Legal Commentary

Contradictions

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias writes today:

I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . . . . I wasn't alive in 1973-74 [when Nixon was forced to resign]. I have a vague sense that at that time America's elites operated with some sense of conscience and dignity, and it was taken for granted even among Republican leaders that one couldn't just break the law. . . . I don't really know what changed, or why David Broder and other gatekeepers of elite consensus can't see that something's gone wrong here, but I'm not happy about it.

Nicely put. But then he writes in his VERY NEXT POST:

[W]hatever disappointments one has with Obama (and there are sure to be more to come) -- he unquestionably represents a leftward shift relative to the sort of national candidates the Democratic Party has been putting forward in recent cycles.

I'm not sure what went wrong between Yglesias' writing of those two posts, but his lament about Broder sounds empty when he excuses Obama for ignoring the very same FISA law breaking and supporting the FISA capitulation. Because that is what Yglesias was doing there - rationalizing for Obama's FISA flip flop and capitulation. Let's not deal with the fact that Obama is doing precisely what he is lamenting about Broder in his previous post.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 03, 2008 (boomark / email).