Barack's position on the recent bill has been a real blow to me, and I am struggling with it, so I will appreciate it if you guys will share your thinking on this.
I do believe Barack believes in our civil liberties. But we also have to look at the choices people make. This particular choice appears to fly in the face of who I thought Barack was at the core, which is why I am not able to dismiss this as just an area where we agree to disagree.
On one hand we have who we thought Barack was and what he stood for. On the other hand we have an action on a very serious matter that is in complete opposition to what we thought Barack stood for. It's well documented that people cannot live in a state of cognitive dissonance - which is when there is a discrepancy between what a person believes (or knows or values) and persuasive information that calls the beliefs or values into question. When that occurs, you basically have to either give up what you believed or you find a way to dismiss the persuasive information in some way. For me, this started on Thursday when Barack "went silent" on the recent bill at a time when he would normally have taken a stand. It got worse on Friday when he continued his silence for most of the day and then came out with his (I thought) lame statement on the bill that seems to fly in the face of who he is and what he stands for. It didn't get any better when Barack failed to post his statement on the Obama blogs - when normally every statement Barack makes ends up on a blog. I's been 4 days of cognitive dissonance for many of us, and it hasn't been fun. I have been unable to either completely give up my former view of Barack OR dismiss his position on the recent bill as not that important or not indicative of who Barack is. The best I have been able to figure out is that I will still vote for him, but I cannot give heart and soul and money because I no longer trust Barack the way I have since I first met him in the summer of 2004. I do not want to give up on Barack but am unable to let this go. UPDATE: I am going to remove any posts from this blog that come from "unknown user" or people we do not know. This is intended as a forum for conversation between people who I have come to know and respect over the past year. Any newcomers will likely have worthy opinions, and I hope they share them on the wider Barack Obama website.
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I haven't "weighed in" heavily regarding the FISA vote because I look at how somebody votes on legislation through a strictly practical lens: If the vote on a bill is so close that only a few votes make the difference between pass and fail, those are the situations in which I pay attention (for example, last year's Immigration Reform Bill in the Senate could have gone either way). In those cases, it matters a lot to me how one legislator votes. But in situations like this one where the bill is going to pass no matter what one (or a few) Senators do, I see the vote as impotent to begin with. At those moments, I don't mind so much if a presidential candidate makes a calculation that he or she doesn't wish to trade political capital for merely symbolic reasons. I consider most of what Congress does, frankly, to be a distraction, full of symbolism over substance, and the greater priority for me is changing the system, which is something that taking the levers of power in the executive branch will have far more impact on than a symbolic legislative vote by one senator. I understand that not everybody views it that way, and I respect their opinions, but I choose not to be sidetracked by it, or spend a lot of time on it.
Does anybody really think that unwarranted surveillance of US citizens abroad - our phones, our emails, etc. - isn't already happening? There's already a loophole big enough to drive a super-computer through on a trailer: There's no US law that prevents US law enforcement agencies from receiving recordings and data files from foreign agencies, or private sector telecommunications companies abroad, if permitted by the government in that country. Let me second what Al and Bill Conroy wrote, and also state that it applies to US citizens/non-citizens here in the US. I can tell you from first-hand experience -- first-hand, not second-hand, not 'I read it some place', not 'someone told me' -- that this has been going on since at least 1984. Domestically. Culled from the ten major nodes of the US telecommunications system. (San Francisco, Denver, Missouri, New Jersey, etc.) Stored underground near Falls Church VA, last I knew -- maybe they filled it -- in a massive multi-floor storage area several football fields per floor wide. I can also tell you, first-hand, that before 1994, there was a modicum of secrecy and protection involved -- before 1994 -- because of the internal culture of AT&T that viewed itself as a utility and a law unto iteslf, and as a major US govt national security player. When the hardware and software law changed with CALEA -- the stupidest thing we ever allowed -- foreign governments and companies were involved because of judicial deniability. That was the intel thinking then. My knowledge, again first-hand, involves Israeli companies, and their subsequent morphing into US subsidiaries with no ties to the motherland; they seized the opportunity when AT&T really broke up mid-1990s by getting the WH contract, then over quiet but intense objection becoming a US company
What happened in the 90s can be explained moreover by human nature. It's called greed and kickbacks -- a whole new candy store protected by national security claims; therefore those Liechtenstein and Costa Rican accounts were protected hola!-- and the late 90s dotcom boom with staggering profits, which caused foreign commercial/govt entities working with US intel to create US subsidiaries to cash in on a greater scale. Our exploding digital technological world was the ocean these characters now wanted to cruise on to buy islands in the Pacific and tschotkes for mistresses. No one paid adequate attention to this during the Clinton admin, when all the dark players dreamt this up, sometimes using political/religious motives as the ostensible reason. All this is what is giving many 90s-era congressmen on the Hill the heaves. Both Dem and Repub. Their participation then can make them unelectable now, and it frightens them. (I worked with some of these Reps; they rubber-stamped their sponsorship while having drinky-poos at fundraisers.) Bottom line: we out-sourced out intel (making our govt officials subject to blackmail, even today), we out-sourced our telecommunications (all call-record data are stored in foreign countries subject to their intel shenanigans; your bills are produced overseas), and we out-sourced our hardware and software to the extent that we have lost complete control over what can be collected. Or protected. My position, knowing what I know? Accountability and the truth. I want sunlight on the whole goddam thing, the whole megillah. I'm grown-up enough to say 'OK, so you did this, and you over there did that, and you did it because the guvvie came to you and said You Need To Act To Help Save Our Country, Blah-Blah, but the time has come to tell us what you did and what you're doing now'. Bitching about FISA is like bitching about the buttons on your coat being too tight. It doesn't address the body that still gets to walk around and do the same things. We need to know what those things are. In plain English. With flowcharts. And little Spy-vs-Spy icons.
Got an interesting analysis of the current FISA bill from someone who normally is on the ball with such things. This source predicts the bill will pass the Senate, but then be vetoed by Bush and sent back to correct one major flaw from the administration's perspective. This source claims, after reading the legislation, that the FISA bill as now structured pretty much insulates the telecom's from civil liability, but does not address the potential of future criminal liability -- which could become problematic in future years should we ever get a Congress or president with cajonas. I'm not certain we ever see the day where a criminal prosecution on this front gets a foothold, but you never know ... maybe there might be a prosecutor out there who still believes in equal enforcement of the law. I have not vetted the proposed legislation enough to determine if this source is right on the analysis, but it was an interesting perspective.
Quite frankly, I'm baffled by your latest statement. It seemed too tepid and consiliatory towards such an aggregeous act conducted by the president and telecoms against the constitutional rights of the American people. I look forward to you clearing up any misconceptions that statement implied. It's been an honor and privilege to support you, to spread your message, to correct misinformation and to fight like I never have in my life for a candidate to become president. No candidate will live up to everything everyone wants in a president, but integrity and 'protecting and defending the constitution' is pretty fundamental. I know you will do the right thing.
I've been on vacation the past few days, so I missed the FISA dust up. So how I understand this: Obama is supposed to fall on the sword on the FISA bill, with little to no support from other Democrats in Congress. The bill will pass anyway, and he'll have to spend time and money trying to reach the low information voters who have gathered from snippets on CNN that he voted against a bill that would protect us from terrorists (which bolsters their suspicisions that he is a Secret Muslim who is just waiting to institute sharia law the second he is sworn in on the Koran after not saying the Pledge of Allegiance on Inaguration Day). Secret confession time. I don't give a crap about the FISA bill. I've read all of the info and I know I am supposed to be calling my Senator daily, but I can't pretend to care. Immunity from lawsuits for telecom companies who spy on Americans? What abut the government who authorizes the spying? That for sure won't change with McCain in the White House. So Obama is still getting my money and my support. I am not trying to say that people shouldn't care about this. We all have our core issues, and Obama is going to disappoint all of us at some point with a stand he takes.
The laws that were created under FISA were sufficient to meet our countryʼs national security needs. What the Bush administration has done, again, is present Americans with a false choice between national security and civil liberties, while this bill increases neither. I oppose any broad retroactive immunity provided to companies who may have broken the law. The legal purpose of immunity is to use the protection granted by such immunity as an inducement to divulge information about what occurred. Immunity in this case would do the opposite: it would shut down any investigation into what actually occurred."
FISA Trojan Horse? Submitted June 25, 2008 - 10:04 pm by Bill Conroy I keep thinking about this FISA immunity as being a Trojan Horse for the Administration, and that even if it passes, they won't go for it. Not likely, maybe. But the thought occurred to me that if as a condition of getting immunity from the civil suits, the telecom's have to get a statement from the president saying he authorized them to spy on Americans absent a warrant (a criminal violation of FISA by the Administration) doesn't that serve as evidence against the Administration of law breaking -- even if at the same time it provides immunity from civil prosecution for the telecoms? Could that be possible? And if so, might the Administration be reluctant to provide such a letter of acknowledgement for fear that in the future it might be used against those involved as evidence of a criminal violation of the FISA law -- and it doesn't appear, from what I can see, that criminal violations are not absolved by this current bill. At a minimum, the image of the president's signature on such a statement couldn't play very well in the current election cycle for the Republican cause. The Dem.'s voted to enhance our security with FISA reform (even if that's a crock, it's a political talking point) after the President admitted, see, we have his signature here, to a criminal violation of the FISA law. And might not that slight of hand in this bill be something the Administration would be reluctant to discuss publicly, since to announce that concern to the media would essentially be the same as announcing guilt. It couldn't be that slick, could it? I'm sure I'm missing something. Any thoughts?
