Barrack Obama and the FISA bill

As I see it, I agree Obama went "against his word" when he voted for the FISA bill giving immunity to the telecom companies who provided their lists years ago. After all, he did say he would definitely vote against it, and that's that. Let's be realistic, though; frankly, I don't think he had a choice. Sometimes voting for a bad bill meant to correct problems in a corrupt system is better than not voting to pass it. In other words, Obama did what a politician has to do, sometimes: hold the nose and vote for it anyway. Besides, I'm not certain how you can hold a telecom accountable for being forced by a government agency who rules by fear to turn over the list. Many of us would have done the same thing. Cheers go to Google who refused to turn over their browser logs.

Some of the criticisms I have heard about Obama from his own party sound exactly like criticisms from the far right: the two end points (left and right) tend to see things in black and white, and therefore if he's not right he's wrong. What is wrong with being a left-leaning centrist, anyway? This is what moderates are. We realize there are serious problems with the two endpoints of a continuum, and try to achieve a compromise for the best solution to the problem. There are almost no such thing as a certainty, particularly where people come in, and certainly in government. Each solution will cause problems for a subset of the population, therefore we must choose the solution causing the lesser problems for the smallest subset. It is not an easy thing to do.