{"id":3584,"date":"2010-01-02T12:44:20","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T20:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2010-01-02T12:44:20","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T20:44:20","slug":"obamas-post-1225-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/obamas-post-1225-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama&#8217;s post 12\/25 dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0It\u2019s going to be amusing to see President Obama try to triangulate between the public outcry for tougher terror screening policies in the wake of the 12\/25 attempt and his natural allies on the civil libertarian left.\u00a0 Senator Dianne Feinstein sent Obama <a href=\"http:\/\/feinstein.senate.gov\/public\/index.cfm?FuseAction=NewsRoom.PressReleases&amp;ContentRecord_id=e1ba89b0-5056-8059-7686-bb7f2471988c\">a letter <\/a>last week criticizing a policy adopted under President Bush that, in her words, \u201climits the circumstances under which the government adds an individual to the [no-fly] watch list.\u201d\u00a0 That standard is \u201ctoo restrictive,\u201d she said, and \u201cshould be changed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Any standard that the Bush administration implemented was of course crafted under pressure from the ACLU, among other influences, which has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northcountrygazette.org\/articles\/012806FedsPay.html\">suing TSA and NSA <\/a>almost non-stop since 9\/11, not to mention from the <em>New York Times<\/em>, which has been waging its own campaigns against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/Content\/Public\/Articles\/000\/000\/002\/222pzyqs.asp\">connect-the-dots technologies <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/Content\/Public\/Articles\/000\/000\/012\/386syqsr.asp\">intelligence-gathering<\/a>.\u00a0 Those parties have now either <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/02\/opinion\/02sat1.html?ref=opinion\">conveniently forgotten <\/a>their own role in limiting government action or have been reduced to meaningless bromides (\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/technology-and-liberty\/aftermath-attempted-attack-aclu-advocates-effective-security-respects-privacy\">The American Civil Liberties Union calls for the implementation of effective security policies that pose the most minimal threat possible to Americans&#8217; privacy<\/a>.\u201d)\u00a0 If Republican policies are now to be judged by Democrats as\u00a0\u00a0\u201ctoo restrictive&#8221; \u00a0due to a single instance of someone slipping through the cracks, or conversely, if a Democratic administration is now to be judged by Republicans as \u201csoft on terror\u201d due to those same circumstances, and if Obama has joined the chorus arguing that any failure to connect the dots is, in his words, \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d (a stance which David Brooks mocks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/01\/opinion\/01brooks.html\">here<\/a>), Obama can satisfy the demand for after-the-fact action only by sticking his finger in the eye of the left.\u00a0 The cries of betrayal could be louder than after the Afghanistan surge decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0It\u2019s going to be amusing to see President Obama try to triangulate between the public outcry for tougher terror screening policies in the wake of the 12\/25 attempt and his natural allies on the civil libertarian left.\u00a0 Senator Dianne Feinstein &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/obamas-post-1225-dilemma\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[353],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3587,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions\/3587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}