like that part," to which they will respond, asking, "Then why did you vote for it?"

This is why legislators like Ron Paul vote against things: if they don't like the whole thing, they vote no, no matter how important any one part of the whole is.

Re:Bills

[TheGratefulNet]

the only 'tools on terror' are the blooded ones that can't seem to read or comprehend history.

there is NOTHING that wiretapping will do to prevent those that hate us from doing damage to us. any 'terr-a-wrist' worth his salt is already using subchannels, hidden info in plain sight (steganography) or just regular old pedestrian encryption.

at this point, the door locks only keep honest people out. and tracking honest people is NOT going to bank you any 'terr-a-wrists'. its only going to harm the freedom base of the people you are TRYING TO PROTECT.

the logic is flawed: "we must vote for this or we lose the WHOLE bill". yeah, so? then lose the whole friggin bill, then! this all-or-nothing shit is bad for us and always has been. justifying that we need SOME 'tools' is just ignorant when the tools you are using have NOTHING to do with what you are advertising them as. same as using a garden hose to solder circuit boards. yes, a hose is a tool, but it won't do any good in soldering. wiretapping won't catch a single 'bad guy' but it sure will ruin what we had left of our right to free speech.

we don't even have to wait a generation to see the chilling effects. already, everyone I know is CAREFUL about what they write online (or their e-journals), what they say over the phone and even what photos they take and publish. if that's not a chilling-effect in operation, I don't know what is.

roll back the WHOLE notion of wiretapping. its not useful, its intrusive and its too abusable against non-criminals (ie, us!). the 'benefit' is not clear and the abuse is all too clear. this 'tool' should be destroyed and never used again. yes, I'm really serious - the right to free speech is near to the right to breathe air and drink water. it should be considered HOLY and not fucked with. kill our ability to communicate freely and we are not a free society anymore.

Re:Bills

[maztuhblastah]

So instead of voting to take a way a tool in our war on terror,

Don't be deceptive. FISA has worked fine for 22 years -- there's no reason it suddenly needs to be updated now. The only thing this bill removes is judicial oversight and accountability. It's not as though it's challenging to get approval for a legitimate tap from the FISA court -- they've only ever rejected a handful of requests. It's also not about the need to tap in an emergency: FISA makes provisions for that too. Taps can be placed for 72 hours without a warrant in the event of an emergency, all that has to be done is that the tap be reported and a warrant sought after the 72 hours.

No, this bill is about removing judicial oversight, removing accountability, and removing the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Re:Bills

[postbigbang]

And nothing would have been the right move. Obama caved in on this topic and it's just as evil and just as stinky as what his opponent has done.

If you're going to use altruism and idealism as "values", then you have to stick by them. That's what Obama sold me, and now he's taken them back. Now he's the lesser of two evils. That sucks.

Re:Bills

[sweatyboatman]

Long before the votes were cast, those weak amendments were destined for failure. Which makes Obama's voting for them an empty gesture.

The reason the details are not yet fully known is that the telecoms who did the wiretapping are not going to cooperate in an investigation. Giving them immunity removes the only leverage that Congress had in getting them to testify.

So it's very likely that it will be at least 50 years (and possibly never) before we actually come to terms with the scope of the wiretapping. And no one in the Bush administration will ever be held accountable for violating the law and the constitutional rights of private citizens.

I recognize that we're looking at a two man race, and all Obama needs to do is not lose. But on this issue (which is about the expanding power of the executive and has nothing to do with National Security) Obama could have made a clear, decisive stand and taken a position as a leader of the democratic party. Instead he chose to follow the herd, disappointing.

Re:Bills

[Knara]

The problem is that, unlike many state legislatures, the US Congress has no rule (nor will it ever) against adding riders on bills that are not related to the main proposal. Additionally, there's only so much time to actually legislate during a session, so mashing bills together is pretty necessary.

It's not an ideal system, but running the federal government more or less requires it.

Also, I think there should be some sort of phrase that describes invoking Ron Paul, sort of like Godwin's Law.

Re:Bills

[Jasonjk74]

I will mention that I am using all means available to me to oppose this war.

Yes, my government isn't a prize pig either, but I'm trying to change that. What are you doing?

Good luck with that. Your tireless blogging and /. posting will change the world!

Re:Bills

[mrfunnypants]

or in Ron Paul's case just not vote on this Bill:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll437.xml

I would not consider that a no vote.

Re:Bills

[JCSoRocks]

no, No, NO, this sneaking crap into bills garbage has got to stop. If they're trying to hand out Telco immunity under the guise of "maintaining terror fighting tools" then vote "no". Then when people complain put out a press release saying - "This is crap and (here is why). If someone puts out a bill that isn't laden with money-backed special interest filler - I'll vote for it." Sometimes it blows my mind to see / hear about the things that have been combined into one bill.

Re:Bills

[betterunixthanunix]

And if that is truly the case, then it shows Obama's true colors. This bill does not introduce a vital new tool or method for law enforcement to track down the "bad guys." It only removes restrictions on existing methods, and so now we have even fewer protections from our government. If this is the goal Obama really sought, then he is not promoting the sort of "change" that I am really interested in. This is the compromise: Obama wants to loosen restrictions on how investigations will be performed, so he is willing to allow telecom companies to be immune from prosecution for their role in assisting the government in ignoring restrictions on how investigations may be performed.

Then my friends wonder why I am voting third party.

Re:Bills

[just_forget_it]

The original FISA of 1978 is illegal. The fourth amendment makes no exceptions.

Re:Bills

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"Nothing would ever get done if everyone in Congress refused to vote for anything that contained a provision that they didn't agree with."

That would be an ideal country to live in. The greatest politicians in history have been the ones that did not do anything. No bad ideas made reality, no debts paid back to campaign financiers, no added restrictions on individual rights. It's the ones that think they need to change the world - acting on their definition of "the Greater Good" - that you must worry about.

Note: This is not flamebait. It is the truth.

Re:Bills

[n0-0p]

As I've commented elsewhere, the original FISA bill was written 30 years ago in the days before large global networks. As such, there has been a growing ambiguity as to whether the law dictates the manner of collection on systems inside the U.S. or just the parties targeted. The intelligence community has spent nearly 20 years trying to get clarification on this issue. Now they have it, along with additional oversight measures to prevent abuses.

Judicial review hasn't been removed, so the USSID 18 targeting criteria remain as strong as ever. Further, a warrant is still required to collect on any U.S. citizen or person located inside the U.S. While the emergency period has been extended past the PATRIOT Act's 72 hours to a full 7 days, a warrant still must be applied for and approved within that window regardless of the duration of collection.

On balance, it's a reasonable bill with reasonable protections. The telecom provision is bunk, but not a deal-breaker because oversight is expanded and criminal liability still exists. Of course, the effectiveness of the oversight will need to be assessed over time. But I don't understand why anyone who's read the different FISA bills and is familiar with title authority would be freaking out over this.

Re:Bills

[stewbacca]

there is NOTHING that wiretapping will do to prevent those that hate us from doing damage to us. any 'terr-a-wrist' worth his salt is already using subchannels, hidden info in plain sight (steganography) or just regular old pedestrian encryption.

Yeah, so those people in the industry (imagery analysts, linguists, cryptographers, et. al.) should just do nothing? Something tells me you have no insight to the amount of success our intelligence experts are having against the "terr-a-wrists". Do you even realize that run-of-the-mill, junior ranking enlisted soldiers are exploiting those things you say can't be exploited EVERY...SINGLE...DAY (to include your bonus word of steganography)?

My company provides a suite of tools that exploit all these supposedly amazing tricks the enemy is using, with great success. To sit back and say "nothing can be done" is defeatist and capitulatory.

Re:Bills

[corbettw]

Nothing would ever get done if everyone in Congress refused to vote for anything that contained a provision that they didn't agree with.

You say that like it's a bad thing. If Congress can't get around to passing any laws, they can't make our lives more complicated. Sounds like a winning plan to me.

Re:Bills

[roystgnr]

Also, I think there should be some sort of phrase that describes invoking Ron Paul, sort of like Godwin's Law.

In a discussion where you've just discovered that the mainstream "change" candidate is willing to break his filibuster promise, the Fourth Amendment, and the Rule of Law?

I think the applicable phrase is "I told you so."

We'll have to wait for someone less gullible than me to say it, though. I voted for Obama in the primary, because at that time I believed that he meant what he was saying about civil liberties, and I decided it would be better to vote against Clinton's fearmongering than to vote for a candidate like Paul who (at that point) couldn't win. I made a mistake, and I apologize.

Re:Bills

[baffled]

It's not an ideal system, but running the federal government more or less requires it.

Bullshit. We've got more tools and methods for information management and analysis than the framers could have dreamed of. I bet 50 random slashdotters could throw together an immensely improved system to manage the government in under a month.

Lesser evil

[NetDanzr]

The only thing Obama has going for him this week is that McCain is matching him misstep for misstep.

That's why we always vote for Lesser Evil, not the Greater Good.

Re:Lesser evil

[kentrel]

One of those "morons" went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bush goes on to destroy America's reputation overseas, severely hurts her economy, and is responsible for sending more Americans to their deaths than were killed in 9/11.

Voting for the Lesser Evil certainly works, eh?

Re:Lesser evil

[Joe the Lesser]

Except we don't always vote for the lesser evil, and haven't in the past two elections, and are suffering for it.

If we continually vote for the less evil candidate, the other candidates will become less evil to try and get votes.

This is how system works, for better or worse, by slogging through the trenches.

If Obama isn't elected, far worse will occur in terms of civil liberties than if he wins. Obama has a chance to be real progressive in office, even if he plays it safe during the election months. McCain will just pardon the Bush administration and stay in Iraq for 100 years etc.

I mean, if you say Obama's lost your vote because of this, then you're being selfish, because the sad truth is that he's still the best feasible option. We need to consolidate our power or we'll never get anything accomplished.

Getting offended by things like this are also why the democrats always fail. Politicians can not be idealists. Write an angry letter, but get over it.

Re:Lesser evil

[plasmacutter]

If Obama isn't elected, far worse will occur in terms of civil liberties than if he wins.

Are you sure?

1 - Democrats, and obama in general, tend to have a very good grasp of technology.

2 - While Republicans pillage society based on the old industrial cartels, dems do it on behalf of the entertainment cartels.

usually 1+2=3, but in this case 1+2 = "dead internet"

There is an alternative to tweedle-dee and tweedle-dee... vote for him.

Re:Lesser evil

[Evildonald]

The United States DID vote for the lesser evil. Unfortunately the Greater Evil's relative had appointed the judges in the crucial state!

Re:Lesser evil

[methuselah]

Oh and that peace prize was a real accomplishment eh? while the glaciers grow all over the planet chicken little runs around screamin the world is melting. Then a bunch of doofuses come to the conclusion that the "MORON" screaming at the top of his lungs about the boogie man has done something to benefit world peace? Brilliant! So from this we can conclude what exactly the nobel committee is composed of morons too?

Democratic Party

[Darkness404]

I've admired Obama, but I never confused him with a genuine progressive leader. Today I don't admire him at all. His collapse on FISA is unforgivable. The only thing Obama has going for him this week is that McCain is matching him misstep for misstep

Well, now that Obama has the party nomination, he can't possibly manage to get anything done. Now he has to support all the things Hillery wanted done, while making sure that he seems Conservative enough to attract some of the republicans that don't like McCain. If Obama tries to be different, he risks alienating long-time democrat supporters, if he tries to be the same he risks alienating all the people who want to vote for him for change.

Re:Democratic Party

[jpeirce]

Democracy doesn't scale.

Re:Democratic Party

[kellyb9]

If Obama changes his opinions on issues, you KNOW the Republicans will be pulling out the old "flip flop" card from the 2004 election. The only thing we really have is our credibility, I want a poltician who's not willing to trade that in for votes. I really thought Obama might be that candidate. Maybe he still will be, who knows? but this really isn't a good sign at all.

Re:Democratic Party

[Darkness404]

The thing though is. A lot of people are saying "screw this election". Hard-core republicans don't like McCain, all the Hillery fan-girls don't want Obama. And a lot of people are going to blindly vote for a democrat because they hate Bush, and then there are some people who are going to vote for McCain because he isn't black. Obama at least has people excited for him, most republicans are saying "screw this election", I expect an easy victory for Obama, but I don't think he will get re-elected.

Re:Democratic Party

[ucblockhead]

Every Democratic candidate does it, both losers like Kerry and winners like Bill Clinton.

Here's a hint:

[tyler.willard]

If a higher office candidate has a "D" or an "R" next to their name, they aren't progressive.

That probably goes for any letter, but those two in particular.

Sigh...

[bigstrat2003]

FTFA: "Every time I wonder whether I can ultimately vote for Obama in November, given all of his political cave-ins, McCain does something new to make sure I have to."

Thanks for propping up the good ol' two-party system there with your thinking, ma'am. Seriously, there are other bloody candidates out there, and if you don't think you should vote for Obama or McCain, then vote for one of them! It really gets tiring listening to the thinking exhibited by most people, which locks us into the hellhole of a political party system we have.

Change starts with you, and all that.

Re:Sigh...

[moosesocks]

The best hope we have of ditching the (current) two parties would be to reform the current election system, and support IRV or priority-based voting.

The gist would be that you could vote
1) Nader (only as an example!!!!)
2) Obama
3) McCain
4) Paul

If you wanted Nader to win, but would be happy with Obama, and *really* didn't want Ron Paul in office. If Nader fails to reach a simple majority, your vote goes to Obama. If he fails to reach a simple majority, it goes to McCain, and so on and so forth.

Personally, I'm pretty irked at Obama about this, but it's not going to change how I vote. Looking at the bigger picture, Obama's got a whole lot more going for him than against.

The EFF announced a new round of court cases today to challenge this law, which should hopefully make it through to the Supreme Court, where the law is almost certain to be struck down, even with a conservative majority of justices.

When you stop supporting the lesser of two evils,

[Devout_IPUite]

the greater of two evils starts winning. If everyone always voted for the lesser of two evils instead of holding themselves politics, the evils would diminish instead of grow.

Fudged the bucket

[Drakin020]

The guy seriously fudged the bucket with me. I actually had some amount of faith in this dude.

This was the big test to see if he would collapse under the pressure of the telecoms. More money was offered so he decided to go with it.

I am very upset over this but I should not be surprised. He is just another politician. (But lesser of the two evils)

Re:When you stop supporting the lesser of two evil

[Devout_IPUite]

...themselves [above] politics...

Dur. I hold myself above grammar.

My letter submitted to Obama's website

[MasterOfMagic]

Senator Obama: Because of the miserable failure that George W Bush has been, I have been placing the candidates for this presidential election under strict scrutiny. Until yesterday, I was proud to tell my friends that I supported Barack Obama for President of the United States. Now, I fear that my interests and your interests are not aligned and I can no longer lend you my support. Yesterday, while you did vote for the Dodd amendment, you failed to support a filibuster, and you failed to vote against the revised FISA bill that does for the telecom companies who have implemented surveillance against the American people what Gerald Ford did for Nixon. Being President of the United States means sometimes taking an unpopular stance on an issue despite the outcry of the public. It sometimes means thinking in the long term instead of the short, 24-hour sound-bite news cycle. What you have done today is embolden the elements of the government that tapped Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and handed them a fresh set of excuses to listen to the phone calls and Internet traffic of the American people. Maybe things work differently in Washington. Maybe the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the president have sworn to Representatives and Senators not to listen to their calls. Maybe the Republicans have sworn to the Democrats not to sabotage them like in the '70s during Watergate. Out in America, away from the halls of power, what protection does the citizen have against those who would gladly violate their expectation of privacy? Might I remind you that the president that suggested this bill also lied to start a war, approved the torture of innocent civilians, and believes himself to be above the law. What you did today was sell The People down the river for political capital. I hope you are proud of yourself. I am not proud of you. You are no different than any other politician, using the politics of fear to get what you want. The only sort of Hope you offer is False Hope - the worst kind because by the time it is identified as such, it is too late. A humble citizen, MasterOfMagic (I put my actual name, but I'm not going to post it here)

Re:My letter submitted to Obama's website

[Digital Vomit]

A humble citizen, MasterOfMagic (I put my actual name, but I'm not going to post it here)

Don't worry; you're secret's safe with us, Asmodarius, Keeper of the Eight Circle.

Its no wonder FISA Stinks....

[mengu]

In Swedish FISA means to Fart...

He lost a $1K donation from me

[maynard]

It went to the ACLU instead.

I've left the Democratic Party and I won't vote for Obama any longer. Both parties are completely irresponsible and don't deserve any support. Further, I'd support general strikes and mass protests to demand our supposed "inalienable rights" back. They've been alienated from me, a citizen, and I'm pissed off about that.

Re:He lost a $1K donation from me

[sleigher]

I did the same. Gave to EFF..... Hopefully their lawsuits will hold some water and the judges won't throw them out.....

Re:He lost a $1K donation from me

[MyNymWasTaken]

Barack Obama and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments

The ACLU agrees that there is no criminal immunity, and while this fact had been largely overlooked, Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson said this point had been mentioned in passing in both the House and Senate during the debate. With a little more digging, I found that the sponsors, as well as the Bush Administration, also understand that there is no immunity in the House-passed bill from criminal prosecutions for violations by anyone.

A multi-cave

[pzs]

It's not just FISA, there's also the death penalty for child rapists (is that "progressive"?), pulling out of public financing, and even being inflammatory on abortion despite being pro-choice in the past.

I think I agree with the Huffington Post. Is this the guy everybody got excited about?

Re:A multi-cave

[jonpublic]

I should also point out that at my family gathering this weekend average blue collar americans don't like his middle name. Like really hate his middle name. They hate George with a passion, but having a middle name of Hussein is something they are having a hard time with. There are a lot more of those than there are people who know what FISA is.

Re:A multi-cave

[dreamchaser]

That's exactly why I will hold my nose and vote for McCain despite my dislike of him. Not only is Obama woefully inexperienced but his plans for spending will bankrupt us quickly AND he will appoint Justices who pay more attention to International law than to the letter and intent of the Constitution.

Don't like the Constitution? Great, then get it amended. That's the process, not haveing a bunch of lawyers in black robes twist it around.

I am a libertarian

[kipin]

Who supported Dr. Ron Paul and came to the conclusion that I would vote for Obama because I believed he would change the world's opinion of the United States.

However, after his vote on FISA, I have decided to throw my vote to Bob Barr, whereas I was previously planning on voting for Obama.

I hope others who were planning on voting for Obama decide to do the same.

The political culture in this country scares me, and I am very afraid of where we are headed. It is a shame to see the Constitution mocked like this. The only hope I have left is in the judicial system which I hope has the balls to stand up to the power grab and strike it down as unconstitutional.

Re:I am a libertarian

[Palshife]

I love it when people invoke The Ron Paul with Dr. in front. Is it to make me believe his experience as a gynecologist will help transform America into a utopia?

Re:I am a libertarian

[retchdog]

Since we feel similarly about Obama, perhaps we can see eye to eye on this. I felt like Ron Paul had something going - a bit crazy, but capable of being reasonable; compromising (for a libertarian) and with strong character. I think that the racist stuff is a bit exaggerated; even if true to the extent shown, I'm willing to believe it was an "any port in a storm" type of thing, where people supporting his other ideas happened to tend to be racist.

Having read a few articles and wikipedia on Bob Barr, he just seems like an extremist nut blowing in the wind. Democrat/left activist until his mother gave him some Ayn Rand. OK... I've known a few people like that (going either direction), and I wouldn't want one for a boss let alone president. But this was so long ago, you may say.

Let's ram through some ridiculous anti-drug legislation while ranting about "witchcraft"... and then change our mind a few years later and lobby for the drug reform policy to get it repealed! Maybe if he'd not suppressed the 68% majority AGAINST his legislation in the first place, this hullabaloo wouldn't be necessary.

And speaking of witchcraft, what was up with banning wicca in the military? While I wouldn't mind banning religion en toto in the services (except for the fact that it would dissolve the military overnight), it doesn't seem like a support of personal liberties to ban one and only one.

One of the big problems with the "conservatives" now is the religious right; this guy seems to have... an interesting allegiance with their ideals.

Maybe he's had an epiphany since all that - well, what kind of epiphany would he have when Rumsfeld gives him Leo Strauss to read? Serious question - he seems to exhibit a total lack of consistency, disturbing in any candidate but especially a libertarian.

Feingold

[happyfrogcow]

Four years ago I saw an interview with Feingold, the democrat from Wisconsin. I thought he would be the one running this election, and now I wish he were.

Tool in a war on what?

[denzacar]

Come again?
Tool in a war on what?

You do realize that there is a greater chance in wining a war on chocolate than "terror"?
You know... all that stuff about one being an actual physical thing and other being an idea.

Re:Tool in a war on what?

[Lemmy Caution]

I think you underestimate the power of chocolate.

Re:Tool in a war on what?

[TheGratefulNet]

I think you underestimate the power of chocolate.

(waves hand)
"these are not the snickers bars you are looking for."

Re:Good time...

[Nutria]

not to be in the US.

Oh, please. Australia banning Fallout 3, Canadian judge overruling a parent's normal punishment, and Britain is officially insane.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/11/america/hate.php
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=6aaf855a-47e3-4e3f-8709-5b53dcfffff0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nbaby.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nchild.xml

I'll stick with the imperfect USA.

Canada, being so close to the US, still appears to have a little sense:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080628/steyn_commission_080628/20080628?hub=TopStories

Re:Look on the bright side

[brkello]

Even after following your link to a conservative website I fail to see how what he said is so unreasonable. He is basically saying that we should be like the rest of the world and have our children learn multiple languages early on. Spanish would be fairly useful since there are many people in the US that speak Spanish.

This is my problem with conservative personalities these days. They try to take these things out of context to make it seem like what Obama says is horrible. But every time I look at the full transcript of what he says, he comes off extremely reasonable. This link didn't even hide the context. So really, what's the big deal?

Re:Good time...

[Drakin020]

You know, you may have been modded a troll, but you are right.

When are people going to stand up? When will they turn off American Idol and actually look at what's going on?

I have a feeling this won't happen anytime soon. A lot of the major news network won't cover the story, or will spin it to make American's think they are safer.

Most American's won't do any kind of real research on there own like through the internet, they expect to be hand feed the information over TV, and in this day and age, important information like this will never come across the news networks.

I think if American's knew what was going on behind the scenes, they would stand up, but it's getting people more involved and more informed.

Also any mod points I might have gotten will be surly brought back down after this next statement....

Yeah I tend to agree that I don't think our votes count. I'm sure there is plenty that goes on behind the scenes to ensure the proper person get's into office.

It's sad to think about....but what can we do? Writing senators all day doesn't seem to do the trick. (Obviously)

Re:News for nerds. Stuff that mattters???

[edittard]

I'm tiered

Just go and layer down for while.

The Honeymoon Is Over

[telbij]

he is "no doubt" a progressive, just one who now supports the scandalous FISA "compromise" and Antonin Scalia's views on gun rights and the death penalty, no longer plans to accept public campaign funding, and wants to make sure women aren't feigning mental distress to get a "partial-birth" abortion

The rest of those things don't bother me much at all. I don't expect to share that many viewpoints with anyone, to me those are all small potato personal value judgements that people can reasonably disagree about.

The FISA bill is what is really disappointing. It's amazing how overnight it's completely destroyed my opinion of Obama. When is a politician going to have the courage to stand up and point out the simple absurdity of shredding our own constitution, trampling human rights, and sparing no legislation to cover our own asses to fight a threat that is statistically insignificant? The terrorists must just be laughing in their caves right now. Are we such pussies in America that we can't rely on real intelligence and police work to fight terrorists?

This isn't a partisan issue at all, it's the absolute insanity of our times. Obama really sounded like he understood that, then he turns around does the exact opposite. It's not about flip-flopping per se, it's about pretending to know what the biggest, scariest, most obvious problem is in this country, then turning around and pandering to bamboozled middle america huddled in fear thanks to 7 years of fear-mongering by an incompetent who was just trying to muddle through a job that was way wayyy beyond him. If Obama had stuck to his guns (if he even understood the point of what he was saying), he could have used the bully pulpit to bring rationality back to America ala "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Unfortunately now his rhetoric has become hollow. I still think he may redeem himself as president, but his most powerful tool, his voice, is now castrated.

Re:The Honeymoon Is Over

[jwinct]

Hey, both HRC and Obama voted "yes" on the Dodd Amendment -- the critical piece which would have bagged retroactive immunity entirely. Give Barack a break here. Yes the new FISA is an abomination, but he could have done nothing to prevent its passage and, had he tried, would have been promptly sandbagged by the fear-mongers on the right. Keep November in mind, please!

Re:The Honeymoon Is Over

[geminidomino]

Yes the new FISA is an abomination, but he could have done nothing to prevent its passage and, had he tried, would have been promptly sandbagged by the fear-mongers on the right.

Keep November in mind, please!

We are keeping november in mind. And obviously, so is Obama. Rather than standing by principles, he showed his true colors to be just as much of a political whore as any of the others. That's sort of the crux of the whole issue.

I don't get it

[hyades1]

It's like somebody lent the guy one of those self help books, but the title is, "How To Be A Dick", and he's turning it into his own personal Bible. Doesn't Obama understand that he gets a huge amount of his support from people who just didn't give a crap about politics before, and who will vanish like smoke if he turns into the same old thing with a pretty face painted on it?

No way to oppose it

[192939495969798999]

If he opposes it, there will just be 9 million attack ads about how he "supports terrorism" and he'll lose. The best strategy is to support it to win the election, and then strike it down first day in office. That's why being in politics is a crappy job... you have to support things you don't want to in order to get the job, and then when you finally have the power to fix everything, your electorate is confused as to why you're "changing".

If you don't like what he did

[Alzheimers]

Tell him so.

Re:Good time...

[TheGratefulNet]

I have a feeling this won't happen anytime soon. A lot of the major news network won't cover the story, or will spin it to make American's think they are safer.

looking at CNN yesterday, it wasn't even on the front web page! that bitch, jon benet (who the fuck cares, at this point, btw?) got the front page. but OUR FREEDOMS, no, not front page material.

CNN is not much better than faux news. we have been sold out in almost every way imaginable; by our lawmakers, by our reporters, by our consuming public.

I think I believe in evolution; but I KNOW I believe in DE-evolution. I'm seeing it right now, in real life.

I hereby dub Obama "Precious Roy"

[Kenrod]

Precious Roy says: "Suckers!"

Precious Roy, Precious Roy!
Makin' lots of suckers out of girls and boys!

Re:Telecom Immunity Might be a Good Thing

[corsec67]

So you are saying that companies that do illegal things at the request of the government should be "given a pass", rather than have to make a decision that might be inconvenient?

I would rather not have set the precedent that companies can have laws made just for them giving them immunity for crimes committed in the past.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Jasonjk74]

Even after following your link to a conservative website I fail to see how what he said is so unreasonable. He is basically saying that we should be like the rest of the world and have our children learn multiple languages early on. Spanish would be fairly useful since there are many people in the US that speak Spanish. This is my problem with conservative personalities these days. They try to take these things out of context to make it seem like what Obama says is horrible. But every time I look at the full transcript of what he says, he comes off extremely reasonable. This link didn't even hide the context. So really, what's the big deal?

The big deal is that their target audience will never bother to read the article, and they know it.

It's not the issue, it's the meta-issue

[A nonymous Coward]

The problem is that Obama depicts himself as different from all other politicians, that he claimed he would support a filibuster over telecom immunity, and that he voted to cut off filibuster.

He flat out reneged on an important promise, apparently because he wanted to "move to the center", "accept the compromise (sic)", and "appear tough on terrorism".

All he really did was show that he is just another ethically challenged politician.

Re:It's not the issue, it's the meta-issue

[DaveV1.0]

I always believed, regardless of the hype, that he was "just another ethically challenged politician."

I guess that is why I am not surprised by this.

Re:It's not the issue, it's the meta-issue

[A nonymous Coward]

I am not surprised either, but I had a small smidgeon of hope that simply because he was such a fresh face, he might actually give us a fresh start after all the years of the Reagan/Bush and Clinton dynasties. I want the president and Congress to be different parties just to keep Washington from doing too much damage, but a small part of me thought maybe Obama being such a fresh start would make up for that.

Now, no. I sure don't have much use for Bush Number 3, aka McCraven, but at least he would be the opposite party. With this spineless Congress, that's not much good, but it's better than nothing.

Re:It's not the issue, it's the meta-issue

[joggle]

I don't think just because you renege on a promise you are ethically challenged. For example, Bush Sr promised not to raise taxes but was forced to when needing to increase funds to pay for a war. It was a stupid promise but I think he was right to change his position when circumstances changed. Bush Jr, on the other hand, promised to cut taxes and stayed with that pledge no matter what. I think he was given every reason to legitimately change his position on this (the supposed trifecta) but never did. In this case I think the latter is much more ethically challenged than his father.

However, in Obama's case I can't think of a good reason why he should have changed his vote and almost certainly was just doing political pandering.

Re:It's not the issue, it's the meta-issue

[DaveV1.0]

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

Re:It's not the issue, it's the meta-issue

[A nonymous Coward]

Let's say you are the president and have been secretly, for years, illegally authorizing massive searches without warrants. This is blatantly unconstitutional.

So your supporters introduce a bill to retroactively legalize this and to pardon all those who helped you.

This stinks to high heaven, and there are lots of objections.

So you say "pretty please with sugar and cream on top".

Your opponents say "Oh, he compromised with us, let's pass this compromise."

And everyone is sic (sic) at the thought.

Does that answer your question?

Re:please explain...

[DaveV1.0]

It is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

It is the laws that govern how the government may snoop on communications made by people who are not citizens of the United States.

This isn't a "progressive" issue.

[hey!]

Frankly, I don't really don't care that much that the telecoms get off the hook in this instance. Yes, it's a bad precedent, but it's far from the biggest problem here. It's part of a pattern that is far more worrying.

The biggest problem is that the FISA amendments allow the government to destroy surveillance records, or not to keep them in the first place. What possible legitimate purpose could that serve? The telecom thing isn't there to protect the telecoms, it's there to make it impossible for private individuals to determine the scope of the government's intrusion via discovery. Likewise, the amendment prevents states from investigating crimes committed against their citizens.

Clearly, the biggest practical effect of these amendments is to allow the executive branch to engage in criminal activities and obstruct any effort, private or public, to determine the extent of those crimes.

This is not a "liberal" issue. Concealing and destroying evidence shows this is not an argument about the extent to which the President is bound by one law or another, but whether he can exceed his constitutional powers with impunity and then escape accountability. This transcends liberal/conservative divide over the President's "inherent powers", because whatever you think the scope of the President's powers should be, this allows him to exceed that scope.

centrist

[fermion]

As bad as this is, it is likely necessary. It is called moving to the center.

McCain likely has 10-15 states because he is conservative, older, and his opponent is not white. Obama might have 5-10. Therefore Oboma has to reassure the people by making them aware that he was born inside the contiguous united states, in fact the heartland, unlike his opponent, and he will not shake things up too much.

Which means allowing this miserable fiasco to continue, at least for a while, and not waste too much time looking back. The republicans can waste billions of dollars on impeachments, et al, beacause they have the support of the people who live on beliefs, not facts. And this is where the issue is.

George Bush was elected on a platform of Christianity, that he had been saved by the power of Jesus. People trust him. He is not too smart, and, like the populous, often works from beliefs rather than facts. So he was elected instead of Gore, who is more of a let's explore the possibilities type of guy, even if the possibilities do not come to fruition, it was fun talking about them. But that is too complex and too easy to attack. In any case, many people trust Bush and think that anything he does is ok.

More importantly, many people believe that foreign terrorists are the danger, or at least non-christrian terrorist, and specifically every Mosque in the world is base for attack on the US, which makes Mosques on US soil an issue. Many people trust Bush to do anything to fight against these threats, and protect the American Way of Life. In fact, the only reason Bush is having trouble now is that he has failed to protect our way of life, we are now forced to buy small cars, and the weak dollar means that we can no longer be so arrogant. But that does not mean Bush is not the most moral man in the country, and what he does comes from a good place.

So Obama voted for an act that in the scheme of things is probably no worse that anything else Bush has done in his best effort to end the traditional transparency and public responsibility that should characterize a democratically elected government. He did this as insurance against a Bush style ad in which is is implied that black men should be kept in prison indefinitely, because giving them a second chance at rehabilitation is too dangerous. He did this as insurance against the late Jesse Helms type ad, in which it is implied that if a black man has power, no white will be able to get a job.

At the end of the day Obama is unlikely to be any more or less moral than any other president. I like him because, unlike many in the US, I like to have leaders who are intelligent and can think and articulate their own thoughts so the rest of the world does not think we are all uneducated bigoted red necks who run to our churches at the first sign of trouble, or at least to our guns.

Before Everyone Goes Off the Hook on this One

[Knara]

Perhaps you want to actually read what the man has to say about it:

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any President or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility

The Inspectors General report also provides a real mechanism for accountability and should not be discounted. It will allow a close look at past misconduct without hurdles that would exist in federal court because of classification issues. The (PDF)recent investigation uncovering the illegal politicization of Justice Department hiring sets a strong example of the accountability that can come from a tough and thorough IG report.

The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once Iâ(TM)m sworn in as President -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions. No tool has been more important in focusing peoples' attention on the abuses of executive power in this Administration than the active and sustained engagement of American citizens. That holds true -- not just on wiretapping, but on a range of issues where Washington has let the American people down.

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I'm not exempt from that. I'm certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country. That is why we have built the largest grassroots campaign in the history of presidential politics,

That phrase predates the racist use of 'spade'

[spun]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade

Re:Telecom Immunity Might be a Good Thing

[Shakrai]

What would have been the point of suing the telecom companies?

The point was to find out exactly what the hell happened through the discovery process. This wasn't some thinly veiled attempt to get money out of Verizon and AT&T. This was an attempt to find out what the extent of this illegal wiretapping program was and to hold those who violated the law (within the administration and within Verizon/AT&T) accountable.

The lawyers would have made most of the money anyway

Yes, those money-grubbing lawyers at the EFF and ACLU only took this on so they could make legal fees....

What if it comes out the "wrong" way? What if the courts decide the President has that authority?

Yes, if only Dred Scott had been content to remain a slave and hadn't sued to change it... then we wouldn't have had the horrible Dred Scott decision on the books.

Child Rapists?

[davevr]

It's not just FISA, there's also the death penalty for child rapists

I think death penalty for child rapists is a little harsh. I mean, if they are a child, they don't know that rape is wrong... What next, life in prison for child arsonists?

hmm? what? oh... nevermind!

On the other hand, at least someone is thinking of the children...

I admire certain politicians

[spun]

There are some admirable politicians out there. The fact that you are unwilling to look at their individual behavior, and simply tar them all with the same brush, marks you as intellectually lazy and fundamentally dishonest.

Re:I admire certain politicians

[ColdWetDog]

There are some admirable politicians out there.

No, you're thinking of Statesmen. Those are dead politicians (Berkeley Breathed).

Re:I admire certain politicians

[nurb432]

Haven't met one yet.

Re:I admire certain politicians

[saider]

"Lord knows we need more statesmen."

Re:I admire certain politicians

[spun]

I have, twice. But for you, here's the list again: Dennis Kucinich. Paul Wellstone. Jimmy Carter. Nelson Mandela. Kim Campbell.

Tar away.

My letter to Obama, sent last night

[busydoingnothing]

Senator Obama:

When I first heard you speak, I was moved, literally. Very few people who speak give me chills, and you were one of them. Later, I was excited to attend your speech at Joe Luis Arena when you came to Detroit--not only excited to hear you speak in person, but excited to be a part of something big and meaningful. Though I am still young and have only been following politics for the past eight awful years, I felt honored to be able to finally support a politician who seemed different from any other.

I'm now several months removed from the first time I heard you speak and a few weeks past the night I attended your speech in Detroit. I'm writing to you five days after Independence Day, and only a few hours after you voted for the FISA Amendment Act. Simply put, I feel cheated, and I know I'm only one of tens of thousands of supporters who feel the same way. It's one thing for the majority of the Senate to pass this legislation, it's another for someone who you thought was different to vote for it. That's the biggest slap in the face.

In light of your vote, I'm no longer excited about your stake for presidency. I thought that we might be on a path to something new, something better. But your vote tells a different story, and that's not change that I can believe in. It's simply more of the same.

Thank you for your time.

We have a two party system.

[ISoldat53]

The For Sale and the Sold.

The answer is right there

[Weaselmancer]

Vote against the bill, denying law enforcements precious tools (He didn't)

Why not vote against it?

Why not punish the people who draft bills that are too broad in scope or have insane riders on them and let them know that if they want laws passed they should learn to be concise? Or how about actually standing up for their constituents?

What the hell is wrong with the government working for the people it's supposed to represent for a freaking change?

Obama has clearly stated he is against granting the telecoms immunity; there's simply nothing yuo can do when OTHER blue dog democrats with cushy incumbent seats wantto retain their fat lobbyist paychecks and vote with their wallets.

WRONG. Yes there is. How about voting your conscience rather than rolling over and taking it up the tailpipe? This is supposed to be a leadership value?

Please don't think I'm a Republican when I type this, but if this is Obama's idea of "Change" - well, it looks like the same old same old to me.

Re:The answer is right there

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not vote against it?

You need to weigh more than just telecom immunity when considering this vote. I'm not saying he made the right vote (it really is a tough call in my opinion), but reducing the bill solely to telecom immunity is to greatly misunderstand things.

It seems to me one of the great problems about elections is that extremely complex issues get boiled down to ten words. This is a perfect example of that.

Re:The answer is right there

[urbanRealist]

Or how about actually standing up for their constituents?

I voted for Obama in the primary because his rhetoric of change really made me feel hope for the future of this country. His support for this FISA bill has thrown that hope out the window. Where before I was actively trying to persuade others to vote for Obama, I'm now trying to discourage it. I don't want McCain to win, but at the same time, someone has to have some principles somewhere along the line and I'm not giving up mine. I'm standing up for myself and not supporting Obama any longer.

Re:The answer is right there

[MrMarket]

Why not vote against it?

You need to weigh more than just telecom immunity when considering this vote. I'm not saying he made the right vote

Perhaps the 4th Amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Re:The answer is right there

[zippthorne]

Change AND hope in the same sentence! Audacious.

Re:The answer is right there

[Zenaku]

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. If you vote against it, your opponents will pick out all the sensible provisions of the bill that no sane person could disgree with (I'm not saying there are any in this case, haven't read the bill) and plaster the airwaves with attack ads about how you opposed all of these obviously good provisions. If you vote for it, you will be passing into the reprehensible provisions of the bill that have come along for the ride.

That's WHY the bill is written to be overly broad in the first place. It's called politics and it sucks. Doesn't help to blame "the author" either, because the damn things are authored by committee -- amend it to add this, amend it to reword that, etc.

Re:The answer is right there

[KenSeymour]

There are two sides of national politics, principles and compromise.

Senator Obama reversed himself on retroactive immunity because he felt the FISA bill was a good compromise.
I can't site it but I remember him being quoted as saying there were adequate protections
in the bill and that overcame his objections to retroactive immunity.

Where this is a change from the past seven years is this:

Our current president is known for is never changing his mind no matter what happens. People used
to think that was a virtue, but look what has happened. Bush will say over and over that he will
veto a law that contains "X" where X is some principle he is against. As a result, there has been
no movement on some issues.

Obama is showing that he is the opposite. He will compromise with people he disagrees with and
change his mind. Some may see that as expedient. I see that as a good alternative to having
two groups stand on opposite sides of the room never reaching an agreement while big problems
go readdressed.

As a lifelong Democrat with left of center views, I struggle between being pissed off at
Democrat Senators (like Dianne Feinstein) who often vote against my own opinion and also
wanting all these legislators to work together and make some headway against the growinglist of problems our country faces.

Sure I'm upset at retroactive immunity. But I can't vote on only one issue because I think
that the environment, the deficit, the falling dollar, rising oil prices, immigration,
health care are also important.

The struggle for me is that on the one hand, I want Democrats and Republicans to work together
to solve some of these problems. On the other hand, I'm not always happy with the result.

If a politician signals that they are never going to change their vote, then no one bothers
to change the bill in order to get your vote.

If you can find someone who sticks to their principles and never changes their mind, go ahead
and vote for them. But that sounds like what we have had for the last 7+ years -- same old same old.

Re:The answer is right there

[rumcho]

Well, it's not as bad as you make it out to be. That's why he's a senator - he can write legislation that is not broad but very specific. Obama needed to vote NO on this FISA bill and propose another one. What's so difficult? "You're damn if you do and you're damn if you don't"? Bullshit!

Re:The answer is right there

[MindStalker]

Good things about the bill
1) It closed many loopholes that allowed the warrentless wiretaps in the first place.
2) Requires further wiretaps to follow at least some process (process isn't perfect but its better than the lack of process before).
Bad things about the bill.
1) Provides retroactive immunity to telecoms, it doesn't provide forward immunity though.
2) Expands wiretapping provisions over the old laws, but as I said earlier previously the old laws were ignored completely... Shrugs.

Re:The answer is right there

[GodfatherofSoul]

But, a law basically exonerating perpetrators of a crime (and a Constitutional crime at that) should be a showstopper for ANY bill.

I read his blog post about why he did it, but that doesn't stop it from being wrong. I'm one of those people whose support he lost. I'm not sure how I'm going to change my politics, but that vote just voted me out of the Democratic Party.

Re:The answer is right there

[LaskoVortex]

You need to weigh more than just telecom immunity when considering this vote.

One of the principle tenants of Republicanism is the Rule of Law:

Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, with an emphasis on liberty, rule of law, popular sovereignty and the civic virtue practiced by citizens.

The main thing that bothers me about anyone, republican or democrat, voting for any legislation that grants immunity for breaking laws is that sidesteps a core principle of Republicanism. I don't think that the Rule of Law should be open to compromise.

Re:The answer is right there

[LordKazan]

he's a constitutional scholar - retroactive immunity is Ex Post Facto and unconstitutional under Article I Section 9 US Constitution.

so in effect that language in the bill is powerless and Obama knows it

Re:The answer is right there

[mattwarden]

Don't be ridiculous.

1) Bill is submitted with Rider Amendment #7.
2) Bill fails.
3) When asked, people who voted against the bill say they would have voted for it if not for Rider Amendment #7.
4) Bill is submitted with a revised amendment or absent the amendment.

If you vote for the damn thing anyway, why would politicians ever fear adding on seriously controversial rider amendments???

Obama... Grow a spine!

Re:The answer is right there

[Lumpy]

Tough call? did you even READ the bill? Voting No on that pile of crap was an easy thing to do.

Deny Law enforcement needed tools? HUH? how the hell do they need those tools? They have all the tools they need right now.

Re:The answer is right there

[dgatwood]

It's not a tough call at all. There's no grey area here. A bill is either good or evil. Period. Allowing telecom immunity is tantamount to saying that a guy who raped and murdered a child but spends every weekend volunteering at the homeless shelter and helping underprivileged kids is a great choice for a babysitter because he knows how to watch kids.... A bad rider on a good bill makes it a bad bill. One bad apple spoils the barrel and all that.

More to the point, not only is Obama a hypocrite, everyone who did not vote against this bill voted AGAINST the will of the American people---against the voters who elected them---and voted against the U.S. Constitution. Thus, they are twice hypocrites to the oath they swore before Congress:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.".

Can someone explain how any bill that retroactively grants permission for companies to conspire with illegal actions by the federal government to spy on its citizens and subvert the fourth amendment can possibly be interpreted in any way other than as a direct attack on the U.S. Constitution? Seriously? Anyone?

Everyone who voted in favor of the FISA legislation is also, IMHO, a traitor against the United States and is guilty of treason:

"whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

Their actions are directly aiding and abetting terrorists by reducing the freedoms that those terrorists despise, thus effectively winning the terrorists' war from within our own government without the bad guys having to lift a finger. The whole lot of those Senators and Representatives should have their citizenship revoked and be ejected from this country for their disloyalty to the Constitution and to the American people.

Do your part. Vote to impeach Congress. Whoever the incumbent is, regardless of your party affiliation, vote for the other candidate. We have to send a message to our government that the public will not roll over and allow our rights to be trampled upon. We must do it NOW before it is too late. And elect an independent for President. But please, not Ron Paul....

Re:The answer is right there

[SL Baur]

Why not vote against it?

Indeed.

History repeats itself. The Computer Decency Act, which most people considered unconstitutional was attached to the mid 90's Telecom bill. Asshole politicians, including my own rep, Andrea Seastrand voted for it anyway, saying the Telecom bill was too important to pass regardless of any other crap attached. Look where the Telecom bill led to ...

By the way, The Messiah had promised to filibuster the bill until it was dropped. It only takes one Senator to do that. Obama is woefully inexperienced and it shows.

It's still not too late for the Dems to salvage the election, they can still vote for Hillary! in Denver.

Re:The answer is right there

[dccase]

So, the old law was "bad" because it was ignored?

Will this one be obeyed because it's so "good"?

Re:The answer is right there

[Incongruity]

Honestly? Really? That's such apologist whitewashing that I can't believe you're actually serious. Sorry, but he should be doubly ashamed of voting for a bill that's unconstitutional. It's like someone stealing a car claiming that they did it because they needed to, but they knew that the police would catch them and make it all even after the fact. Does that example sound insanely stupid? Yep. So does your explanation.

Re:The answer is right there

[Chris Burke]

he's a constitutional scholar - retroactive immunity is Ex Post Facto and unconstitutional under Article I Section 9 US Constitution.

so in effect that language in the bill is powerless and Obama knows it

Um... No, because in Constitutional cases the Ex Post Facto clause has always been interpreted to mean that you can't make a previously legal action retroactively illegal, then charge someone with a crime for taking the action during the time in which it was legal.

Making things that used to be illegal retro-actively legal is considered acceptable, and often it's a good thing such as preventing people who helped slaves escape from being prosecuted for that criminal act after slavery was abolished.

However all this law really does is make the telecoms immune from civil lawsuits. It doesn't change whether or not their actions were legal, it simply prevents anyone from taking them to court over it, unless they're a government prosecutor bringing a criminal case. I don't think the case for unconstitutionality is very strong.

Re:The answer is right there

[CowTipperGore]

It seems to me one of the great problems about elections is that extremely complex issues get boiled down to ten words. This is a perfect example of that.

I think you're correct but not for the reasons you believe. I see this vote as a calculated political move for his campaign because he knows that it would otherwise be reduced to a scrolling headline saying he voted against fighting terrorism. He supported an amendment that he knew wouldn't pass so that people like some of the apologists in this thread can say that he tried. Then he voted exactly opposite of how his campaign promised he would, in an attempt to move his campaign more toward the right. I believe that his campaign underestimated the fallout from the same folks who pushed him past Hillary in the primaries, but the reality is that these same people are not going to jump ship to McCain.

You need to weigh more than just telecom immunity when considering this vote. I'm not saying he made the right vote (it really is a tough call in my opinion), but reducing the bill solely to telecom immunity is to greatly misunderstand things.

The problem with this sentiment is that telecom immunity was a huge issue and one that didn't need to be tied to this bill. With Obama making an unambiguous statement about what we would do in this case, he failed himself and his supporters by doing exactly the opposite.

Re:The answer is right there

[cervo]

Except that the government does not need these tools. Aside from turning them against drug users and other stuff, what actual terrorism has the government actually prevented with their illegal spying?

Re:The answer is right there

[allthingscode]

Don't we also hate politicians who run around and poll test everything? And really, what would you have done had he gone around and found that his constituents didn't care at all about telecom immmunity?

Re:The answer is right there

[MushMouth]

1) It closed many loopholes that allowed the warrentless wiretaps in the first place.

No it doesn't, these loopholes were NEVER legal, they were illegal, should be investigated, and will be until the president pardons everyone in six months. The illegality of these loopholes was upheld just last week by a federal judge appointed by Reagan (but confirmed during Bush 41's term)

2) Requires further wiretaps to follow at least some process (process isn't perfect but its better than the lack of process before).

There was certainly a process before, it was handled by the Judicial branch of the government, now it is all handled by the Executive, with only the oversight of the Executive branch. In other words the foxes are guarding the henhouse.

Re:The answer is right there

[Chosen Reject]

sometimes to get a gain we also have to suffer a loss

I'm a big supporter of standing up for your beliefs, but at the same time I realize there are times when you have to pick your battles, and as you say, suffer a loss to get the gain. The question then is, what did we gain by passing this law? FISA already made it a cakewalk to get warrants. So what did we gain while pissing on rule of law?

Re:The answer is right there

[cicatrix1]

I really think they should have spined up and voted this one down.

I don't care if there's a bill that issues free healthcare and fixes social security. If part of that bill says that 10,000 orphans will get murdered, you don't "take the good with the bad". You throw that shit out and fix it.

Re:The answer is right there

[ArsonSmith]

Every bill comes down to:

provision 1: Feed the hungry children.provision 2: Slaughter baby kittens.

So if you vote for it you hate kittens, if you vote against it you hate children.

Re:The answer is right there

[otopico]

There will be no criminal cases brought. Bush will pardon everyone involved before leaving office. It was civil or nothing and that is now out the window.

If Bush does pardon the crooks it will solidify the idea that he is the most self serving and corrupt president since Nixon. And even as corrupt as Nixon was, even he cared more about America than winning and in the end he did the only good thing for America and resigned. He couldn't even pardon the other cooks as it would prove he had no respect for the law. He was saving his own ass, but he also started the process of moving past the Watergate mess.

I don't think Bush has that much strength. If it weren't for all the suffering he has instigated, I could feel pity for Bush. He was promoted beyond his abilities and now my kid gets to pay for it.

At least my son got to see how stupid Americans can be when told to either go along with the masses or have their patriotism challenged. Sadly, people were fine with Bush until gas got out of hand.

Re:The answer is right there

[Moofie]

Right, and the reason you can conclude that is because foreigners clearly are not "people". There's some kind of typo in the Constitution. It really means that only some of the people should be secure in their houses, papers, and effects. And only then when they don't cross borders.

It's real clear...if you squint.

Re:The answer is right there

[RobertM1968]

Why not vote against it?

You need to weigh more than just telecom immunity when considering this vote. I'm not saying he made the right vote

Perhaps the 4th Amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The what? I don't understand what you are trying to say... The 4th what of what?

It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't place it. And for whatever reason, it reminds me of buying gasoline at under a dollar a gallon - which I also know could never have existed or happened...

I have a feeling the document you are referring to got burned up in the Pentagon crash on 9/11, because nowadays, very few people seem to remember it ever even existed - and fewer understand what it means - and even fewer understand it's importance.

:-(

Re:The answer is right there

[dgatwood]

That's as much an overly simplistic view of terrorism as the Bush view of it. There are many reasons that they hate us, and different people in those organizations are in it for different reasons. Al Qaeda in Islamic states works in much the same way as the KKK works in the U.S. They look for the issue of the day---reasons for people to be angry at a particular group of people---and then exploit that issue to attract members, who they then indoctrinate into a culture of hate.

Some members of Al Qaeda joined because they were angry over military bases, sure, but far more militants joined because they hate our support of Israel. Far more than that hate us because our country is relatively wealthy and is seen as being greedy (and to some degree, rightly so). Far more people than that hate our general tendency to interfere in the way Arab countries are run, our interference in wars, etc. Still others are determined to spread strict adherence to Sharia (Islamic holy law) worldwide and hate the fact that the U.S. law is so thoroughly different. That last group are the ones who are pretty much going to hate us until we turn into a totalitarian state....

If you really want to combat the problem, you have to take a three-pronged approach. The first, unfortunately, is attacking the immediate threat, which we did to some extent in Afghanistan. It wasn't a pleasant war, but it was arguably necessary.

The second is a policy issue: we need to make a lot of changes in the area of foreign policy to improve relations with the Muslim world, not the least of which is bullwhipping Israel every time they do something stupid like launching missiles into a neighboring country and killing 200 people because some Palestinian killed a single police officer somewhere. We're far too tolerant of such knee-jerk Israeli actions, and the sooner our foreign policy reflects that, the better. We also need to reduce our dependence on oil from that region. This won't in any way make anyone hate us less, but it will at least discourage future U.S. leaders from letting future foreign policy decisions be dictated by oil needs.

The third, ironically, is to promote better understanding of the Muslim religion among Muslim people in the MIddle East. By better educating Muslims about what the Qur'an does and does not say, it will in thwart the perversion of the Qur'an into a text of hatred and war by these terrorists and encourage people to actually follow the teachings of Muhammad (which do not encourage hate or wars, but rather encourage caring for others and behaving in a morally upright fashion).

Funny, ever since we removed our bases from Saudi Arabia (Bush's pals you know), we haven't been attacked. Hrm cause and effect?

By that standard, our war on terrorism has also been completely successful. After all, since we started making people strip down and take off their shoes at airports, nobody has carried a bomb onto an airplane. So it must be working. (This despite the fact that the last bomb on a U.S. airplane prior to the Richard Reid incident was Pan Am Flight 103 way back in 1988....)

P.S. The last Al Qaeda attack on U.S. interests was in 2005. Three American hotels in Jordan were bombed. That was more than 2 1/2 years after the U.S. pulled out of Saudi military bases. So no, it almost certainly is not cause and effect....

Re:The answer is right there

[mwalleisa]

[...] reducing the bill solely to telecom immunity is to greatly misunderstand things.

No, it's not. As with most legislation, there is a core issue at stake whether or not you realize it. With this bill, that core issue is not "What additional powers should we grant to law enforcement agencies to make their job easier?" (debatable, but not here) but rather "Will you compromise a fundamental principle upon which this nation was founded?" The principle in question (simplified) is that it is the responsibility of the Judicial branch to determine whether or not a crime was committed (in a criminal case) or if a plaintiff has a legitimate complaint (in a civil case) and, in either case, to punish or award as appropriate. What Congress did here was pass a bill with a key provision that temporarily (more on this in a minute) bypasses the Judicial process in the interest of protecting valuable partners in what was, at the time, an illegal activity. While the other provisions of this bill may have merit, that debate is not the point here - the subversion of the legal process is.

As for my comment that it "temporarily" bypasses the Judicial process, I believe it is still possible for a case against one of the involved Telcos to be pursued eventually up to the Supreme Court level where the constitutionality of the law can be decided, but I'm not qualified to answer that.

Personally I would applaud a politician who would vote against any piece of legislation that has some positive aspects if there is any part of that bill that would violate their principles. Admittedly, I am operating on the assumption that the politician in question has a defined set of principles, but the optimist in me would like to believe that. If the "Free Money for School" bill guaranteed $30,000 per year towards college expenses for every student but had one clause that is counter to your principles (pick anything you believe in) then you should do everything you can to amend the bill to remove the objectionable clause. If that fails, that you cannot in good conscience vote in favor of the bill.

The election this fall should/will be about many things - the economy, our energy situation, education, health care, and a myriad of other issues. However, there is one core issue that is always at the top of my issues list: integrity. Integrity is more than a blurb in a campaign commercial. Integrity, like trust, is something that must be earned. You must say what you believe and do what you say.

Granted, in any group of people greater than one, compromise is always necessary but those compromises should only be on issues of "lesser conviction". Think something along the lines of "you want to see the latest shoot-em-up movie and your significant other wants something with fewer explosions" - work it out. On the other hand, if you like slaughtering puppies for fun, I would hope that your SO would draw a line in the sand - "No puppy massacres or I'm gone!"

This ended up much longer than I planned, but it boils down to this - if you would not compromise on your principles (and I hope that's true), shouldn't you expect your elected officials to do the same? In this case, I believe the cost of a "Yes" vote is too high.

At this point it would not matter.

[khasim]

Kind of like voting for a war ... and then opposing it.

The time for thoughtful consideration is BEFORE the damage is done.

Words are cheap.

Re:At this point it would not matter.

[feed_me_cereal]

Obama didn't vote for the war. He wasn't even in the senate at the time. Are you talking about Kerry?

Re:At this point it would not matter.

[gnick]

Maybe it's hard to tell the two of them apart since Obama started compromising his core values in order to "move to the center"?
--
Obama '08

I'm so confused right now...

Re:At this point it would not matter.

[Shakrai]

Well then, I have to differ with you - a vote for anybody but Obama is a vote for McCain.

It's exactly that line of reasoning that allows the major parties to ignore any issue not important to the swing-states that control the outcome of Presidential Elections in this country.

Don't get me wrong. I used to believe as you do. Go dig into my comment history. I used to rail against people that claimed the Democrats and Republicans are the same and those that voted for Nader. How the hell could you honestly believe that GWB is the same as Al Gore? Al Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

I'm long past those days though. What's the point of caring about healthcare, education, abortion, foreign policy or any of the areas where Republicans/Democrats actually disagree if neither party gives a damn about our rights? Let's review:

1st Amendment: Not defended strongly by either party. See free speech zones
2nd Amendment: Not defended by most Democrats.
4th Amendment: Not defended by most Republicans.
5th Amendment: Not defended by most Republicans.
9th and 10th Amendments: Completely ignored by both parties. Does these even exist in their worldview?

The American experiment ends when people start ignoring the parts of the Constitution that they don't like. Both major parties are guilty of this. Neither of them deserve my support until they change their ways.

I disagree with a lot of what Ron Paul stands for but now I find myself wishing I had given him the money instead of Obama. No, I can't vote for Obama in good faith. Not after today.

Freedom Law

[azzuth]

The Freedom Law: The likelihood of someone mentioning Ron Paul is directly proportional to the length of any discussion involving freedom, fascism or politicians.

Flip-of-all-Flops on Iraq Coming

[geoffrobinson]

"After consulting with the generals..."

If you cannot even lead your party ...

[khasim]

how are you going to lead the country?

Leaders do NOT compromise their core values.

Anything that they DO compromise on is NOT a core value for them.

Obama "compromised" on the 4th Amendment, his previous statements and telecom immunity with that vote.

Why? Did he suddenly start believing the opposite of what he believed before?

No, he did it because he thought that preemptive capitulation would make him look "strong".

He cravenly caved to a lame duck President.

Re:If you cannot even lead your party ...

[gnick]

how are you going to lead the country?

Leaders do NOT compromise their core values.

Anything that they DO compromise on is NOT a core value for them.

I'm not an Obama guy - His lack of experience scares me and his "message", although well spoken and charismatic, seems empty. I was a big backer of McCain until a few years back when he stopped fighting Bush and started morphing into him...

That said, I don't want a leader in the White House. We have one now and he's lead us into a complete quagmire. I want a representative.

Re:If you cannot even lead your party ...

[truthsearch]

I'm not an Obama guy - His lack of experience scares me

You're right. 20 years of experience in public service and law isn't nearly enough.

Re:If you cannot even lead your party ...

[savorymedia]

No, by definition, the President's job is to *execute* the wishes of Congress, who are our *representatives*.

The problem is that Congress has ceased to represent us (and now represents only special interests and corporate lobbyists) and has ceded nearly all of its power to the President, creating a de facto near-dictatorship.

My letter to Obama

[b4thyme]

I sent this to Obama last night...absolutely disgusted.

Your message says change yet your vote on the FISA bill says more of the same corruption. You could have rallied democrats to not let the bill through with the retroactive immunity, yet you have actively helped Mr. Bush and his cronies cover up their illegal activities. Anybody else would have gone to jail for what these criminals have done yet apparently all men are not created equal in the eyes of Barack Obama. You have actively betrayed the privacy and trust of the American people.

So what am I really supposed to believe you were trying to accomplish by voting this way? Do you really believe that these companies and the administration are above the law and deserve to be allowed to do whatever they want? Or are you just doing whatever you think will get you the most votes in the election which ironically happens to be a polar opposite from your stated message (at least the one on the front page of your website). Either and both of these reasons are enough for you to have lost my vote. I am not sure what is worse, the hypocrisy of Mr. Bush stressing the importance of the FISA bill for national security and then vetoing anything that doesn't cover himself and his cronies, or your recent complete betrayal.

Before today, I absolutely endorsed and loved your message of change. I thought finally, we will have a president who might actually do something about global warming. What an amazing thing it would have been to have a president who actually wanted to fix the country. It is sad that once again this remains only a dream.

"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." -Obama spokesman Bill Burton, oct 07

Obama thinks that FISA is now over

[Dan667]

I think it has just begun. If you donated to Obama, ask for you campaign contribution back so you can donate it to the ACLU. If Obama is not going to represent people, then give your money to someone that will.

Whenever you hear something about Obama

[Maxo-Texas]

Please go look at

http://my.barackobama.com/

It's Obama's "Snopes".

---

Obama is a liberal
Obama will raise taxes on those making $225k & up (and I think $90k & Up)
That means a lot of powerful wealthy people are going to be doing a lot of despicable things to try and keep him from being elected. For them the Bush years have been great. The top 1% has gotten tax cuts so great that the top 5% shows tax cuts even tho taxes are up on the top 2-5%.
There are a lot of VALID reasons to oppose Obama because he IS a liberal. Or you can oppose him because he is socially liberal.

McCain is a conservative. I would have supported him but I saw a very clear moment in 2005 when he said, "I want to be president and I'm going to play ball with the wealthy and the corporations and the military industrial complex". He flipped on several key issues at that point and became Bush-3. I don't want to wait around 2-3 years until he reverts to being the McCain that I supported while the country goes deeper into debt and gets into a couple more pointless wars.

There are a lot of VALID reasons to oppose Obama because he IS a neo-con republican now. Or you can oppose him because is socially conservative.

Both candidates are going to be screwed as first term presidents by a vicious bear market akin to 1968-1980.

But do the decency to go to each man's site and read up on them. Clinton & Their ilk will create a lot of lies about McCain. Whisper campaigns. Play up how he divorced his first wife. Etc. Karl Rove and his ilk will create a lot of lies about Obama. Play up "Hussein". Plant whisper campaigns that he is a muslim. Etc.

If you really are a christian, shouldn't you be moral and ethical and really find out the truth about Obama rather than listening to gossip and lies? This is a man tha said he got down on his knees and accepted Jesus Christ when he was doing community work almost 30 years ago. He's been going to christian churches for all that time. And suddenly he's islamic? Bullshit.

I don't believe my self but I think it is more the dogma of christianity than the good works. Some of the dogma is silly but the basic meme is kind and moral.

Anyway... CHECK THE FACTS on BOTH men. Both are decent intelligent men. I'm going to vote Obama because he inspires me. He makes me believe in America as the shining beacon on the hill- that country where anyone can be president. The country that is tough as nails and a scrappy fighter but basically decent, honest, and fair.

I think I see how they felt about Kennedy. I sure hope Obama is elected and doesn't screw it all up with some stupid tragic flaw.

Re:Rational Alternatives

[toddhisattva]

Ron Paul is rational?

The idiot spews tired commie crap from the Vietnam War.

Ron Paul is a moron as are his supporters.

I'm in the minority

[stewbacca]

Surely, I'm in the minority (and dammit, quit calling me Shirley), but for me, as a substantially liberal Republican, this move has solidified my vote for Obama. This, plus his reconsideration of a hasty Iraq withdraw shows me that he is willing and able to think things through and change his mind instead of waltzing the party line.

How about: Show Moral Backbone?

[EgoWumpus]

He voted FOR the bill. Nevermind he said that he would never vote for a bill that granted immunity. Nevermind that this bill is the last chance at exposing Bush's misdoings regarding the wiretapping scandal. The key is that it undermines individual protections; and he voted for it in favor of executive branch power.

He did NOT need to vote for the bill. The idea that law enforcement is denied 'precious' tools has been debunked time and again. All it denies is oversight - which is a terrible, terrible idea. The original FISA bill allowed for wiretaps with warrants, warrants that are easy to get, even after the fact. Instead, he has opted for blind trust in the executive branch.

There is always something you can do; he didn't need to vote for the bill. It would have been an easy thing to do - the bill still would have gone through. Make no bones about it; he's shifting to the middle in hopes of picking up swing voters who swallow the purple punch and believe the current Administration's rhetoric about how this is 'vital' to national security, or we're all DOOMED. It's overblown propaganda, and people need to recognize that.

Finally, let me note that he's not 'biding his time'. There is nothing he can do now; the bill has to be repealed by Congress or the Supreme Court. It's not like once he's President he can wave a magic wand and make the bad thing go away. More to the point, even if he could, voting for the bill does nothing to increase his ability to do so. It's entirely gutless move.

Re:How about: Show Moral Backbone?

[swillden]

He voted FOR the bill. Nevermind he said that he would never vote for a bill that granted immunity. Nevermind that this bill is the last chance at exposing Bush's misdoings regarding the wiretapping scandal. The key is that it undermines individual protections; and he voted for it in favor of executive branch power.

Of course he did.

He's suddenly faced with the prospect that there's a very good chance -- better than 50/50, IMO -- that he's going to be the next Executive. So now he realizes that executive power is a Good Thing.

Of course it is. If you're calling the shots. The prospect that Obama is going to have such power scares me more than Bush having such power (and Bush having it scares me plenty).

Exactly

[JerkyBoy]

And that's the reason the Republican Media Machine put him as the frontrunner. After 8 years of hell, a Republican president still seems like a viable option.

A Supporter No More

[Dreadneck]

Senator Obama,

Today you voted to destroy the Constitution. You betrayed millions of supporters like myself when you voted away the 4th Amendment today. No amount of spin on your part is going to change the fact that you and your fellow Congressmen stabbed every American in the back today. You and the rest of your compatriots in the Senate and House have lost all claims to legitimacy. You have betrayed your oath of office, the Constitution and the People.

I cannot begin to express how violated, molested and utterly betrayed I feel by what you have done. I feel duped, suckered, hoodwinked and bamboozled. I feel like I have been robbed, raped and left bleeding in a dark alley.

Goodbye, Senator. This is a deal breaker. I will not be voting in November. You have destroyed what little hope I had left for my country. I now know without doubt that absolutely nobody in my government can be trusted. You and all your fellow traitors inside the beltway can go to hell. There is no excuse for what you have done and no possible explanation or apology will right this wrong.

In closing, Senator, I leave you with a reminder and fair warning from our founders.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

I feel no shame for having taken a chance that you might be different, Senator. However, knowing now that you have taken ranks with the most vile among us, to remain in your camp would bring enduring shame and dishonor upon my soul.

Goodbye and God Save the People!

To whom?

[edmicman]

Losing voters to whom? McCain? Because his views on personal privacy is so much better? They're all just more of the same Republicrats now.....

Take off the tinfoil hat

[spun]

If politics were really as bad as you make out, we'd all be slaves by now. Sure, there are problems, but for the most part, politicians of all parties are honestly doing what they think is best for the country.

Do lobbyists manipulate politicians into thinking that what is good for company or cause X is good for the country? Certainly, and that is an issue we need to address.

Is there a higher percentage of sociopaths at the highest level of politics than in the general population? I think so, but the same is true for the business world as well, and will be true in any hierarchical power structure. Is it anywhere near 100%? No.

Telecom immunity was a sideshow

[grandpa-geek]

Obama didn't cave on FISA. He just looked at the core issues.

Take a look at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051220-5808.html

If we assume that article has correctly identified what was happening, the core issue becomes how to get massive, automated wiretapping under judicial control. The article states that there aren't enough judges to process all the warrants needed under the old FISA law using the new technology. So instead of fixing the law, the administration ignored it. Bush and Cheney should be impeached over this, but that isn't going to happen.

A major purpose of the telecom lawsuits was to get discovery going and find out what was happening. The investigation ordered by the new law is also supposed to do that. However, if the article is right we know what was happening. Enough was said publicly about a variety of matters for the author of the article to figure out the underlying technology.

Let's give Obama credit for focusing on the core issues and working to get them fixed. If he gave on the immunity sideshow, that's just part of the imperfection that he said was there in the compromise.

A smart guy told me this...

[teamhasnoi]

Presidential candidates don't need your help, it's the local ones. They're the ones who grow up to be presidential candidates. If you get good ones in office locally, you not only benefit immediately, but you have a much better chance of getting 'bigger' candidates that have similar beliefs and concerns.

That said, I'm a locally active DFL'er - not because I agree with everything that the DFL stands for, but so I can try and make changes to the DFL at the low level, like Instant Runoff Voting, and other platforms that will hopefully trickle up. (Incidentally making other parties more viable)

An excerpt from my letter to Obama (sent several weeks before this vote):

...I am also very upset about his unwillingness to fight telecom immunity. This is a serious issue for me. I, and many of my friends and family are tired of being spied upon and considered seditious in the overreaching "War on Terror"; this unwillingness essentially rewards the companies that were "just following orders", and makes Barack seem weak in the 'War on the Constitution'.

My wife and I are delegates for the first district in MN. We got involved for the first time because we believed that Barack would kick corporate interests out of Washington, that he would help restore the Constitution, and that we would have someone in office who not only held similar beliefs, but would not compromise them. I've combated many false and slanderous emails, reached out to many independent voters who were 'on the fence', and was the first in my town to sport a Obama sign in my yard, sticker on my car, and button on my guitar strap - but I'm sad to say that I'm becoming disillusioned.

I need Barack to stop compromising. I need him to hold the current (and future) administration accountable, I need him to return government to the people, rather than corporate interests. I need him to keep to the ideals which made me want to actively support a candidate for the first time in 20 years. I will do my best to get him elected, but only if I can believe in him.

The response I got was a plea for money. Thanks, but I'll spend my dollars on local candidates in MN, who I can trust not to tell me one thing, and do another.

Re:Voting for Obama, But Not Enthusiastic

[Doc Ruby]

Here are just a few highlights from Barack Obama's career as a US Senator: specific pieces of legislation, what they meant and how they were passed.

The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act

Introduced by Sen. John McCain in May 2005, and cosponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy. Barack Obama added three amendments to this bill.

While the bill was never voted on in the Senate, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Acts of 2006 and 2007, respectively, drew heavily upon the wording of this bill.

The Lugar-Obama Cooperative Threat Reduction.

Introduced by Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Dick Lugar and Sen. Tom Coburn.

First introduced in November 2005 and enacted in 2007, this bill expanded upon the successful Nunn-Lugar threat reduction, which helped secure weapons of mass destruction and related infrastructure in former Soviet Union states.

Lugar-Obama expanded this nonproliferation program to conventional weapons -- including shoulder-fired rockets and land mines. When the bill received $48 million in funding, Obama said, "This funding will further strengthen our ability to detect and intercept illegal shipments of weapons and materials of mass destruction, enhancing efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism."

Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006

This act of Congress, introduced by Senators Obama and Coburn, required the full disclosure of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds in FY2007.

Despite a "secret hold" on this bill by Senators Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd, the act passed into law and was signed by President Bush. The act had 43 cosponsors, including John McCain.

The act created this Web site, which provides citizens with valuable information about government-funded programs.

Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act

This law helped specify US policy toward the Congo, and states that the US should work with other donor nations to increase international contributions to the African nation.

The bill marked the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor. Following this legislation's passage, Obama toured Africa, traveling to South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. He spoke forcefully against ethnic rivalries and political corruption in Kenya.

Honest Leadership and Open Government Act

In the first month of the 110th Congress, Obama worked with Sen. Russ Feingold to pass this law, which amends and strengthens the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.

Specificially, the changes made by Obama and Feingold requires public disclosure of lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills.

The House passed the bill, 411-8, on July 31. The Senate approved it, 83-14, on Aug. 2. At the time, Obama called it "the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate."

Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act

Following the Republican-sponsored voter intimidation tactics seen in mostly black counties in Maryland during the 2006 midterm elections, Obama worked with Sen. Chuck Schumer to introduce this bill.

The bill has been referred to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Obama said of the bill, "This legislation would ensure that for the first time, these incidents are fully investigated and that those found guilty are punished."

Re:Look! His NUTS are already spoken for by Right

[callmetheraven]

It was not LICK.
It was not KICK.
It was CUT OFF.
Jesse Jackson shows his true colors again.

one Amerika, one party...comrade

[RecycledElectrons]

There's only one party...The RepublicCrats, They pretend to disagree on minor distractions, but nobody wants real change. After all, a politicians first job is to get reelected. The current system put them in power, and they are not about to change it.

I used to say "If you want real change, vote for Chuck Baldwin with the Constitution party." Then the black box voting machines stopped counting our votes.

Now I say "If you want real change, learn to shoot."

Andy

This might be redundant...

[DeskLazer]

But you had to expect Obama to go towards the middle. It's not popular for people who want "liberal" things done, but he can't just keep preaching to the choir. I hate his stance on this. It aggravates me, but I know he's still trying to do good things. The reason "other" candidates are so cool is because they know they have no shot of winning. Look at the crazy and awesome things people like Ron Paul, Steve Forbes, Al Sharpton, and even Ross Perot were able to say! Of COURSE you can say those things and say how you really feel because only a small percentage will agree with you [when you consider the ENTIRE POPULATION of the United States]. My vote's going to be cast for Obama this year, reluctantly, but I know it's better used on him than a vote that will not go to him and give McCain an edge. McCain of 2000 = decent choice. McCain of '08 = the continued slide of America into the wastebin.

Because....

[raehl]

Why not vote against it?

Because the bill passed, while not a good bill, is STILL better than the present law. Obama, and others, tried to strip the immunity. It didn't work. So given the choice between maintaining the status quo (worse) or accepting that the telecom companies have bought out a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Obama voted for the bill so AT LEAST executive power is restrained a bit more.

Obama chose 'something' over 'nothing'.

The immunity is also not absolute, and if/when Obama is President, hopefully the issue can be revisited when a Bush veto doesn't have to be overcome (which is a mere 6 months from now).

Re:Because....

[quanticle]

Because the bill passed, while not a good bill, is STILL better than the present law.

How? As far as I can tell, the new FISA bill the same or worse in every respect. It loosens restrictions on government spying, creates loopholes that could be used to have unconstitutionally broad spying programs, reduces judicial oversight, and, finally, adds immunity for past wrongs (effectively turning this into an ex post facto law).

Tell me again, how is this law an improvement?

What's wrong with FISA?

[sweatyboatman]

What is wrong with FISA that the current bill fixes?

This bill changes nothing except now what the Bush administration did illegally, it can now do legally. And the fact that they were doing it illegally before is also, actually, legal.

The only thing this does is confirm that the CIA/NSA can do whatever they want regardless of the law and if they get caught, Congress will bail them out.

Wake up people.

[crhylove]

This is just ONE of MANY examples proving that Obama is a total stuffed shirt who only says the right things, and almost never does them.

If he was a REAL candidate of hope and change, who actually gave even a passing nod to the constitution, or even any of the tenets set forth by Franklin, Jefferson, and the other geniuses who set up our system, he would not be a "realistic" candidate, and he certainly wouldn't get so much air time on corporate TV.

All you Obama fans had a real guy representing the stuff you really wanted. His name was Kucinich, and his wife is totally hot.

Oh, and he's the one in congress delivering impeachment papers day after day, too.....

But what he doesn't have is CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSN, and Rolling Stone completely sucking his cock. There's a reason for that, too. He's the real deal, unlike stuffed shirt Obama, who talks the talk and then sells the constitution out for corporate and political power every time. Just like the FISA thing.

You people claiming it's a simple mistake that he will work to correct are idiots. The FISA thing is an OBVIOUS choice, actually talked about DIRECTLY in the fourth amendment.

You people claiming Republican's are far worse are also idiots. They are exactly the same. They just don't even SAY the right things. Well, they say the right things for old people and people who talk to invisible men in the sky, but then they vote pro corporate and pro fascist just like the Democrats. There is NO difference. The party lines are both the same: The bottom line for Viacomm, AOL/Time Warner, Bertelsmann, News Corp, and Disney.

Dennis Kucinich on FISA

[4D6963]

Interestingly enough while semi-randomly browsing YouTube I found this video of Dennis Kucinich talking about how the congress is trying to push that FISA thing and how they went as far as having a secret congress meeting (the 6th in history) dedicated to the topic.

Seems like unlike what I first thought that stakes are much higher than what I suspected would be an issue only the Slashdot crowd would care about. I hope this video sheds some light on the context of this news article, even though the video isn't news.

We get the leadership we deserve

[slashdotlurker]

I have never admired a politician in my life (get a life !). I have admired statesmen, but they then need to be dead 50 years or more.

I was going to vote for Obama for President this fall. Politically, I am an independent who has voted Republican a few times and Democrat fewer times. Mostly, I stay home (voting third party is meaningless in the system we have). I also think that we need to start repairing the Constitutional enforcement ASAP. Enough damage has been done over the past 40 years (when was the last time Congress declared war ?).

Here he comes along, this fellow trained in constitutional law, and I say, ok, maybe I will give him a chance. Voted for him in the New Hampshire primary. Was happy when he finally put the Clinton machine to bed and started the campaign. I do not buy for a moment that he has been tacking to the center. He has long been a supporter of faith based initiative (his career as a community organizer was nothing but a faith based initiative). I have concerns about separation of religion and state, but with sensible safeguards like hiring constraints etc., those issues can be dealt with. His position on guns has changed but it does not matter either way for me. The second amendment is safe and since I do not own a handgun, I admit I do not follow this issue very closely.

However, the fourth amendment is perhaps the second most amendment (after the first amendment) in our country. It (used to) places restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure by the government. It has become more and more toothless and yesterday, it was effectively carved out of the constitution by legislators who had no legal right to do so (changing the constitution in such fundamental ways requires a constitutional amendment - but who has the time these days for the people to actually express their opinion - like Gonzalez is supposed to have said about something related, this is so "quaint"). In the modern world (just look at the farce playing out in Europe with the countries bold enough to reject a constitution disguised as a treaty), laws do not matter as much. They can always be incrementally extinguished.

Who is responsible for all of this ? WE ARE. Why ? Let me know how many Senators (and House members) who voted to gut our Constitution again get re-elected in fall.

As to Obama, well, he just lost my vote yesterday. It does not matter whether he collects enough focus group flack to apologize for it at some point in time or says his vote was wrong, I am done with him. I know his vote would not have made that much of a difference (though the moral statement would have been massive), but he had the opportunity to act on his conscience yesterday. He did not. I will not be doing the same in November. My ballot on the question of the President, will be blank. Down ticket, it will depend on what my representatives did in Congress.

And Mr. Barack Constitutional Law Obama, it does not appear that you were paying attention in class. Grant of retroactive immunity is unconstitutional in itself :

Article I section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed". It just remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will educate the Congress on the matter. Given recent history, I am not overly optimistic.

The real problem

[fyngyrz]

Actually, the entire telecomm immunity thing isn't the point.

The point is, both the old FISA and the new FISA both allow warrantless searches. The old FISA provided for 72 hours of oversight-free tapping. The new FISA allows for many months of oversight-free tapping. They're both direct and obvious violations of the 4th amendment.

The position put forth by Obama is that "the government needs these tools"; the only correct action is to pursue article V (amendment) and see if they can get them; to violate the amendment because "they want to" is to act as if the constitution doesn't exist.

Why is this so important? Because if one part of the constitution can be ignored, so can any other part. Either we live in a constitutional republic, or we live in a nation ruled by 645 privileged nobles (535 reps, 100 senators, 9 judges and a president) who are not bound by anything other than what they agree upon.

I was brought up to understand that the nation I lived in was designed and authorized as a constitutional republic. How about you? Do you think the constitution should matter with regard to what the government can or cannot do, or are you more inclined to live in a nation ruled and guided exclusively by the fashions and opinions of 645 people? People, I should add, who were sworn into their jobs explicitly committing allegiance to, and swearing defense of, the constitution.

Is the retroactive pardoning of corporations for spying on the citizens distasteful? Yes, you bet it is. But it isn't the root of the problem, and as long as you, and people like you, keep harping on immunity, you're going to be blinded to what is actually wrong.

Foxes guard the henhouse, worse in every way.

[MushMouth]

Unless you are comparing it to the statutes of the "Protect America Act" this law is significantly worse, and does nothing to protect our safety. But it is worse than the PAA, because the statutes of that law expire, which puts us back to the fine FISA act which was passed in 1975. There is nothing that this new law adds to the '75 FISA act which protects our safety. What it does is allows the Executive Branch full power to break the law as it sees fit, with the only oversight coming from the Executive Branch, this law would make the Watergate affair legal.

Single-Issue Voting

[eoeoe]

I don't want McCain to win, but at the same time, someone has to have some principles somewhere along the line and I'm not giving up mine. I'm standing up for myself and not supporting Obama any longer.

I don't know about anyone else, but this sounds just as narrow-minded as any other single-issue voter. In a democracy, you will not always get everything you want. You need to weigh what's important, and what's possible, and try to get the best candidate you can. Sure, a multi-party system would help, but beyond that you sound no different than someone voting entirely on the issue of abortion, gay rights, or gun rights.

Sure, if you find FISA to be -the- issue, and it outweighs all other issues (environment, Iraq, foreign policy, etc), then go right ahead and throw your support elsewhere. Or if you think that his stance on FISA shows an endemic problem in his character, then go right ahead.

I think this is crap, too. And I'm really upset (in general, at first glance. I haven't read enough about it to have a full opinion) that Obama voted this way. But there other important aspects of his platform that I -do- agree with, and I won't let this one reasonably large flaw change that.

FISA *is not* broken.

[mikelieman]

There's a THREE DAY grace period between when the spies can start spying, and they have to get their spying rubber-stamped by a Judge.

So, there is NO LAW ENFORCEMENT BENEFIT to this bill. It is purely there to provide cover for CRIMINALS.

Remember that: Anyone who voted for this bill is SOFT ON CRIME and HATES THE AMERICAN VALUES OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW, AND DUE PROCESS OF THE LAW.

They are NOT conservatives.

[Hasai]

The closest term I can think of for what they are is neo-imperialists (gad, I can't believe I used that word). Conservative, whether "neo" or whatever, is something they most certainly are NOT.

....I'm a conservative. I even had a political party, once....
:(

PARAPHRASE OF OFFICIAL RESPONSE - LIVE FROM TV

[LordKazan]

Someone brought this up to Obama in his campaign stop in Fairfax, VA - his response talking about he helped expand the federal whistleblowers law.

he says the issue here is that we haev a surveilliance program that tracks people that could do us harm - it was supposed to run through FISA (i'm trying to keep up with him while typing this) - "there is little doubt the bush administration chose to ignore FISA in setting up with program" and went to the phone companies. Reason we originally wanted to deny them immunity was not just to punish them but to find out how the program was abused and we might not have any leverage to make sure going forward the program wasn't violating basic civil liberties. Hence he voted against the original version of the bill. He said the current bill is not perfect - it did two things he wanted to support: explicitly stated that ALL surveilliance programs MUST go through FISA to make sure they're getting warrants, it also institutes and inspector general to investigate any abuses already present. He recognizes some people feel that the phone companies were complicit and should be accountable and he understands this - but he feels that this surveilliance (when conducted legally w/ warrants) is important for our security and he had to balance punishing the telecoms and what he feels is needed now - he also made reference to the fact that he can change things when he gets into office.

So... we have an official response

sorry for the paraphrase i tried to keep up.. there is a direct quote embedded

Re:Look! His NUTS are already spoken for by Right

[snoyberg]

Oh, what are his true colors? I was under the impression he was an African American.

Re:Look! His NUTS are already spoken for by Right

[Wandering Wombat]

I thought he was black...

Thank you.

[Grendel Drago]

Wow, it's as if the Republicans' fantasies about unlimited executive power and the Democrats' fantasies about Obama's goodness had a baby. A baby with fetal alcohol syndrome, who will never even be able to comprehend the SchoolHouse Rock version of "how a bill becomes a law"...

Gloriously well put.

It's astonishing how anyone can look at the headlines today, laced with verbs like "cave", "surrender", "give in" and "capitulate" and conclude that, boy, Anthony Fremont did a good thing there.

On the other hand, one vote on a measure that passed with more than a two-thirds majority doesn't really mean much of anything. It does make Obama as much of a cowardly weasel as the rest of them, but, seriously, you've got to blame just about the entire Republican party and roughly a third of the Democratic party for this one. They can't all be Chris Dodd, unfortunately.

It's depressing that if all of the Republicans vanished from Congress, we'd still only have a rough majority of sane folk there.

Re:You, sir, are correct!

[Grishnakh]

I agree. I used to vote for the "lesser of two evils", and I kept getting evil. I've had it, and from now on I'm voting for someone I think will be a good President, even if there's zero chance he'll be elected. That zero chance isn't because of me, it's because of all the other morons in this country that buy into the two-party system and the "wasted vote" myth. If a crappy President gets elected, the only people to blame are the people who voted for him.

If the country goes down the tubes, don't blame me. Blame the people who voted for crappy politicians (which is probably a majority of the voting population). Those of us who were brave enough to vote for non-mainstream candidates, people we actually believe in instead of "the lesser of two evils", will be blameless.

Then Deny Law Enforcement the tools

[pugugly]

Let's be clear about this. The Immunity was added this way because the administration says that while the Law Enforcement Tools were important, the immunity was more important. They were willing to turn down the law enforcement tools, to get the immunity.

I agree - it *is* more important to deny the principle that when the President orders you to break the law, you are allowed to break the law, than it is to stop another terrorist attack.

Let's make this clear - I lost friends in the Pentagon *and* the World Trade Center, and I would *rather* get hit by Al-Qaeda, *again*, than to have established that the President can order you to break the law.

Frankly, I consider this immunity an another in a series of absolute wrongs foisted on our country by cowards and traitors.

Pug

(Sad) Reality Check

[asackett]

Obama's just another stinking politician. There was never any reason to expect otherwise. He's not just some guy from out of left field who came along with a happy message and got lucky. To become the DNC's anointed one, he had to make deals and secret promises and had to receive the blessings of the moneyed interests that have been in control for many decades. He's as much an insider as any other politrickster at this point.

Hey kids! It's all political, all the time!

[otopico]

Welcome to the world of politics. As much as I like Obama, one must never forget he is still a politician.

It just took the flag pin and now this for more people to get it. Unlike Hillary, Barack waited until after the primaries to start making the huge mistakes.

The immunity only covers CIVIL liability, criminal liability is still on the table, but with the 'leaders' we have, I cant see anyone bringing criminal charges against the TELCO and Bush et al unless the next president makes it an issue. (which they should)

So chin up, Obama isn't perfect, but aside from a revolution to replace the government, he will be better than what we could get with McCain or what we have now with the moron from Connecticut via Texass.

We didn't lose our rights overnight, and it will take time and effort to regain them. That is if people start worrying more about the future of America and less about gas prices, American Idol, and gay marriage.

its just mathematics folks

[circletimessquare]

in a democracy, you never get a president who appeals to you greatly, you always get a president who appeals to you weakly (if at all). the reason for this is that someone only appeals to you greatly if they have a lot of affinity for your own values

but being that your set of values are a small tiny subset of the range of value sets out there, then if someone appeals to you greatly, that means they only appeal to a small number of people, and therefore are never going to be elected. get it yet?

so the job of a presidential candidate, to appeal to as many people as possible, is to pick a mixture of values that appeals to as many people as possible. but by covering all of these bets, this naturally means you weaken your appeal to any one given small subset of values, in order to cover as many subsets as possible

this is the inevitable truth of democracy: you will always, forever, only get a president who appeals to you very weakly, because it is the job of the candidate to appeal to as many people as possible in order to win the presidency. therefore, EVERY eection, FOREVER, consists of picking the lesser of two evils. this is mathematically inevitable. pleae, get used to it

this is why morons who vote for fringe candidates only weaken whatever cause they care about. in their blindness to embrace a cnadidate who appeals to them greatly, but can never win (because any candidate who appeals to anyone greatly naturally only appeals to a small subset of a population), they therefore are wasting a vote that would otherwise go to the candidate who appeals to them weakly, and ensure that the candidate who appeals to them least wins! morons. you always ALWAYS vote strategically in an election. you never, NEVER get your golden candidate. your golden candidate can NEVER win. it is simple mathematical inevitability

the question is simply then: why are you so stupid not to know this, and why do you take it so personally?

why are you so stupid as to expect that you will ever get a president who appeals to you greatly? why do you waste your vote on fringe candidates? why are you so shocked that your golden boy obama is proving to be SMART as well as charismatic (hint: his smarts is why he tracking to the center, appealing to you WEAKLY, instead of strongly like he used to. waaaah)

everyone takes it so personally. its politics you morons, not a romance

this is the way it has always been, and always will be in a democracy, forever. get used to it. grow a brain. don't take it so personally, it just means you're blind, dumb and selfish about the unmoveable absolute rules of politics

and yet you morons are always part of the process. wasting your vote on perot (ensuring clinton won), wasting your vote on nader (ensuring bush won), wasting your vote on kucinich and ron paul, etc.

and so, i guess the lesson is for me: also part of politics are the committed partisans. the fools who will always vote blindly idealistically, never intelligently and strategically. and you are just damaged goods for the shrewd politician to route around

the permanently clueless. so idealistic and naive about how democracy works

btw, to preempt some of you even stupider than the idealistic and naive:
1. democracy is still a better form of government than any else.
2. also: triparty and quadparty systems have their own shortcomings, such as ridiculous coalitions between ideologically opposed parties in order to retain party. go ahead, ask any german about greens getting in bed with the far right
3. furthermore, the democrats and the republicans ARE different parties and DO represent different values. to explain it to you in parable: two peaks in the rocky mountains viewed from out on the great plains are the same. but in a mountain valley in the rockies, the two peaks couldn't be more different. in other words, if you see the republicans and the democrats as the same, you yourself are so far out on the ideological bell curve, the real issue is that you yourself are so out of touch wi

What I've learned from all of this...

[Maltheus]

Well after reading everyones' comments, I can now conclude that Obama just made the biggest mistake of his campaign to date. All of his other controversies just led me to roll my eyes and say the press is taking fluff too seriously. But apparently, a lot of you actually thought that Obama was the real deal, representing the little guy, instead of the status quo. I've read comment after comment here by people who've been shocked back into apathy.

You can bet that the media won't report this as much of a misstep. No, they'll probably conclude that it was good for him to do. But this is the first time I've seen his base start to wobble in any real way. Even more so than with Jeremiah Wright. I had always assumed that he had it locked up, but now I wonder if McCain might not have a shot after-all.

Obama could have easily stuck to his guns and further energized his base. Republicans wouldn't have been any more likely to turn out for McCain if Obama had voted against it. All he needs to do is hold onto his base and the election is easily his. McCain will never be able to turn out his base in significant numbers unless Obama chose Hillary as his running mate or we get another 9/11 style event. But with a steady enough build-up, it only takes a few stumbles by Obama for McCain to get within striking distance.

Either way, we're screwed. The next president will take all of the totalitarian powers that Bush had and expand upon them, without regard for the next guy who'll inherit those powers. The congress will continue to rubber-stamp it all and our standard of living will continue to decline. There's no turning back now. There is only starting over.