Democracyblog

 

Hello again Dear Friends,

 

I have to admit these political in between times are a little bit boring. We are in between Obama’s victory as the presumptive Democratic nominee and the Convention which will ( be the beginning of) start a very eventful presidential campaign.
 

However, there are a couple of interesting events worth mentioning.

There is a new anchor man at CNN whose show is at 10 AM Pacific Standard Time on Sundays. His name is Fareed Zakarias and his show is called GPS.  He has his own homepage: http://www.fareedzakaria.com/ as well as the following CNN page: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.zakaria.gps/.  There are lots of great videos including videos featuring Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger.

This is one of the few news programs that allow those being interviewed to develop their ideas without constant questions and interruptions from the interviewer.

As an example the last show featured Obama and his ideas on international politics.  It was interesting, Obama was brilliant and the show was worth watching.

 

The important event that did not receive extensive great coverage was the vote on FISA.

The FISA law was slightly improved in some minor ways but the ACLU felt compelled to act to uphold American civil liberties.

The preamble of their lawsuit summarized the problem in the best possible terms.
After the Senate vote which approved this “weakening of the Constitution”, The ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the new 2008 FISA law:

“The law challenged here supplies none of the safeguards that the Constitution demands. It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents without identifying the people under surveillance; without specifying the facilities, places, premises, or property to be monitored; without observing meaningful limitations on the retention, analysis, and dissemination of acquired information; without obtaining individualized warrants based on criminal or foreign intelligence probable cause; and, indeed, without even making prior administrative determinations that the targets of surveillance are foreign agents or connected in any way, however tenuously, to terrorism.”

 

This same concept was expressed by one of our Founding Fathers, the extremely brilliant Benjamin Franklin when he said,

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

 

This was a major test for Barack Obama.

Did he fail the test?

No if our expectations are that he will be a GOOD President.

Yes if our expectations are that he will be a GREAT President.

 

When the Constitution and Civil Liberties are at stake it is not unreasonable to hope that the candidate of change acts differently than the Washington establishment he criticizes so vehemently.

 

There is no doubt that despite a great deal of pressure from Moveon and some of his other supporters Barack Obama played it safe to protect his resume and anything that could be used against him by the Republicans who will be too happy to characterize him as weak on defense and terrorism in the future.

 

I personally understand that he should show that he is strong against terrorism, but I was hoping that he would ask for a sunset provision of one year which would serve as a time limit after which the discussion would be reopened, the bill reevaluated and improved and voted on again.

 

The question is still:

Will Obama be a Great President or a Good President despite his FISA vote?

 

Eric Lafayette

www.fordemocracy.com