Another OBAMA flip flop

[Tigermike 3,046]

Barack Obama reversed his position on FISA reform yesterday, giving the Left a taste of the real Obama for the second time this week. After Obama abandoned public financing, most of his supporters in the hard-Left base seemed willing to write that off as good politics.

Obama Supports FISA Legislation, Angering Left

By Paul Kane

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign. (They must have been looking at public opinion polls again.)

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists. (Will the far left see him for what he is? Will they turn on him? No and no.)

In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a "vital national security matter" -- and alienating his base.

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries," but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty." (Does that mean Dodd & Feingold are under the bus now?)

Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) continue to oppose the new legislation, as does Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). All Obama backers in the primary, those senior lawmakers contend that the new version of the FISA law -- crafted after four months of intense negotiations between White House aides and congressional leaders -- provides insufficient court review of the pending 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies alleging privacy invasion for their participation in a warrantless wiretapping program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The immunity outcome is predetermined," Feingold wrote in a memo today.

Obama came down on the side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who argued that a provision in the new law reaffirmed that FISA, and that act's courts, gives the final say over government spying. President Bush has argued that a war-time chief executive has powers that trump FISA.

"It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance -- making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law," Obama said today.

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the most prominent Republican opponent of the compromise bill, issued a statement today calling that exclusivity provision "meaningless because that specific provision is now in [the] 1978 act." Specter said Bush just ignored existing law in starting the warrantless surveillance program.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2...legislatio.html

It’s becoming clear even to the Left that Obama has no real firm principles, only ambition. This FISA package doesn’t differ much from the compromise Senate bill in February — one supported by a significant number of Democrats then — except that it requires a court to certify that telecoms meet the prerequisites for immunity that the first bill granted outright. As Feingold notes, the bill drafts those requirements to ensure that the applications will be approved, as they should be, since the government assured the telecoms that the activities were legal. Obama’s stated reason for switching — that it restores FISA and wiretap statutes — was true of the previous version as well.

What changed? Obama doesn’t need the hard Left to get past Hillary Clinton. In fact, Code Pink, International ANSWER, and that “grassroots movement” will become liabilities in a general-election campaign against a nationally-known war hero. He tossed them under the bus with as much consideration as he did Jeremiah Wright and Jim Johnson.

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[Justin5 20]

But you have said, as with McCain's flops, that if the flop is in support of your views its ok, right?

You should be celebrating that our next President agrees with you at least on something.

[arnaldoabru 11]

McCain flips flops more than a bank bream.