Quote:
Originally Posted by scaeagles
Obama is doing everything he can to move to the center. This is just one of many things recently that he has changed his position on to do so.
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He and 94 Democrats.
Of course, I'll reiterate that my support for Obama has always had little to do with the specifics of his stances and whether they've been consistent and has had almost everything to do with the fact that he has demonstrated a level of decorum which has allowed him to disagree with people without resorting to vitriol towards those he disagrees with. That has not changed and that alone continues to distinguish him from a great many of his colleagues.
He'll probably hear from me about this, not that I expect that will make much of an impact.
Though, truth be told, I'm not entirely sure I'm against the bill. On the one hand I'm not comfortable with the access the government has to the data. On the other hand, this bill doesn't do as much to change that access as people would like you to believe. Remember, the whole wire tapping flap stemmed not from the government wire tapping in ways that were not legal. They just didn't go through the correct channels to get authorization to use methods that, once authorized, would be legal. So I'm not totally convinced that altering the authorization method is quite the end-of-the-world move that it might seem on the surface.
That said, the lack of the kind of authorization method that Bush wants is NOT the massive hindrance he'd like us to believe either and voting against this bill would have been a powerful message that should have been sent. And definitely should not have been compromised for dumb pork barrel reasons.