The Sunshine Empire

Conservatives have undergone a slow shift on the amount of importance they attribute to following the letter of the law, or understanding the realities of a particular unique situation. In the 1990’s they impeached a popular President on the basis of lying to a grand jury about a personal situation that had no bearing on his job as chief executive of the Executive Branch. They said that the law was the law and any breaking of it was to be punished no matter the mitigating circumstances.

Yet when the specter of terrorism on the Homeland appeared in late 2001, the President went to telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T and demanded that they break the law. Both the aforementioned broke the law, but companies like Quest rightly said no to the request to violate the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Now some can argue that it was needed to protect the Homeland during a time of unprecedented perilous peril, but the innocent has no need of immunity and what they did was break the law. Political passions take a back seat to the steadily eroding civil liberties in this coutry. Now many Senators have stood up to this and are still planning to, such as Russ Fiengold and Chris Dodd. Yet some inexplicably have decided to throw in the towel, like presumptive Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama. Now many around the net have already pilloried the Senator for a flip-flop worth paying attention to, but I felt the need to go on record due to the praise that we have given the Senator in the past. The move was gutless pure and simple. The press will continue to focus on a bogus flip-flop with the public financing dust up, and keep ignoring Senator McCain’s even more politically egregious flops like on Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and the religious right.

With some many policy differences, this is a rare political agreement between Senators McCain and Obama in this campaign.