...who wrote:

I may not be smart enough to know all of the angles, but why did the House block making the surveillance law permanent back in Feb? Wouldn't you think they'd try to CYA back then if that is their reasoning today?

It looks to me that they accepted the compromise to clear this from the aganda until after the election.

But like I said, I'm not all that smart and may not understand the overwhelming unity of the House Democrats to protect their leadership at the expense of re-election.

-- xufapemu

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snarky false modesty ill-becomes anyone, especially you, I suspect.

That out of the way, the reason the House couldn't get this trash approved in February is because enough people put enough pressure on enough House members that it was defeated.

In the interim, Hoyer, and his people, have been arm-twisting and making deals to get the votes to pass it. Ask yourself: why is Steny Hoyer working *so hard* to get this thing passed? To satisfy Bush? I doubt it.

To satisfy telecom donors? Probably

To satisfy a rump of Bush dog dems? AHAH. Here is the gold I think..

To protect blue dog dems from GOP attack that they're soft on terrorism? Almost certainly the case.

To protect the House leadership from what would almost certainly be embarrassing discovery in those telecom lawsuits? Absolutely.

Although, increasingly, I think the "protect the blue dogs" motivation may well be the strongest. Pelosi and Hoyer want to control the House for a long, long time. The blue dogs are key to that. The blue dogs want to be re-elected. They're vulnerable to stupid GOP attacks in their conservative districts. So, in order to have the power he must want, Hoyer is satisfying the blue dogs and ensuring their re-election, by rolling over one more time to Bush and Cheney.

Obama isn't about to screw with Hoyer's and Pelosi's plans. Not if he wants to govern effectively. He's going to spin his way out of this little mess, and carry on. It's politics. I get that. But I'm saddened nonetheless.

Still, Obama could disappoint in every single way, but if he keeps us out of stupid wars, and appoints solid, sane not-partisan-hack judges to the Supreme Court, a vote for Obama is worth it. He's going to knuckle under to corporate power. He has to. But if his SCOTUS judges keep basic constitutional safeguards in force, and limit the power of the executive (and give Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas collective heartburn), then I'm a happy camper.

As Glenn and Christy and others point out, the only way out of this mess is the oust the blue dogs, and their enablers, with better democrats. If we're really serious? We have to take over the Dem party the way the right-wing took over the GOP. It's going to take a long time, and a lot of bare-knuckle fights, but if they can do it, surely we can do it..

'course, it occurs to me that so many in the right had a lot of time on their hands, because they're about as attractive as a dog's lunch, so they don't have much of a social life (think Rove and Goldberg, more or less at random)...and you have really savage primitives like the Coors family and RM Scaife to fund the Right for all those years.

I suspect lefties have a lot more fun in general than righties have. So it's harder for us to get our jollies by designing a fascist future for a political party, like the Kagans and the Kristols and all the other signatories to the PNAC. Righties have this terrible focus because they really don't have much else to do. It's hard for them to get laid, and most of their "friends" probably don't like them much, you know?

Aside from cheap ad-hominem attack, something I indulge too often, I admit, righties ENJOY telling everyone else what to do, it's wired in them apparently. Lefties don't get the same charge out of it.

We better get focused and do something, though, or the Right will continue to run the country in the person of the Blue Dogs, from now until forever.