Since right-wing mouthpieces act like there's never been criticism of the president on the scale experienced by G.W. Bush by the mainstream media (read: "liberal media," or not them), conservatives can probably now rest assured the Daily Show will live on should Obama be elected.
Should still be plenty of fodder.
I posted about the FISA bill's troubles before, but now the bill — which would grant retroactive immunity to telecom companies for their help with illegal spying by the government — is back and guess who signed up in support? Obama.
Apparently the Democratic apologists are out in force so as to clear any criticism of the gentleman from Illinois from his path to the White House. Pathetic, but sadly not surprising.
Glenn Greenwald skewers Obama, and his apologists, as well as you can. A couple gems include:
There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism — "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" — and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.
And:
What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it. What's more, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, and yet he's supporting it anyway. Anyone who sugarcoats or justifies that is doing a real disservice to their claimed political values and to the truth.
I can't stomach the thought of McCain winning, and want the Republicans out of office as much as anyone, but not at the expense of being able to criticize McCain's opponent. And especially not if it means giving the next president the same unchecked (begging to be abused) power as Bush.
A bad sign of things to come? Probably. He is a politician, folks. Via.
