World-News

AntiWar.Com
by Philip Giraldi

04/07/09

Sen. Barack Obama opposed the MCA and voted against it. He was not in the Senate when the first PATRIOT Act was passed, but he criticized the second version for its abuse of civil liberties before voting for an amended version. Candidate Obama ran on his record of opposition to the various pieces of legislation, noting consistently that they had authorized the abuse of authority by law enforcement and had abridged the rights of every American. Unfortunately, President Obama appears to have forgotten the principled positions he took as a senator and presidential candidate. After his inauguration, he moved quickly to publicly ban the CIA’s use of torture, a meaningless gesture in that the Agency had already abandoned the practice, but it now appears that he will do nothing to revoke Bush-era legislation like the MCA that he once strongly criticized. There is every indication that he will also endorse renewal of the PATRIOT Act when it expires at the end of the year, afraid that if he does not do so and there is a terrorist attack he will pay a significant political price. The Obama administration has also been silent about the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretaps and has invoked the ’state-secrets privilege’ in connection with a lawsuit by the Islamic charity al-Haramain in an apparent bid to prevent disclosure of the warrantless wiretap procedure...

http://tinyurl.com/dapn3v


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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