What the Hell's Wrong with Obama? (Part Two)

We're against this. We were against domestic spying when George W. Bush was president. We haven't changed our position.

The over-stepping of executive powers, especially those that threaten to unleash even more "investigative freedom" for the executive branch, should concern every American. Unfortunately, certain Republicans only find their outrage when a Democrat is in office. They applauded all the Patriot Act nonsense when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were seizing unconstitutional power to spy domestically. Now those same Republican voices, joined by tea baggers, are going ape-shit over this new proposed internet snoop-ability. Just check out some of the comments posted to the Times article linked above.

I told you so well before Barack Obama was elected: "...Republicans who claim to love the Constitution and who profess themselves giddy that they've gotten the congressional Democrats to cave on FISA [in June 2008] might want to consider these extraordinary spying powers in the hands of a president of the other party. We don't want them in the hands of a president of EITHER party."

The lust of the government for more ways to spy on us, once the Bush administration had thrown open that door, is pretty understandable and pretty awful. But the situational ethics of Republicans just pisses me off.

The Politics of Fear

"Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power - and that's exactly what this [FISA Amendments Act of 2008] allows. The ACLU will not sit by and let this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment go unchallenged. Electronic surveillance must be conducted in a constitutional manner that affords the greatest possible protection for individual privacy and free speech rights. The new wiretapping law fails to provide fundamental safeguards that the Constitution unambiguously requires."

--ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, announcing the lawsuit filed to block implementation of the FISA Amendments Act

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed by Senate Democrats on Wednesday and signed by President Bush yesterday, not only legalizes the secret warrantless surveillance program the president approved in late 2001, but it also gives the government new spying powers, including the power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications.

Gutless Democrats, who voted for this abomination:

Baucus of Montana
Bayh of Indiana
Carper of Delaware
Casey of Pennsylvania
Conrad of North Dakota
Feinstein of California
Inouye of Hawaii
Johnson of South Dakota
Kohl of Wisconsin
Landrieu of Louisiana
Lincoln of Arkansas
McCaskill of Missouri
Mikulski of Maryland
Nelson of Florida
Nelson of Nebraska
Obama of Illinois
Pryor of Arkansas
Rockefeller of West Virginia
Salazar of Colorado
Webb of Virginia
Whitehouse of Rhode Island

We've already expressed our anger with the winning Democratic presidential nominee. We note that all the other Democratic senators who ran for president this year voted against this assault on our Constitution ... Clinton, Biden, Dodd, and the nominee of 2004, John Kerry.

We're giving what money we have to give to the ACLU. At least they're willing to stand up for freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.