Obama Adviser On FISA: We'll Trust The Inspector General To Prevent Surveillance Abuses

M.S. Bellows, Jr.
Huffington Post
Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Dennis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, said in a conference call this morning that legislation expanding presidential power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications is acceptable to Senator Obama because the United States Inspector General will ensure accountability.

In other words, the Obama campaign's position is now that the duty and power to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, now resides primarily not with the President, not with the Congress or the Courts, but with a bureaucrat created by administrative law whose job is to conduct internal investigations of government agencies.

That's a dramatic statement, but not an overstatement. The legislation that the House passed last week and the Senate will be taking up later this week not only immunizes giant telecommunications companies like AT&T from liability for violating their customers' rights under prior law -- immunity that Obama promised last year would warrant filibustering the bill, but which he now says he'll only "work" to remove -- but also greatly expands the president's ability to order eavesdrops on routine telecommunications by ordinary Americans who aren't even suspected of being associated with terrorists, which many observers see as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
FULL ARTICLE @ Huffington Post