Obama fights to keep his nasty surveillance state

[drwex]

http://www.boston.com/business/news/2013/07/23/obama-lawmakers-square-off-over-nsa-authority/dKSc3vcAflgTjYNTSPqR0N/story.html

Anyone who still holds onto any shreds of the illusion that Obama is some kind of liberal can let those go now.

Comments

[dcltdw]

I thought it was established years ago that Obama is center-right, for non-insane values of right.

[drwex]

I thought so, too, but there keep being people - even people of my acquaintance - who seem to have an oddly distorted image of the guy. Mostly they say "gay rights" a lot and yay treating people equally but it's just one thing.

[dcltdw]

If I may veer into Stuff I Don't Actually Know territory, wouldn't gay rights be consistent with legal conservatives (as opposed to social conservatives)? The whole "one rule of law without special exceptions" motive. Not to mention the whole small government thing meaning less government dictation of who does and doesn't get rights.

[drwex]

Equal rights, including equal right to marry, has been a consistent position of libertarians (big-L and little-l) for some time. However, the Republican party is nearly as hostile to them as it is to Democrats. And for better or worse, Republicans including Tea Party types, social conservative types and so on are the defining party of conservatives in America.

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

And in opposition to the House bill Obama's mouthpiece says ‘‘This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process.’’ Riiiight, because the spying on US citizens who weren't under suspicion of anything (and the lying about it under oath) were such a shining example of an informed, open or deliberative process.