Stephen Webster over at Raw Story has an article titled "Obama Attorneys Argue for Warrantless Cellphone Tracking"
A US appeals court began weighing Friday whether police should be allowed to track citizens through their cellphones without first obtaining a warrant.
The case "could prove to be one of the most important privacy rights battles of the modern era," The Legal Intelligencer noted.
Adopting a Bush-era argument, Obama administration attorneys asked the court to allow telecoms companies to hand over their subscribers' location information, even without a probable cause warrant
As I posted a few days ago, once again, Obama asks "What would Bush do?"
"What’s at stake in the case is not whether it’s OK for the government to track the locations of cell phones; we agree that cell-phone tracking is lawful and appropriate in certain situations," the ACLU's Catherine Crump argued in a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial. "The question is whether the government should first have to show that it has good reason to think such tracking will turn up evidence of a crime.
"We believe it should. This case is not about protecting criminals. It’s about protecting innocent people from unjustified violations of their privacy."
"Make no mistake, our freedom is being challenged," The Des Moines Register opined. "This tracking data would allow the government to determine what church you attend, what meetings you go to, where you buy your groceries and who your friends are. The government has no right and little constructive need to have free and open access to this information.
GPS location tracking is already estimated to outnumber all other forms of electronic surveillance.
Hasn't it gotten to the point where we have to seriously sit down and admit to ourselves that all we've done is re-elect George Bush but with better charm and wit and better bullshit?
How did it come to this?
I'll tell you how: With the help of diaries like this seeking to belittle what should have been taken as serious warning signs by all Americans who knew we had to do better:
I am confident that, if he is elected, and if voters also elect enough Democrats to give Senator Obama a solid Congressional base, his legacy will also be viewed as solidly, though not purely, progressive. But only if progressives lay the groundwork in their local communities - as the union movement and other activists did for FDR - to enable progressive solutions ... to make them pragmatic solutions.
Because Senator Obama, like FDR, is a pragmatist. He will choose from the menu of the possible, not the menu of the ideal. If we want to see progressive solutions to our nation's problems, we'll have to make them possible for him, by working and organizing in our communities, tilling the fields within which progressive seeds can be sown, nurting them as they take root, and demonstrating their pragmatic value.
Senator Obama is not "betraying" progressives, because he was never one of us. But he does share our values. Let us not betray him by failing to lay the groundwork for progressive solutions.
We can and must criticize, but let's criticize as we work to make better solutions possible.
This pablum in response to
After Senator Obama's decision to forego public financing came the FISA mess, then the Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty and handguns, then his comments on General Clark's criticism of Senator McCain, and his statement to evangelicals that he will not only preserve but expand the Faith-Based Initiatives program instituted by President Bush.
Hellloooooo! Such foolishness is called Sticking Your Head In the Sand. It is certainly not being honest or maintaining solid footing in the reality-based community. It is called Covering Obama's Ass.
And MUCH too much of that went on around DKos during the primaries.
Bullshit like this diary :
Barack Obama towers as the most far left progressive person running for president. And this isn’t the spin of some enthusiastic supporter (in fact I’ve been leaning a bit towards Edwards since Michael Moore praised him), this is the objective assessment of the prestigious and authoritative National Journal which examined the totality of each candidates actual votes in three broad areas: Social issues, economic issues, and foreign policy issues. When life time scores were compiled by the New York Times political blog, amazingly Obama towered over even ultra progressive Kucinich.
This pile of crap diary had the following tidbits in the comments section:
Your statistics do not (6+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Subversive, Sychotic1, FightTheFuture, ChapiNation386, scoff0165, BoiseBlue
make a centrist into a leftist. Indeed, Obama campaign workers in at least one Iowa caucuses werearguing that you need a centrist to win and Obama was a centrist. I was told that by someone who was there.
Fix It and Pass It
by TomP on Fri Jan 04, 2008 at 02:44:35 PM PST
I see, so votes prove nothing (6+ / 0-)
Recommended by:wystler, hhex65, The Sinistral, 0wn, dotster, Mojo Jojo
I guess I'll just surrender to your psychic powers then.
by countmein on Fri Jan 04, 2008 at 02:48:41 PM PST
[ Parent ]
No (7+ / 0-)
Recommended by:SeanF, The Sinistral, 0wn, dotster, Akonitum, vengeance for mr sympathy, Mojo Jojo
Surrender to Tom's hearsay.
I mean, an Edwards supporters is telling you he heard from another guy that some other people were arguing that Obama is a centrist.
What further proof do you need of Obama's longstanding centrism?
It blows me away that people simply kept promoting the LIE that Obama was anything but a centrist. Nowadays, the excuse to cover Obama's ass is that "you should have known what you were getting. He never said he was a progressive."
No. But damn near every Obama backer on DKos said so. And went out of their way to prove it and defend him as such.
And of course, it doesn't help that Markos himself is a progressive hater:
Here's what too many people still don't understand -- there's nothing loony about the netroots. This isn't fertile territory for the McKinneys and Kuciniches of our party.
We didn't rally around Webb, Tester, Schweitzer, Trauner, Brown, Massa, Burner and so many other moderate Democrats because they were little Kucinich clones,
We are not the elites, we are America, and we're situated squarely in its ideological center.
And the Troll Patrol - Democratic Luntz, etc. - all lit into the poster pointing this out. Calling Kucinich a wierdo, looney, etc. How Wingnutty is that?
Great job Markos. We elected a "centrist" - code for Corporatist - at the one time in our history when we could have literally elected ANYONE (afterall, if the backlash to Bush was so great we could elect a black man, we could have literally elected ANYONE) but hey, we elected the next George Bush.
Thanks Markos and your Troll Patrol. Great job you all did helping us all out here in America.
