Orange County Register

By endorsing the NSA surveillance bill passed by the House last week, which gives telcos immunity for help they’ve given the government that was illegal at the time (and also gives the president more power to do more widespread unwarranted surveillance of Americans than the 1978 FISA bill did), Barack Obama may have been tilting toward the center, which most candidates do once they’ve secured a major-party nomination. But Yale Law Prof. Jack Balkin, who does a blog called (of course) Balkinization — maybe I should rename mine Looking Bockwards? — has a different explanation. His belief is that Barack Obama fully intends to be president, and once he is president he will be happy to have that power. (Here and here and here are more comments on that FISA updating bill.) Of course. Every president of every party has loved executive power. And if Obama is elected president, plenty of conservatives who have been doggedly defending executive prerogatives and privileges so long as somebody with an “R” after their names occupied the Oval Office will rediscover their Madisonian roots and start celebrating the three branches and wondering whether it’s dangerous to have so much power in the hands of one man.

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