Say It Aint So ‘O’

I’m still in shock over Obama’s announcement that he will vote to give the telecom’s retroactive immunity after they allowed the NSA to illegal wiretap people without warrants. Obama said that “given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay.”

I have yet to hear any evidence that the wiretapping has made us any safer. President Bush has already whited out the Eight Amendment with his policy of torturing potentially guilty “enemy combatants”. The wiretapping vote effectively whites out the Fourth Amendment. I was hoping that Obama would move the debate back into the realm of reality. This hope is the reason that as many as 65,000 people have turned out to see him at rallies.

Instead, it appears that Obama is instead going to be playing the “security scare” game, where we pretend like the threat of terrorist attacks is so grave that we must ignore the principles this country was founded on in order to fight “a new kind of war.” Maybe this vote will make Obama a stronger “general election candidate”. But before he votes for this bill, I will need to hear him give a speech on why terrorists threats outweigh the Bill of Rights.