DKOS wants Obama to keep his vow...

[dkf]

Amnesty, Obama, and the Good Fight
by mcjoan
Sun Jun 22, 2008 at 10:14:22 AM PDT

Following up on Hunter's excellent post on why we care about FISA, I want to home in on one part of the whole debacle, and why keeping Barack Obama to his vow to try to strip immunity from the bill is important.

Here's Glenn in an important post on the larger issues behind this bill, and Obama's support of it.

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

The ACLU specifically identifies the ways in which this bill destroys meaningful limits on the President's power to spy on our international calls and emails. Sen. Russ Feingold condemned the bill on the ground that it "fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." Rep. Rush Holt -- who was actually denied time to speak by bill-supporter Silvestre Reyes only to be given time by bill-opponent John Conyers -- condemned the bill because it vests the power to decide who are the "bad guys" in the very people who do the spying.

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/22/115325/671/841/540213

[Cha]

1. Good..

Check it out, Obama!

[Imagevision]

2. Oh I get it, if Obama votes against opposition to telecom amnesty it won't pass?

[golddigger]

5. No, but will he keep his word on it. It's all about word's, Right?

[lyonn]

3. Example, my granddaughter was in Europe for school

for several months this summer and I e-mailed her often. Just imagine simply because you call or e-mail a friend or relative in a foreign country that your info was being save for who knows how long. There is personal info on both parties being out there for the govt. to see. None of us have anything to hide but maybe silly talk and personal stuff. Believe it is called a privacy issue.

You gotta hope our govt. intel agencies have a better method of keeping up with the terrorist than billions of e-mails and phone calls for someone to pour over??

I'm all for a filibuster over this and keep the bush admin. pissed over the Dems and not harassing Iran into a conflict.

[GoldieAZ49]

4. I guess words don't matter when spoken by a politician trying to get elected.

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries," but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty."

Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) continue to oppose the new legislation, as does Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). All Obama backers in the primary, those senior lawmakers contend that the new version of the FISA law -- crafted after four months of intense negotiations between White House aides and congressional leaders -- provides insufficient court review of the pending 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies alleging privacy invasion for their participation in a warrantless wiretapping program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/06/20/obama_supports_fisa_legislatio.html

Really, how important is the constitution? Just more words. No POTUS should have the power to spy on the citizens, not Bush, Obama or McCain.