Mr. Obama’s Disappointing Response

[pscot]

By the time President Obama gave his news conference on Friday, there was really only one course to take on surveillance policy from an ethical, moral, constitutional and even political point of view. And that was to embrace the recommendations of his handpicked panel on government spying — and bills pending in Congress — to end the obvious excesses. He could have started by suspending the constitutionally questionable (and evidently pointless) collection of data on every phone call and email that Americans make.

He did not do any of that.

Sure, Mr. Obama thanked his panel for making 46 recommendations to restore the rule of law and constitutional principles to government surveillance activities. (The number alone casts a bad light on the president’s repeated claims that there really was nothing wrong with surveillance policy.) And he promised to review those ideas and let us know next month which, if any, he intends to follow.

But Mr. Obama has had plenty of time to consider this issue, and the only specific thing he said on the panel’s proposals was that it might be a good idea to let communications companies keep the data on phone calls and emails rather than store them in the vast government databases that could be easily abused. But he raised doubts about such a plan, and he left the impression that he sees this issue as basically a question of public relations and public perception.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/opinion/mr-obamas-disappointing-response.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

[awoke_in_2003]

1. ...

http://m.

[imthevicar]

2. BO, the tool of the 1%. Just like the one before and the one before that one.

and so on and so on and so on.....

[pscot]

3. Mealy mouthed

I just watched him on TV. He's a great dancer.

[Doctor_J]

4. Yeah, I think everyone who thought they were voting for "change" in 2008

has woken up by this point. I sure have. I don't blame him personally. He is just another figurehead. But he's punched the ticket of the party. We don't have the propaganda apparatus that the Repukes have, so we actually have to DO something to get voters out. The president's exposure as a conservative representative of the 1% has cost the party immeasurably.

[Cal33]

5. Well, he did say that if he had been president in the 1980s, he would have been considered

a moderate Republican. He was telling us something. Of course he said it some time after
he had won his second term, but he couldn't have been more direct than that, could he?

I also think that with Hillary it will be more of the same. Would the Democratic Party still
be in existence after that? Yes, if the powers that be should say "Let the two party system
continue."

[Doctor_J]

6. True, but during the 2008 campaign he lied and said he was a Dem

he promised support for labor, a public option, no SS cuts, and environmental issues. If he'd told the truth during the campaign, he wouldn't have been elected in 2008.

[Cal33]

7. He also said nearly the same things during his campaign in 2012. He waited till

after he had won before he came out with his "If I had been president in the 1980s...."

I wonder what the Hillary fans have to say about this now.