Netroots only want to lose elections.

Obama, you can do better.

I'm not referring to your position on the pending FISA bill, though I don't believe it should be allowed to pass in its current form. I'm talking about your explanation of your shift in position.

Just how patriotic does someone need to appear to be to be elected? More important, is showing patriotism dfferent from being patriotic?

Now that I've lured you in this is the reaction currently going around on DKos members and their support for Obama and his public statements on FISA...

Some of our support for our candidate "now" hinges on one issue, ONE FUCKING ISSUE.  

Okay you want to stop FISA, well I'm going to help you, I'm going to give you some advice to stop FISA and fan the outrage that has taken DKos by storm the last two weeks.  Learn the ways after the jump.

Obama is a mainstream Democrat. This might come as a surprise to some, who might have mistaken him for some kind of Leftie. Still others pretend to be shocked-shocked!- that Obama is planning on winning the GE. Then there are the single issue crusaders who, in their sole focus on constitutional rights, are reminiscent  the NRA   than Democrats. Add to this the opportunists who see a cause they can ride to National Fame. May be even a media career as commentator on a MSM publication.

If a Liberal supports Obama it is not news. Dog Bites Man. Big Deal. If a Liberal attacks Obama it is news. It feeds into what NYTimes, CNN, WSJ, FOX and others are looking for. Man Bites Dog.

Obama is the first Presidential candidate to use modern technology to let dissenting  supporters tell him what they think. And we should take advantage of that. But who is being helped when  that medium and blogs such as this are used to attack Obama relentlessly day after day?

The concern over the FISA Bill is genuine. Obama shares that concern. But the FISA debate has been taken over by a handful of bloggers and their low information followers who obsess over it to the exclusion of everything else.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Three out of five of you are willing to sacrifice your beliefs to elect a politician.

Another one of you is willing to accept a politician for what he is.

What else are you willing to sacrifice? Your career? Your family? Your Constitutional rights?

What else are you willing to accept?

In Thursday's widely ignored framing piece ("Pot & FISA: Linked, but Not How You Think...") about the potentially strange relationship between the campaign for marijuana legalization and the long term implications of the 2008 FISA bill on civil liberties, I speculated  that future technologies would magnify the FISA problems of today, many fold.

The article drew the analogy between ways in which the original 1978 FISA failed to anticipate the contemporary digital environment, 30 years later, and imagined that in the digital environment of 2038, another 30 years hence, the same will inevitably occur.

I was so busy writing that diary that I failed to browse my usual geekishly obscure wire services that day.  Pity, too, because one item highlighted the problem better than I could have imagined. Check out this gem from the NewScientist.com news service. (more...)

The Republicans can still win, McCain can still win, and the destructive deadly policies of this Bush Administration can still continue.

Think of this, as you call for your donations back, as you attack Senator Obama, rightfully or not, and relegate him to the "Boy Junior Senator from Illinois."

The results of November are not set in stone. There is still a long fight, a long battle left, if we are to take back even a part of Washington for the people who have dedicated themselves to this movement and who have invested so much of their time, their efforts, and their dwindling finances in a common effort to elect a man the next President of the United States. A man, who not 200 hundred years ago would have been brought to this country as a slave bound in shackles and mastered into servitude, a man brave enough to speak to our hopes and dreams for this country, a man who has demonstrated his political abilities, in only a short time, in the halls of national government, a man, who despite the racial divides that still exist in this country, who despite the political divides that tear us apart, who despite the dangers that threaten our country, continues to send forth a message of peace in our time.

Friends, punishing the telecoms for rolling over for Bush (in the aftermath of the most traumatic attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor) should not provide the left with this level of outrage against a candidate with great gifts, offering us a historic opportunity to take back the White House with strong majorities in both houses of Congress. I've sat back for a week reading these diaries, and the last straw was McJoan's attack on a good Democrat who was trying to explain the FISA bill in an LA Times Op Ed. Yes, in a high school civics textbook world, the heads of major corporations should not have caved in to a president's arguments. But these were not ordinary times, and to make punishing the heads of telecoms the most important goal of the left is to make this whole project laughable, no matter how much passion is behind it. The world isn't a civics class, and the president's demands can only be understood in their full effect in context. And what was the context?

Let's put the so-called nuance aside for a minute regarding the debate on the FISA compromise bill (so-called). Obama and others who oppose this weakening of our checks and balances shouldn't vote. Not for it, not against. Not at all.

Time is a funny thing

The President
The White House
July 11, 2008*:

Today, I have signed into law H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The Act authorizes critical intelligence gathering activities designed to defend the United States and its interests at home and abroad and provides much-needed flexibility to manage effectively the personnel and taxpayer resources devoted to the national defense.

Section 301(b) of the Act purports to place require the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, and any other element of the intelligence community that participated in the President's Surveillance Program, to complete a comprehensive review of all of the facts necessary to describe the establishment, implementation, product, and use of the product of the Program; access to legal reviews of the Program and access to information about the Program; communications with, and participation of, individuals and entities in the private sector related to the Program; interaction with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and transition to court orders related to the Program; and any other matters identified by any such Inspector General that would enable that Inspector General to complete a review of the Program, with respect to such Department or element.

The executive branch shall construe the requirements on the Inspectors General in section 301(b) as advisory in nature, so that the provisions are consistent with the President's constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and to supervise the unitary executive branch.

What then?

*What you're looking at is an adaptation of one of Bush's oft-used signing statements. Since the "administration" claims that the AUMF and the president's "inherent powers" under the Constitution authorize his domestic spying as a "military" operation, a signing statement simply rejecting the obligation of the Inspectors General (a part of the "unitary executive") to produce these reports would be entirely consistent with everything the White House has argued to date, on this and other related subjects.

So, shorter version without legalese: The people supporting this FISA bill say it has accountability built right into it, because it requires the Inspectors General to conduct inquiries and produce reports on what happened.

What if Bush says, "Yeah, but I'm not going to do it"?

    Thousands of individuals like you and I, along with many groups and websites, have generously given of their time and energy to help Senator Obama in his primary bid but that does not mean that we are immune to the pitfalls of fear and mob mentality.   I believe that the Internet as a source of news, analysis and dialogue has brought much good but also identifiable risks along with it.  One of those risks is the speed to which opinion becomes accepted fact.  Several times throughout this election process this unfortunate byproduct of a healthy, self-regulating discussion has become toxic.  Unfortunately, this time it is directed at Obama and the MSM is eating it up.  

The Democratic establishment is out in full force now, providing justification for the crappy FISA Amendments Act that's about to become law. While they haven't learned how to fight like Republicans (who have redefined "compromise" to mean "capitulation") they've learned how to lie like them.

Case in point, Nancy Soderburg, who was Clinton's deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the UN. She pens a truly deplorable op-ed in today's LA Times, in which she tries to rewrite not only the history of the Bush administration's lawlessness, but also this law.

I can't write a better take down of this nonsense than Glenn, so be sure to read his whole piece. But here's this part that's particularly salient:

It's notable because the political establishment is not only about to pass a patently corrupt bill, but worse, are spouting -- on a very bipartisan basis -- completely deceitful claims to obscure what they're really doing. This is what Soderberg says is what happened:

The Senate is dragging its feet because the compromise bill's opponents -- mostly Democrats -- want also to punish the telecommunications companies that answered President Bush's order for help with his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program. That is the wrong target.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the White House directed telecommunications carriers to cooperate with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance -- the administration's effort to do a better job of "connecting the dots" to prevent terrorist attacks. In its review of the effort, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the administration's written requests and directives indicated that such assistance "had been authorized by the president" and that the "activities had been determined to be lawful."

We now know that they were not lawful. But the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power.

I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to "order" private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I'm asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse -- that the President can give "orders" to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch -- someone who can issue "orders" that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the "orders" are illegal.

That just isn't how our country works and it never was. We don't have a King who can order people to break the law. I have no doubt that people like Nancy Soderberg are spending the July 4 weekend paying shallow homage to the Founding, all the while being completely ignorant of or indifferent to the principles they pretend to celebrate.

This line of thinking is not only patently false, it's absolutely dangerous. Political expediency has been put ahead of principle, which happens all the time in politics. Politicians are always going to be politicians and they are always going to be basing their actions on the next election.

In this case, it wasn't even smart strategy. There are basically three groups who care about this legislation--us, The Villagers, and the Bush/Cheney cabal. Voters aren't clamoring for the Democrats to cave--Bill Foster's win proves that. So in a valiant effort to appease The Villagers, they piss off the activist base. As usual.

But this time is different. This time it's the Constitution we're talking about, the core principles of our founding--separation of powers, rule of law, all those "quaint" phrases that have kept this country going for 218 years.

Now the phrase we get is "it's good enough." Literally, Nancy Soderburg says this bill is "good enough." Sorry, but some of us have slightly higher standards. One of the reasons the Republican establishment is about to be thrown out by the American people is because we're sick of being lied to. Dems should take that as a cautionary tale, and realize that we're just not that stupid.

That goes for our soon to be President, as well. We have a much better chance of continuing this battle, repealing this legislation, and having the information related to this program declassified with a President Obama than we do a President McCain, and I relish the opportunity to do just that.

That's why I'm supporting Obama fully in this election. He's got my vote. But truthy talking points are not going to fool us--we will not sit by while Dem leaders lie to us about what this bill does and and watch them confer the king-like powers on the office we hope he takes.

It seems like a lot of the anger over FISA is being directed at our nominee rather than the House of Representatives where this piece of "legislation" was spawned.

The last time I looked, we were a Party, not one person. Why on earth didn't the House (which has a pretty good-sized majority of Democrats) have the back of our candidate so that he would not be set up to be attacked for his stand on FISA?

He is only one person. He alone cannot stop this awful bill and his voting against it would be a gift to the republicans that would keep on giving.

But some are acting like this is all his fault or that he can fix it by himself.

I utterly oppose granting immunity of any kind to ANYONE who participated in illegally wiretapping American citizens, no matter who told them it was legal or how much they were paid, and consider anyone who goes along with granting it a fucking coward.

Nothing new there, I've said that all before. There IS, however, a possible small bright spot in the abortion that is the FISA Amendment Act.

The text of the relevant Section across the jump...

This diary examines the question of the smartest thing for Obama to do if it is true that FISA would nonetheless pass even were he to throw his entire weight behind opposing it.

(Given that politicians are concerned foremost with their own electoral fate, and that the Dem leadership has been working on this bill for months, I think it is reasonable to assume that Obama probably would be unable to stop this juggernaut.)

I try to argue that Obama is uniquely vulnerable in a way that Democrats running in local races are not to being wounded on issues of national security (he's running for commander-in-chief and he's a young black "crypto-muslim commie"). Thus, I will argue that we should cut Obama some slack because his choices most likely are (1) oppose FISA and sustain potentially serious political damage or (2) don't oppose FISA and receive political benefits. In either case, FISA passes. I try to stress that Obama is facing a strong headwind of beltway bias and has to court low-information voters. And I remind Kos readers of the many times Obama has shown great courage on the issues of national security. In other words, Kossacks, be pragmatic first and foremost, and don't require that Obama fight a battle that he will likely lose and that would harm his chances in the war.

Some of you probably heard a news item about "Sergeant Bill", an unemployed security guard and minister who played federal agent for five months in Gerald, Missouri.  With the local police backing him up, he arrested dozens of people, searched their homes, and "roughed them up," all without warrants or probable cause.  

This story is being treated as a human interest curiosity.  But I believe it is much bigger than that, a clear window onto what the once-individualistic USA has become under the fascist policies of the Bush administration.  Anyone can break down your door these days, as long as it empowers the people in charge.