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FISA: Give me a friggin' break, Barack. If this is meant to be a political pander, it's a dumb one, like when liberals waffle on abortion rights even when the majority of Americans believe abortion should be safe and legal with few caveats. The independents you're trying to pick off in the general either don't know enough about the FISA situation to give a shit, or they're libertarians who are rightly horrified by expanded Executive branch power in the abstract and spying in particular. And then you manage to piss off your base. Trying to paint this bill as some kind of "compromise" is ludicrous, even beyond your token opposition to the retroactive immunity part. The few tiny impediments to rampant invasion of privacy stuck in there are so easily overcomes as to be practically made of, like, filo dough or balsa wood or fucking feathers. Basically, what your endorsement of the bill is basically saying is, "Well, if I'm president, you'll be able to trust me not to abuse this power." Which I PERSONALLY do trust you to stick to, but the principle you're running on here is deeply offensive to a country that's been watching our president run our liberty into the ground. Trust your judgment over the principles of the constitution? Pass. I expected much more from a damn Con Law professor. OK, I'm done yelling now. Let's move on to the Supreme Court.
2nd Amendment Decision: I actually don't see his stance here as much of a flip flop, because he hasn't subscribed to the originalist/"militia" stance in the past like many lefties (including myself, to a certain degree) do. And Scalia did end up having to grudgingly acknowledge that gun control programs are not themselves inherently unconstitutional, just that the DC ban in particular is. So, I'm OK with Obama's approval here, even if I personally come down more on the John Paul Stevens (god bless that man)/bobbies with night sticks side.
Child Rapist Death Penalty: Obama siding with the minority on this one doesn't surprise me, even from someone who has been so passionate in Illinois about protesting the inequities of our death penalty system. Again, like with gun control, Obama has consistently taken a more pragmatic stance, saying that the way the death penalty is currently implemented is egregiously unfair but not actually coming out against the act itself. And I understand where he, and others, are coming from. Dammit, if I were going to give the death penalty to any one group of people, it would certainly be child rapists above and beyond probably all others. (I mean, have you heard the particulars of this case? Oh my lord, it is so heinous. I may have been more horrified reading about that rape than reading the story of the Czech kid who was ritually cannibalized.) But I am 100% against the death penalty, legally and morally. The government has zero right and should have zero power to make decisions of life and death, even beyond the structural inequalities and inefficiencies of the policy itself as currently implemented. But Obama is consistent here, and I certainly emotionally get where he's coming from.
Oh, and Barack, stop stomping on all of Scarlett Johansson's hopes and dreams, or we may have to send you over to Jezebel's "Crap Email from a Dude" territory.
2nd Amendment Decision: I actually don't see his stance here as much of a flip flop, because he hasn't subscribed to the originalist/"militia" stance in the past like many lefties (including myself, to a certain degree) do. And Scalia did end up having to grudgingly acknowledge that gun control programs are not themselves inherently unconstitutional, just that the DC ban in particular is. So, I'm OK with Obama's approval here, even if I personally come down more on the John Paul Stevens (god bless that man)/bobbies with night sticks side.
Child Rapist Death Penalty: Obama siding with the minority on this one doesn't surprise me, even from someone who has been so passionate in Illinois about protesting the inequities of our death penalty system. Again, like with gun control, Obama has consistently taken a more pragmatic stance, saying that the way the death penalty is currently implemented is egregiously unfair but not actually coming out against the act itself. And I understand where he, and others, are coming from. Dammit, if I were going to give the death penalty to any one group of people, it would certainly be child rapists above and beyond probably all others. (I mean, have you heard the particulars of this case? Oh my lord, it is so heinous. I may have been more horrified reading about that rape than reading the story of the Czech kid who was ritually cannibalized.) But I am 100% against the death penalty, legally and morally. The government has zero right and should have zero power to make decisions of life and death, even beyond the structural inequalities and inefficiencies of the policy itself as currently implemented. But Obama is consistent here, and I certainly emotionally get where he's coming from.
Oh, and Barack, stop stomping on all of Scarlett Johansson's hopes and dreams, or we may have to send you over to Jezebel's "Crap Email from a Dude" territory.
