our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike... the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over... It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity... a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act... But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise
Barack Obama is an extremely intelligent and well-educated man. He went to Columbia for undergrad and Harvard for law school, was the president of the Harvard Law Review, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for a decade. He's also a very strong, public-oriented man who turned down the ridiculously ludicrous jobs that are available to presidents of the Harvard Law Review to work as a community organizer. I can hardly believe that he has said these things.
Our national security agencies already have the capability to gather whatever the crap they want. They can decide to wiretap someone and not tell anyone in the world about it for 3 days as long as they then ask a rubberstamp secret court to retroactively grant them a warrrant. That is not a high standard, it's very low! And yet it is not low enough for some reason. The president's program of warrantless wiretapping will only be over insofar as now the requirements to get a warrant are even more horrendously mite-league t-ball than they were before, although given the fact that the president didn't have to do shit to get a warrant before and still chose not to, I don't see why he'd start paying attention to that ol' amendment now. This bill does not firmly re-establish judicial oversight, it makes it even weaker than it was before and devalues the whole judicial branch in that it's a preemption of the courts that would have heard the cases brought by spied-upon Americans against the telecoms. It's also certainly not the product of grassroots organizations, which are nearly categorically opposed to it, or of the people, who oppose it overwhelmingly.
Obama knows what the Constitution demands. He knows what the current FISA law is, he knows what this new one will be, and he knows what grassroots organizing is. And yet he just says, "Fuck it, I know what's going on, but I choose the opposite anyway." He has no excuse, he's too smart and too well-educated.
Well, fuck you too, Barack. We have shitty leaders in Congress right now who are ready to give President Gol' Dang Bush, one of the most unpopular, ineffective, and damaging presidents in US history, a victory on FISA. Why the hell would they capitulate, why would they even allow this to be discussed? Who knows, and yet they do. I was counting on you, Barack, to step in and take our party and country in a new direction, and yet here you are, with this shit coming out of your mouth like it was worth the smell. I was counting on you for strength, leadership, a commitment to the Constitution, and a commitment to us, and you go and do this? Unbelievable. The question was about people illegally spied upon by rich corporations with hordes of lawyers whose fucking job it is to know communications and wiretapping law acting in ways they knew were illegal because of the illicit requests of a runaway-crazy executive branch, Do those people have any fucking recourse, Do they have any power at all, and Barack Obama, not George Bush, not Dick Cheney, not John McCain, Barack Obama says "No, citizens, you ain't got shit!" Eat a dick, you fucking pandering-ass mother fucker.
The whole liberal blogosphere is basically erupting right now, so maybe he'll think better of this sick blue dog shit and flip back against it in a couple days, but even if tomorrow he comes out with a statement saying everything I want to hear, it still won't be the same for me. It turns out that Barack Obama is willing to sell us and the Constitution short for virtually no gain at all, and that makes me real sad, real fucking sad indeed. Not to mention pissed.
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