SubscribeEverybody screams that they want their favorite politician to take a stand on every single issue that comes up. Admittedly this is a big issue and one that I think is stand-worthy, but if a politician took a stand on every issue that came up, nothing at all would get done and the decisiveness that permeates politics will continue as usual.I think you mean 'indecisiveness', and in the case of FISA, that's exactly what we want! The current situation is much better then anything in this new bill, all this new bill does is give bush and the telecoms everything they want.
I think we need to start accepting Obama for what he is: A guy with a lot of charisma who's a bit of an intellectual lightweight andHuh? What makes Obama an 'intellectual lightweight'? Seems like an odd thing to say, there are a lot of reasons why someone might not care about FISA, and stupidity isn't the most obvious one. Part of the problem is that Obama would need to go up against the house and senate democratic leadership at a time when the party needs to be 'unified' It probably wouldn't kill him but it could get ugly behind the scenes. It was total bullshit for Peloci et al to pull this stunt now (or ever). He essentially had to chose between the Dem leadership and the hard core of the dem base, and chose the leadership. Obviously I would prefer it the other way around, but I don't think siding with the insiders and their lobbyist buddies makes him dumb.
John Dean's reading of the statute suggests that it immunizes telecom companies against civil lawsuits but not criminal prosecution. It's possible that the Republicans could get this passed, only to have President Obama direct his Attorney General to open an investigation next January.NO THAT IS COMPLETELY FALSE. Dean never said that the telecoms wouldn't be criminally liable. here is what dean has to say:
I said that when I read the bill, and talked to the folks at the ACLU who had been following it, that it was not clear. I raised it when appearing on Countdown with the hope that someone might figure it out. But that is the nature of this badly drafted bill that it is not clear what it does and does not do, and the drafters are not saying.Olbermann is completely full of shit on this, and what he's talking about (obama prosecuting telecom companies) is pure fantasy based on nothing but his own imagination. It's Total B.S.
But even if the bill is unclear there is no question the Bush Administration is not going to do anything to the telecoms, so the question is whether a future DOJ could -- and here there is case law protecting the telecoms. But there may be language buried in the bill that protects them as well but it can only be found by reading the bill with a half dozen other laws which I have not yet done.
I made no declarative statements rather I only raised questions that jumped at me when reading the 114 page monster.
[stand up for his principles] Even if it's not going to do any good? Even if it the bill's going to pass whether he opposes it or not? Even if it helps get John McCain elected?Oh come on, stopping this bill wouldn't be any more damaging then stopping it the last time it came up, which he was happy to do while the democratic primary was in full swing. Any demogaguing they could do for him not supporting this, they could do for him not supporting it this time around. And no one is going to not vote for him for not supporting the FISA extension who wasn't already not going to vote for him. This is about protecting the corrupt and cowardly democrats who run the house and senate.
Ending Bush's illegal program of warrantless surveillance is a good thing.This doesn't end the program, it legalizes it. Also, as far as we know the program ended with the original Protect America Act expired. The program is already gone, except for the wiretaps which were authorized under the act, which will expire this summer. The legal ability to make new taps has already expired. The program was first legalized when the first protect America act was passed. It's really amazing how many people have opinions about this without knowing the basic facts, which I guess happens when politicians lie about it constantly.
Are you serious? You think Obama's going to appoint Supreme Court justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? You think he's going to bomb Iran? You think he'll do his best to keep us in Iraq for a century? You think he'll veto laws banning torture? If you can't see any difference between Obama and McCain, then vote for Nader. That worked out great eight years ago, right?Now, more power to you if you wanna turn up the heat on B.O. on immunity and support ActBlue. I'm doing the same thing. Just don't get that confused with abandoning an entire host of other issues when it still looks like he's the best hope in the race for addressing them. Or, for that matter, that even if Obama's position looks somewhat compromised, McCain's is all but certainly completely so.
"Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother," Obama told Relevant Magazine. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions."Now, unlike the FISA bill, there are obviously a lot of people out there who are deeply opposed to abortion, and this kind of triangulation can move votes (as long as you're not too transparent about it). But there is no constituency for FISA beyond the telecom companies.
During the primaries, Obama was critical of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the federal ban on late-term abortions, saying that the court had disregarded "a woman's medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient."
Judge Walker's decision (.pdf) was issued in the case of Al-Haramain v. Bush. That lawsuit was brought against the Bush administration by an Oregon-based Muslim charity and two of its American lawyers, alleging that the Government violated FISA -- i.e., broke the law -- by eavesdropping on their telephone conversations without the warrants required by law. The warrantless eavesdropping occurred as part of Bush's NSA spying program, which entailed spying on Americans' international communications without warrants (the lawyers were in London when they spoke on the telephone to their client in Oregon). What makes this case unique is that the lawyers and charity know for certain that they were spied on as part of the secret NSA program because the DOJ accidentally produced transcripts of those calls.There is a lot more, but to call these lawsuits meritless is to be disconnected from reality. Now, obviously if they end up in the Roberts court, they could be overturned simply on political grounds, Ironically since essentially Obama would have to win the election and appoint some good judges by the time this gets to the supreme court, yet here he is, siding with those who want to cut these lawsuits off at the knees.
In his "On Language" column in The New York Times, William Safire wrote in 1988 that "flip-flop" has a long history as a synonym for "somersault". [ . . . ] In the archives of The New York Times, which go back to 1851, the earliest unequivocal mention of "flip-flop" as a change in someone's opinion, is in an October 23, 1890, report of a campaign speech in New York City. [ . . . ]
The term also was used extensively in the 2004 U.S. presidential election campaign. It was used by critics as a catch-phrase attack on John Kerry, claiming he was "flip-flopping" his stance on several issues, including the ongoing war in Iraq.
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posted by about_time at 11:18 AM on July 4, 2008 [3 favorites]