2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

2001, rather.

He supported the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006.

Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on S.2271 - USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Mr. President, four years ago, following one of the most devastating attacks in our nation's history, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act to give our nation's law enforcement the tools they needed to track down terrorists who plot and lurk within our own borders and all over the world - terrorists who, right now, are looking to exploit weaknesses in our laws and our security to carry out even deadlier attacks than we saw on September 11th.

We all agreed that we needed legislation to make it harder for suspected terrorists to go undetected in this country. Americans everywhere wanted that.

But soon after the PATRIOT Act passed, a few years before I ever arrived in the Senate, I began hearing concerns from people of every background and political leaning that this law didn't just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to keep us safe, but powers it didn't need to invade our privacy without cause or suspicion.

Now, at times this issue has tended to degenerate into an "either-or" type of debate. Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. But that is a false choice. It asks too little of us and assumes too little about America.

Fortunately, last year, the Senate recognized that this was a false choice. We put patriotism before partisanship and engaged in a real, open, and substantive debate about how to fix the PATRIOT Act. And Republicans and Democrats came together to propose sensible improvements to the Act. Unfortunately, the House was resistant to these changes, and that's why we're voting on the compromise before us.

Let me be clear: this compromise is not as good as the Senate version of the bill, nor is it as good as the SAFE Act that I have cosponsored. I suspect the vast majority of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle feel the same way. But, it's still better than what the House originally proposed.

This compromise does modestly improve the PATRIOT Act by strengthening civil liberties protections without sacrificing the tools that law enforcement needs to keep us safe. In this compromise:

We strengthened judicial review of both National Security Letters, the administrative subpoenas used by the FBI, and Section 215 orders, which can be used to obtain medical, financial and other personal records.

We established hard time limits on sneak-and-peak searches and limits on roving wiretaps.

We protected most libraries from being subject to National Security Letters.

We preserved an individual's right to seek counsel and hire an attorney without fearing the FBI's wrath.

And we allowed judicial review of the gag orders that accompany Section 215 searches.

The compromise is far from perfect. I would have liked to see stronger judicial review of National Security Letters and shorter time limits on sneak and peak searches, among other things.

Sen. Feingold has proposed several sensible amendments - that I support - to address these issues. Unfortunately, the Majority Leader is preventing Sen. Feingold from offering these amendments through procedural tactics. That is regrettable because it flies in the face of the bipartisan cooperation that allowed the Senate to pass unanimously its version of the Patriot Act - a version that balanced security and civil liberties, partisanship and patriotism.

The Majority Leader's tactics are even more troubling because we will need to work on a bipartisan basis to address national security challenges in the weeks and months to come. In particular, members on both sides of the aisle will need to take a careful look at President Bush's use of warrantless wiretaps and determine the right balance between protecting our security and safeguarding our civil liberties. This is a complex issue. But only by working together and avoiding election-year politicking will we be able to give our government the necessary tools to wage the war on terror without sacrificing the rule of law.

So, I will be supporting the Patriot Act compromise. But I urge my colleagues to continue working on ways to improve the civil liberties protections in the Patriot Act after it is reauthorized.

I thank the chair and yield the floor.

JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER POLITICIAN
SAY ONE THING AND BE MISREPRESENTED AS BELIEVING ANOTHER

But I urge my colleagues to continue working on ways to improve the civil liberties protections in the Patriot Act after it is reauthorized.

and has that happened, and did he truly think it would?

That's the point, deej -- you can SAY anything...

yeah if only he could somehow strongarm everyone into believing what he believes. its almost as if he has to work in a representative democracy with people who disagree, representing people who disagree

OK somebody photoshop a wistful Obama's face on Cusack's body holding up that radio, please please please.

fine deej, YOU WIN; how bout all of Ireland's other points?

(I knew that was comin, TH)

http://i28.tinypic.com/fok4fl.jpg

YES

HELL YES

Will America hear the music?

yeah if only he could somehow strongarm everyone into believing what he believes. its almost as if he has to work in a representative democracy with people who disagree, representing people who disagree

-- deej, Monday, March 17, 2008 12:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

morbius only participates in democracy as outlined in the bestselling self-help book 'the secret'

I only participate in democracy as outlined by a mob stoning inbred Southern gangbang nerds.

Love you guys "voting against beliefs" = cleareyed virtue. No wonder THESE ARE GREAT CANDIDATES!

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/03/usa-todaygallup.html?csp=34

........

I only participate in democracy as outlined by a mob stoning inbred Southern gangbang nerds.

ILEpitaphs

heh...The college I work at in PA just sent around a flustered e-mail about the security risk posed by the flood of Obama campaigners showing up on campus.

lock up your daughters!

How much does it benefit to McCain to get to fly to Iraq and look concerned/Presidential while the Democrats are still giving each other purple nurples?

considering he's there at the same time as Dick Cheney, who's calling the war a 'successful endeavor', and that their travel to the area provides a context in which journos can write up the newest suicide attack... debatable.

they also get to bring up mccain's "safe stroll through the marketplace" accompanied by gunship helicopters

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/17/obama_plans_speech_on_race_1.html

guess we'll see whether the Wright thing gets put to bed

According to WaPo, Obama's giving a speech tomorrow in PA. About race.

In the comments following the report I saw this, it's part of a larger post:

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of imminent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Who is s/he?

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/a_last_minute_hurdle_erected_i.php

The proposed primary re-vote legislation in Michigan prevents those who've voted in the Republican primary from voting in the re-vote.

Fair enough, right?

But about 32% of the those who voted in the GOP primary, according to the exit polls, were Democrats or independents.

It's a fair bet that many of them were Obama supporters, as he was not on the original Michigan ballot.

This could be a dealbreaker for the Obama campaign in Michigan.

xpost Someone called Frank Schaeffer, who I cross referenced in HuffPo, where he contributes. In the WaPo blog post he continues:

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html )

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

damn i read some schaffer back inna day, never saw the nazi ish. the strain ran through all his work though. didn't know his son had moved left?

He could have moved left. More importantly, someone pointing out the blindingly obvious about the religious right from his vantage point has to be taken seriously by those he criticizes.

somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

(ie partisanship trumps logic every time)

full transcript of Obama on News Hour here:

http://thepage.time.com/transcript-of-obamas-interview-on-newshour/

^^^ so sharp

dmx speaks out on the presidential race

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=20332

that fucking guy

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.

But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.

We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.

Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.

The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?

He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!
Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.

Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.

posted and discussed above

i dont read above theyre just gonna do what theyre gonna do i aint really paying mch attention

CNN: NO FLORIDA DO OVER

lolz Florida incapable of holding an election

oh god so it begins

hahahahah bill sez "if dems used the same delegate allocation rules as the republicans, then hillary would be ahead"

"if hilary had won more votes, then hilary would be ahead"

Bill comes back out of the woodwork = Beginning of the end for Hil

If Dems used the same rules, Gore would be finishing up his second term.

if i were in charge dmx would be president

DMX/BDP fresh for '08

CNN: NO FLORIDA DO OVER

Where are you seeing this?

on CNN

No, I know, there's just nothing on the website right now.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Thanks.