Politico: Is Obama Failing Constitutional Law?

Politico: Is Obama Failing Constitutional Law? | Talking and tinkering may not be enough to make the old law professor’s surveillance program legal.

by Jonathan Hafetz:

In his speech meant to quell concerns over government surveillance, President Obama on Friday offered something of a primer on the history of espionage, from the heroic patrols made by Paul Revere in the Revolution to the sordid eavesdropping the FBI perpetrated against Martin Luther King, Jr.

The history lesson—triggered, of course, by the revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which laid bare some of how Obama’s government goes about the business of spying—prefaced a series of reform proposals in which the president put himself forward as the Great Balancer, the one who understands the risks and benefits of spying programs, while also remaining mindful of the competing concerns of liberty and security. “We have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves,” Obama said, “while upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals—and our Constitution—require.”