Well, the Tea Party might be more than just a bunch of right-wing radical conspiracy theorists and racists after all. New Tea Party GOP congressman have shown their mettle in a fight over renewal of the Patriot Act, causing the bill to fail in the House of Representatives: LA Times Article. Like many leading Democrats and those who support civil liberties, they believe the bill oversteps the power of the government to watch and intervene in our lives. As Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan put it, the act is "one of the worst laws this body has ever passed."
Unfortunately, in another signal that Obama is moving further and further to the center (which is really the right of a few decades ago), the administration supports renewal of the bill through 2013. Along with his concession on extending Bush's tax cuts, the continued war in Afghanistan, the turn to fighting the deficit over creating jobs, the inability to pass a substantive financial reform bill, a continuation and expansion of the failed educational policies of his predecessor and little forward progress on addressing global warming, it is now clear that hope and change meant little more than more of the same. One wonders if there is a space for a true progressive in America anymore?
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