 |
In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen — in places where one would never have expected to find them — all sorts of claims about why this FISA “compromise” isn’t really so bad after all.
People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration — or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller — suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did.
What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.
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.It’s either that Obama “chickened out” or — as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders — Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he’ll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good.
“I get on my knees and pray, we don’t get fooled again.” (The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again“) Although that could be said of either candidate right now.
I had a really long “I told you so!” post written up but I kept hitting the wrong keys because I was laughing so hard.
I went over to dailynutjobs.com and you can see them basically saying, “Okay, he’s a criminal despot but we need to make sure he gets elected anyway because he’s a Dem.” Sheeple to the last. LOL
If Obama is a despot, then yes, we will be fooled again.
Not so with McSame. He’s not trying to fool us, rather he is promising us the third Bush term. No fooling there.
Despot==President. The difference after Bush is hard to spot. That is exactly why Nixon and Bush should have been impeached/prosecuted. One of the main reasons for law enforcement is to send a message to other would be criminals/er, presidents, is they are indeed not above the law.
I see this tradition breaking down. Few people give up power. Its what make Washington with all his faults, the great man he was.
Bobbo, agreed, there should be more impeachments. As it is, Nixon resigned. I wish they had stared earlier back with LBJ or JFK or FDR or earlier. YOur reasoning for impeachments is quite valid. Nixon is his autobiography said that he did some of what he did because that’s how he understood politics is played. He was sorry for Watergate, but not for sending the IRS after Democrats.
#41–Mike==you are being very gracious. Your thoughts on Bush?
An impeachment of Bush is OK with me. He’s not doing anywhere near what he promised, surprise surprise. However, the Democrats keep pushing the wrong cases for impeachment. The WMD line and the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame part are dead ends. Joe Wilson was and is lying. He only stops lying when he gets a good reporter asking questions, and then he starts backpedaling and says he was misquoted or something like that. The CIA stated that his trip to Niger helped strengthen the case that Iraq had WMD, yet Joe Wilson claims that he debunked documents, which he never saw.
#43 – Agreed. The correct impeachment angle is illegal wiretapping. Interesting that this should have brought down 2 Presidents but the Dems of today lack the spine.
#43–Mike==two short sentences say it ok to impeach Bush and 4 long ones criticize his detractors. I’d call that progress on your part unless you think unlike Patrick at #44 that Bush should be impeached for not wiretapping enough?
So, for clarity and good brain exercise==you were asked about Bush. Care to be more specific or have you had enough for this thread?
Screw this skinny fascist… Ron Paul all the way.
All I can say is this:
At least Obama is NOT a frackin’ oilman. We’ve been screwed, blued and tattooed enough by a rich guy and his gang trying to get richer.
I don’t remember any specific reasons right now. I don’t think the wiretapping is grounds for impeachment.
In increasing likelihood, I’d go with
allowing illegal immigration
torture
putting women in combat
pardons yet to come?
and if a case could be made lying about Iraq of course.
#50–Mike==good job. Nice to see at least you have noticed these things.
Let me give you this one: As I read the list, I noticed how guilty of all these Clinton was, and then I immediately wondered how many Obama will commit. Lie down with politicians, and you stand up with fleas.
I wouldn’t say Bill Clinton was guilty of any of those things except for pardons, and of course he was out of office at that point.
Use your own subject instead of abortion if you like:
There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly, that Senator [Obama] is the aptest instrument there is, with which to effect that object [of reducing the incidence of abortion]. . . .
They remind us that he is a very great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But “a living dog is better than a dead lion.” [Senator Obama], if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of [abortion]? He don’t care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the “public heart”‘ to care nothing about it. . . .
He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of [abortion] to one of a mere right of [choice]. . . Senator [Obama] holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday—that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong.
But, can we for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference?
Now, as ever, I wish to not misrepresent [Senator Obama’s] position, question his motives, or do ought that can be personally offensive to him.
Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.
But clearly, he is not now with us—he does not pretend to be—he does not promise to ever be.
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work—who do care for the result.
This is a paraphrase of Lincoln on Douglas.