Letter to the Editor - Tapping Out Wire Taps by David M. Quintana - Queens Ledger

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Queens Gazette - Obama Backtracks...

The Wave - Troubling Election Season...

Tapping Out Wire Taps

Dear Editor:

For months all we were told by those in the media was how Senator Obama was a new type of candidate, that he was a non-political politician, that he was above the fray, and that he was running to change politics as we have known it within the Washington beltway. Obama portrays himself as transcending traditional divides

You all must have heard thousands of times how he was a new type of politician. Senator Obama was billed as a reformer cast from the same mold as was Robert F. Kennedy. He was certainly said to be from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

I never bought into this theory, I never saw or heard how his campaign rhetoric really explained how he planned to do anything of substance nor did I hear any semblance of what he had already accomplished, all I heard was flowery vacuous speeches in front of mostly young enthusiastic crowds, ala a rock star.

Now within weeks of virtually securing the Democratic Party nomination, he has thrown the progressive principles he was supposed to stand for out the window.

For starters, he has decided to break his promises to run his campaign outside of the federal campaign finance limitations. Barack Obama s decision not to take public funds for the general election was a total reversal of his previous positions, as the huckster/wizard in “The Wizard of Oz says, “in the vernacular of the peasantry,” it’s nothing short of a flip-flop, a sheer calculation designed for political expediency. Obama’s decision in this matter reflects a Washington “business as usual” attitude toward politics. All of a sudden, Obama, after agreeing for 2 years with the public financing of presidential campaigns, now says that “the system is broken”.

And secondly and most importantly, he has decided to vote in favor of the Bush/Cheney cabal corporate mindset and has chosen to trample upon the US Constitution by supporting the FISA bill which can be summed up as the Telecom Immunity Act.

There is absolutely no need for a new FISA bill, the facts are that the current law allows the President to engage in secret wiretapping, even to the extent of waiting three days after beginning a wiretap to ask permission from a secret court. There is no imminent security threat nor any loophole that demanded additional action, as far as I can ascertain.

To be clear, this act totally eviscerates the Fourth Amendment to our sacred Constitution and allows the telecom industry to operate outside the law and helps the federal government spy on each and everyone of us.

This is in my mind, it is a total capitulation to a lame duck president who is at historic lows in popularity with the American people. Senator Obama has embraced and is pandering to the extreme right wing zealots. It is surely a prime example of him helping to inch our nation closer towards Fascism -- the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government. Senator Obama has chosen to “retroactively immunize corporate criminals,” instead of standing up for our Constitution and the common man .

I can’t say strongly enough how I feel the Senator has cowered to the ultra right wing Republican thugs and I believe these actions display a demonstrated weakness and a monumental lack of strength.

In closing, if Senator Obama cannot show courage now and stand up to those who would harm our basic American freedoms, as our forefathers clearly articulated in the Constitution, how can we trust him to stand up for the American people in this violent and ever stringent world of terrorists and enemies throughout the world.

Sincerely,
David M. Quintana
Ozone Park

CrooksandLiars.com - Bush is a Fascist..Olbermann Special Comment on FISA

Countdown’s Keith Olbermann and guest Rachel Maddow look at the derailment of the straight talkin’ Maverick John McCain into the craven torture-endorsing flip-flopper that appears to have sold his integrity for the endorsement of the Republican leadership.

MADDOW: The White House admits, as of this month, to authorizing waterboarding. And they say that they authorized it because the way they looked at the law, they’re allowed to do that. It’s legal. Yeah right, but that’s what the White House said. They said, ‘The way we interpreted the law, we thought it was legal and we’re happy that we did it, and it was very useful.’ So Congress has therefore passed something that says, ‘actually, clearly, plainly, obviously this is illegal, if you didn’t think it was illegal before, let us make it more obvious for you.’ And that’s what John McCain voted against. So, in context, and logically, it is a vote for waterboarding because the White House has used this legal explanation, this legal cutthroat explanation, in order to…in order to justify what they admit to having already done. [..]

This decision is so plainly a political decision. This is John McCain reversing himself, not only in terms of being for waterboarding now, but the grounds on which he is for waterboarding. I mean, he’s the guy who made the argument that the Army Field Manual was sufficient. The only thing we need to understand about this is that John McCain made a sudden and otherwise inexplicable change of heart since November. A change of heart that brings him in line with what appears to be the Republican strategy for the general election this year, which is to pick deliberately provocative, deliberately controversial fights on the issues that they want this election to be about. They want the election to be about war, and torture and Guantanamo. So they’re picking fights on those issues, even though they know a lot of Americans disagree with them on these issues. They’re picking fights on those issues so those will be the things we’re talking about around the election because they think that will help Republicans.

Given McCain’s own signed “confession” after four days of continued torture during his own POW days, he knows only too well how false information and confessions can be coerced by torture. And yet, even though it happened to him, he’s unwilling to take a stand against torturing detainees. And why? To fall in line with the Republican party strategy for framing the debate this election season. Yup, there’s a maverick for you. (h/t Crooksandliars)

Walt Handelsman: Off We Go...

Off We Go

George and Dick take us on a high-flying "Mission Accomplished" tour.