Two very different political stories today, with an underlying commonality:
Story 1: Obama and other Democrats cave on FISA (telecom immunity), in order to keep the issue off of the general election radar and look "tough" on terrorism. So Obama and the Dems do the WRONG thing, for the political expediency.
Story 2: The Justice Dept. Inspector General released the first of a series of reports investigating the politicization of the Justice Dept. He pulls no punches in the report and says that two of the government officials, in regards to one of the Justice Dept. programs that deliberately chose Republican over Democratic lawyers, not only broke Justice Department policy, but also broke the law. So Inspector General Fine does the RIGHT thing, despite the political pressure to cave and give Justice Department officials a pass.
P.S. Obama's excuse for voting for FISA this time because, "the phone issue doesn't override the security interests of the American people" is simply despicable.
P.P.S. Feingold and Dodd did the right thing.
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Unfortunately, the FISA vote and Obama's comments give legs to my gut feeling that Obama is the same old thing -- a politician who says he (and I'm not going to bother to be gender inclusive here, because history reflects the fact that it's not yet applicable under these facts - Presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm was more of a Chris Dodd than a Barack Obama)represents change, but as you know, I fear it's talk of a type that's walked many a campaign trail.
Obama's prior campaigns (and if one reviews his 12 years of political experience, it consists of arguably far more campaigning than governing) have already exhibited typical examples of political pandering, such as Obama's pro-gun stance in backing legislation to allow retired law enforcement officials to continue to carry weapons in Illinois, in spite of studies showing that such retirees, no longer required to be periodically checked out on weapon handling, have presented a danger to themselves and others in practice.
But as a result of this somewhat uncharacteristic stance, Obama gained the desired official public backing of their organization prior to election.
I also was sickened and disheartened by Obama's actions and statements regarding this recent FISA vote this past week.
And our Dem. KS Reps. Dennis Moore and Nancy Boyda also both voted in favor of warrantless wiretapping (making legal what the current administration was doing illegally) and telephone company immunity for aiding and abetting the government in breaking federal law.
http://clerk.house.gov/
evs/2008/roll437.xml
I tired of Obama's emphatic claims during the primaries regarding what he would have done had he been in the US Senate when they voted to grant authority to the President to authorize war in Iraq in 2002.
Given the significant number of times that Obama has chosen to cast a vote of PRESENT in his past 3 years or so in the Senate, a fact which John Edwards chastised Obama for in at least one debate, my hunch has been that Obama's claim of having the right idea on the war, a claim central to his primary campaign, was a sanctimonious one.
All I know is that, at this point, Obama had better be a good enough politican to spin this vision without legs all the way to the White House. No amount of spin can make John McCain anything but what he is, McSame.
As for how much Obama's recent vote in favor of the FISA bill does to beef up his Tough on Terrorism profile, the facts need to be strong enough to outweigh this fact, already on his Senate record --
And that is, that Obama has admitted publicly, including in debate, that he missed 2 of 3 meetings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since joining that panel and that, as Chair of the subcommittee on European Affairs he has not called a single oversight hearing on Afghanistan, where we obviously are still waging a war, and which would fall to him in that role.
Thus, Afghanistan has not received any recent Senate oversight or monitoring while Obama has campaigned for the Presidency.
Obama was scheduled to make a first visit to Afghanistan when he visited Iraq in 2006, but changed plans and went on to Jordan and Israel instead. He now has plans to visit Iraq again, plus Afghanistan, before the Democratic convention in August.
Spideywhomper
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