Happy Fourth of July

A Fourth of July speech by Joseph Galloway for McClatchy newspapers that is well worth reading. (h/t to Greenwald.) Galloway poignantly explains the betrayal in Obama's new position and in McCain's continued support for the gutting of judicial oversight and the extension of retroactive immunity with respect to the illegal Bush-spying program --

The fact that British troops, operating on flimsy general warrants handed out by local magistrates, were kicking in the doors of ordinary Americans and rifling through their pantries and papers in search of smuggled, untaxed goods was a prime reason why our ancestors rebelled against their king and went to war.

This is WHY we celebrate the Fourth of July. This is why the vote on renewing the expanded version of FISA and whitewashing the egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment for seven long years by our government is important.

If neither John McCain, the Republican, or Barrack Obama, the Democrat, can find the courage to oppose such a violation of so basic a right, then what are we to do for a president, a successor to George W. Bush, The Decider, who has since 9/11 decided what rights you are entitled to keep, what laws he will or will not obey, and whether you will be protected by these words of the Constitution:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Indeed, before casting their vote in support of the new FISA legislation next week, Obama and McCain may want to consider the following thoughts by A.C. Grayling from across the pond --

The creation or adoption of instruments of control, surveillance, and eavesdropping, along with laws and powers to detain, proscribe, silence and punish in areas of thought and activity which were once not subject to such interference, is like loading a gun: we put the loaded gun in the hands of a benign and concerned government wishing to protect us from terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime, then they pass the gun to the next generation of government, and they in turn to the next ... and so unpredictably into the future, in the hope that things will always be such, and times such, and people such, that benignity can and will reign all the way, with the ordinary citizen still functionally free and secure throughout.

History teaches a painfully different lesson about such naive hopes. If one would try to protect oneself against things going wrong, do not create instruments that could all too easily go wrong in the wrong hands - and very, very wrong at that.

I supported Obama over HRC, and vigorously defended this support, precisely because of my concern that HRC would suffer from the self-delusion that, because her motives were "benign", she could be trusted with the powers that the Bush administration has usurped over the past 7 years. Sadly, Obama appears to suffer from exactly that delusion.