Barack Obama has completely changed his mind on the FISA bill just passed by Congress. The sticking point for many democrats was the fact that telecoms like Verizon and AT&T would be shielded from lawsuits that most certainly would result by innocent Americans who may have been spied on by the government after 911.
Obama has come out many times and said that he was against giving immunity to the phone companies, who violated their own privacy laws and subverted procedure due to pressure by the U.S. government in the national paranoia that followed 911.
I think Obama did the right thing. The Bush Administration was whipping everyone into a frenzy after 911. People were scared of terrorist attacks happening in America. Remember the rush on duct tape at Home Depot tha resulted in a family taping up their air ducts to the point that they suffocated to death? Remember the color-coded terror alerts that could affect the stock market one way or the other?
Some of Obama's fair weather supporters are angry with him, but Obama knows that these companies were all operating under the assumption that those being wiretapped were suspected terrorists. It's law enforcement that are using the Patriot Act improperly to go after two-bit thugs that should be chased down and arrested. The telecoms, while not lily white during this episode, I'm sure, have a process to follow and I'm sure hoardes of their lawyers are all over it.
Obama is NOT the second coming of Christ. He will probably make a lot of decisions that his uppity white supporters will not like. That's the part of compromise that always sucks. Get over it.
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