The House passed the revised and extended Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Senate is sure to follow suit next week. ArsTechnica has a good explanation of how the bill undercuts constitutional assurances that the government will not spy on its citizens. And also of why the guarantees that really, truly the government will play by the rules now are nothing more than was already present in the previous legislation and ignored by the the Bush administration.

Today’s news (see the Washington Post story) is that Obama will vote for this bill, while promising to watch its application if he becomes president.¬†

One of the things Obama stressed in his primary campaigns was that he voted against the war in Iraq, and that Clinton voted for it. Obama cast himself as the cautious one, the one prepared to say that the president’s say-so for going to war was not enough. Certainly, many who voted for the war did so out of fear that they would seem weak if Saddam Hussein really did have WMD’s; Clinton and others erred on the side of not being seen as risking the security of the nation, and Obama roundly criticized them for having done so.

Here Obama is doing the same thing. His reputation in military and defense matters being open to question because of his inexperience, he is trying to establish himself as a strong defender of national security. He apparently doesn’t need to court the civil libertarian voters, believing they have nowhere else to go.

It doesn’t look like this can be an issue for the debates, since McCain is planning to vote the same way. I wonder what Clinton’s plans are.

 

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