Something doesn't have to be unconstitutional for it to allow violations of the Constitution. A presidential pardon or amnesty can be for any reason at all, for example.

Posted at July 3, 2008 3:35 PM in response to A Time-line Of Obama's Statements On FISA

By choosing to make a big deal about this one issue and collecting Obama's statements (which will undoubtedly get picked up and amplified by the MSM, just like the FISA group on mybarackobama.com did), you certainly aren't HELPING Obama get elected, which is presumably what we all want. (If you don't, why are you here?)

I'd like Barack Obama to win, but I'd like him to know there's a price to selling out the Constitution. I'll still vote for him today. If he pulls something like this again, no way. Emphasizing the centrist parts of his persona like welfare reform or faith-based initiatives is one thing, but baldly flipping on an issue where he could have made a difference (if he had made clear to Pelosi and Reid that he wasn't going to let this issue go away quietly, they wouldn't have scheduled votes as they did) is unacceptable.

Look, you folks need to understand how the game works now. Obama is now positioning himself as the arbitrator, the grand conciliator between right and left. If the left declares that they will stand by him no matter what, he will always go right. I will support him for now, conditionally. Anyone not wanting to get screwed more than necessary better be similarly conditional about this.

If you just want to discuss the issue, you can start by answering this fellow TPMCafe denizen's question.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/serious-question-really-why-is.php

The comments to the question do a pretty good job of answering it, actually.

Posted at July 3, 2008 3:30 PM in response to A Time-line Of Obama's Statements On FISA

Do I want a perfect Fourth Amendment? Of course. But I have to ask you -- and this is from as avowed a liberal as you're ever going to find -- are there any ways you can put forward that can help us avoid terrorist attacks?

So it was okay to wiretap MLK Jr. because there wasn't any other way to bring down the Iron Curtain?

The first step is realizing that this entire frame is bullshit--the threats we face today are radically smaller than those we faced in earlier times.

As others mention, the problem is not the intelligence agencies lack of information, but a lack of capacity to connect the dots. Glutting the agencies with more data will just make the problem worse.

We could end torture and respect the civil rights of Muslims so that they might be willing to cooperate with us in finding bad actors. If Sunni Iraqis of all people are willing to cooperate with us in fighting AQI after we removed a Sunni leader from power, that demonstrates that Muslims can be worked with, that the worst actors can be isolated.

We could build educational and employment opportunities for unemployed youths around the world, and deprive radicalism of its source of labor, or at least demonstrate the sincerity of our intentions.

We could end plans to build permanent bases in oil producing Mid East states and deprive the terrorists of a valuable propaganda tool.

And most of all we should stand for the principles of freedom at all times, not just when it's convenient and safe--not just when the person claiming the rights is a white Christian. There are aspects of our sexualized culture that offend them, but which we insist we must tolerate because of the First Amendment. But if we now toss aside the Fourth Amendment because Muslims are scary, what lesson is there for Muslims to learn but that the Constitution and the liberal freedoms of the Englightenment are nothing but a hypocritical sham--in full force when a Christian claims them, but tossed aside when a Muslim claims them. If you expect Muslims to respect our supposed land of freedom and liberty, then you'd better act like you respect those principles.

We could win the national security argument, but we'd have to actually try to win it. Obama promised to do that. I hope he comes to his senses.

Posted at June 29, 2008 12:30 PM in response to Obama Social Networking Group Seeks to Apply Pressur on FISA

Oh, great news, the Fourth Amendment isn't violated by warantless wiretapping. Fantastic. I guess we don't need to pass retroactive immunity, then. Oops, they still want retroactive immunity? Well, I guess that indicates people denying that this violates the Fourth Amendment don't know what they're talking about.

It's pretty simple what's happening here. Pelosi, Reid, et. al. want to cave on this because they think it means the issue will go away. If Obama, the nominee, indicated that he wasn't going to let this go away, then they would have no reason to go along with the compromise.

Obama's cave on FISA is disgusting for exactly the same reason McCain's cave on the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was disgusting--because the realities of political pressure and signaling massively inflated their power on a specific issue, but they chose to trade that for political convenience.

At least McCain's sell out actually worked--it was the only way he could win the GOP nomination. Obama's sell out is not only a flat out flip flop of his earlier promise to support filibuster any bill containing retroactive immunity, but most of the public opposes warrantless wiretapping and this just makes him look Kerry-esque. It demonstrates not just a lack of resolve but a lack of political strategy. He's not just a sell-out, he's a stupid sell out.

Just because you choose to sell out doesn't mean anyone's buying.

Posted at June 29, 2008 12:11 PM in response to Obama Social Networking Group Seeks to Apply Pressur on FISA

You can criticize Obama for not being black enough and threatening the black narrative, if you like, but a much larger defeat for the black narrative would be someone if Bill Clinton were rewarded for implying that the voices of South Carolina do not matter because Jesse Jackson won there twice. If that's not removing megaphones for the Jesse Jacksons of the world, I don't know what possibly could be. You can complain about Obama's treatment of Wright and the far more radical (be honest!) Farrakhan, but Hillary Clinton's remarks on those two figures have been far harsher than Obama's. You can get angry about Obama's praise of Ronald Reagan, but that praise is obviously intended as rebuke not of progressivism but of Bill Clinton's "End of Big Government" triangulation. (THAT is what the mandate shrillness is about--that any progressive dare have the gall to suggest that the Clintons underdelivered on their promises in the 1990s.)

In other words, I understand how someone who wrote this piece can get mad at Obama, but there is no possible way to consistently believe the things written here and vote for Hillary Clinton instead--because on everything Professor Loury mentions here, both Clintons have been worse.

Posted at March 31, 2008 2:31 PM in response to Losing the Narrative

"1) Control of congress. Pay attention to down-ticket effects. If McCain wins the GE, Republicans would gain control of one or both houses of Congress. They wouldn't get a veto-proof majority, but who needs one with McCain as president? Dangerous, because:"

I'm not sure what I'd do, but if I did decide to boycott the presidental vote, I'd definitely vote for a Dem in Congress. Republicans are unlikely to gain control of either house whoever wins the GE. McCain will be stuck dealing with Democratic majorities.

On the other hand, if Clinton governs the way she acts now, you can darn well bet Republicans will perform pretty well in the 2010/2012 elections. Meaning, a vote for Hillary today is a vote for Republican domination in the future--which is bad for all the reasons you list. In fact, worse--McCain has actually been louder complaining about signing statements than Clinton or Obama. Given his torture flip flop I don't think that counts for much, but it does mean that any GOP president who wins in 2012 would likely be worse.

The pragmatics of the situation seem cloudier to me than they do to you. And the ethics do as well--I'm not sure it's morally obligatory to participate in a lesser evil in order to prevent a greater evil from rising.

Posted at March 23, 2008 7:01 PM in response to Why I can't vote for Hillary

I definitely think McCain would support worse policies than Senator Clinton, but I can't see a plausible scenario where he literally destroys the country or removes our right to argue. I think if you look above, most people are arguing that a Clinton defeat sets up better scenarios in 2012 and onwards. Maybe that's right, maybe it's wrong, but it's a completely pragmatic argument.

Posted at March 23, 2008 8:52 AM in response to Why I can't vote for Hillary

The argument that Hillary's general election win would hurt progressivism in the long run isn't insane--either because she would so discredit our party that we would lose a generation, or because seeing an honest progressive win in '12 is worth seeing a dishonest triangulator lose in '08. The counter argument isn't insane either--Bill Clinton's judges were way the heck better than Bush's, and Hillary's will almost certainly be better than McCain's. Figuring out whether Clinton or McCain's victory hurts progressives more in the long run is kind of a tough call to me. In November, I won't be motivated by spite--I'll be doing my best to figure out what's best for the future of my country. And I don't know what I will decide.

But I've never heard a plausible account of how Obama's GE defeat would make things better for Clinton supporters--if we don't let her win the primary this time, we sure as hell aren't going to let her win in 2012. While a Clinton defeat serves as a rebuke to both the DLC and Mark Penn, it's not clear what or who an Obama defeat serves as a rebuke to, what lesson Clinton supporters expect to teach us by sinking his candidacy. Frankly, if Obama loses the general election, I will blame Clinton for staying in the primary when she has little chance to win, giving McCain an advantage.If either Democrat loses in November, the person to blame is Senator Hillary Clinton. 2012 primary voters will remember this. Should Clinton's road to the White House reach a dead end, her supporters have nothing plausible to gain by torpedoing Obama, other than spite.

Posted at March 22, 2008 9:57 PM in response to Why I can't vote for Hillary

I sense that McLaren disagrees with the claims of both new atheists and the religious right that the religious and non-religious can't participate equally in government and society without one or the other abandoning their beliefs.

Sorry for the typo--fixed here.

Posted at February 16, 2008 11:54 AM in response to Getting the Bigger Story

Many people both religious and non-religious as well as secular (religious is not the opposite of secular by the way) do want religion kept separate from the daily operations of government.

Yeah, although as a nonbeliever there was a lot I liked in McLaren's piece, but equating the secular with non-religion and non-belief was definitely something I did not like. The vast majority of Christians conduct their business and legal affairs in secular terms. Maybe not for secular reasons, but agreement on metaphysics and ultimate causes is not required for cooperation in the temporal world. "Secular" is not supposed to describe a set of beliefs or a type of person, but a set of practices and a sphere of existence compatible with both religion and the absence of religion. I sense that McLaren disagrees with the claims of both new atheists and the religious right that the religious and non-religious can participate equally in government and society without one or the other abandoning their beliefs. But the word for the sort of pluralism between different religions and different metaphysics he advocates is secularism, and I earnestly wish the religious would stop being afraid of it.

That said, I wonder if the distinction between religion and non-religion has grown too firm. I may not believe in divine agents in the heavens, but I do believe, as I suspect most atheists do, in transcendent things like truth, beauty, morality, and consciousness. (There are lots of atheists who disbelieve one of those but few who disbelieve all of them.) The reason that many nonbelievers are so offended by attempts to write laws that can only be justified by sectarian revelations (see gay marriage bans) is not just because we aren't members of the sect in question and disagree with the policy, but because being forced to live by the practices, symbols, and rituals of a sect one doesn't believe is profane--blasphemous, if you will--to the transcendent things we happen to believe in.

There are some religious folk who want to maximize religious freedom by exempting religious organizations from regulations on labor, child-welfare, zoning, controlled substances, etc. It would be nice if they would realize that separation of church and state is grounded in that same religious freedom--the same recognition that it's not the job of government to regulate the transcendent.

Posted at February 16, 2008 11:52 AM in response to Getting the Bigger Story