I'm having a hard time reconciling Obama's latest vote on the FISA bill. I can't understand why, when the majority of the people in the country are clamoring for change, the Democrats unite to hand Bush what he has been asking for - greater latitude for the government to eavesdrop on people (the caveat is that they are "suspected of links to terrorism" - a rather broad and undefined description that can be tweaked to include basically everyone) and providing the phone companies with legal immunity.
Ugh.
UPDATE - 4:18pm
I swear I just heard on the Randi Rhodes show someone say that Hillary also voted Yea. She did not. Want to call Obama to let him know your thoughts? His presidential campaign number is (866) 675-2008.
1 comment:
I can't really defend the vote, from Obama or from any of the Democrats. From any of the Republicans, for that matter. It doesn't seem difficult to figure out the right side of this one...when in doubt, side with the Constitution.
All I can figure is that the Democrats didn't want to be the ones who failed to pass FISA, at which point all of the Republicans start shouting "weak on defense" and jump around and try to scare people. Sadly, that has been a successful tactic in past elections.
Also, your blog readers seem like pretty political-savvy folk, and you're getting almost no feedback with regard to FISA. That says to me that not a lot of people know anything about it. So the Democrats bail on a bill that is important but nobody cares about. Pretty lame, but I guess that's politics?
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