It doesn't matter if Obama did intend to go after the telecoms once becoming president (which I happen to believe is one of the most naive beliefs I've encountered in a long time - I will be amazed if that happens ... if Dems are so worried about being called weak on terror that they will vote for amnesty then they will too worried about being called partisan to prosecute telecoms criminally). The point is that regardless a precedent will be set whereby the President can order a corporation to illegally violate the civil liberties of its customers with civil immunity. Citizens lose a means to defend their rights in court and they do so because they can't outspend the telecoms who used their money (both as customers and taxpayers) to buy the amnesty votes of members of Congress.

Is it really worth trading access to the courts in the hopes that every 4 to 8 years we can unseat an administration that is violating our rights on the imagined hypothetical grasping-at-straws-that-probably-don't-exist possibility that the next president will do something about it? Do we really want to make the enforcement of our laws a matter of partisanship? - where what is "law" becomes a matter of the fiat of the sitting executive?

I think Mr. Olberman has run into a bit of cognitive dissonance and is doing his best to resolve, but he is heading in the wrong direction, and might benefit from downloading and listening to Carol Tavris explain the dangers with this form of rationalization.

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?p=121

I just finished writing a post specifically about the Faith Based program that Obama is continuing.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/07/senator-obama-plans-to-continue-bush.html

I hinted at it in the post, but a problem with the program - at least in its current form - is that their is little means of telling how the money is being implemented - which makes it difficult to track when federal money is being used to fund discrimination and what not. Regardless, an influx of cash might mean a charity can shuffly funds around anyway.

But the larger issue is that Obama will be leaving in place a program that has been dreamed up by a movement that explicitly wants to transform the United States into a theocracy (Marvin Olasky and his Christian Reconstructionist influences.) Sure, Obama will likely run the program better than Bush - but by leaving it in place the precedent is set and the potential for further or future abuse remains. The underlying principle is what is at stake. As James Madison put it:

I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of [the] noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soon to forget it.

Madison, author of the 1st amendment, vetoed a faith based welfare program in his day, by the way.

Another problem with the Faith Based program of Bush is that it was created by Executive Order when it could not get through Congress. Obama had promised to review and rescind unConstitutional Executive Orders of Bush, but like the FISA rhetoric that seems to have been tossed for the sake of political gain.

Re: Olbermann

Besides the problems with his stance that I stated in a previous comment, the most absurd thing in his special comment was his "answer" to the possible Bush pardon of telecoms that such an action would be an admission of guilt. C'mon! After 7.5 years how can he possibly be this naive, to believe that President Bush would be held back from such an action by the appearance of impropriety. This is a man who appoints lobbysts to regulate their former employees, who lets lobbysts tell him what laws he wants enforced and what not. Does Olbermann really want to bet his liberty on the possibility that Bush will be worried people will criticize him for wrongdoing?

"Obama doesn't exactly have a choice here"

Swell. That makes me feel that much better about seeing the Christian nationalist agenda come to fruition.

It could be the case that Obama doesn't have a choice because Democrats believe they don't have a choice and thus keep offering tepid opposition to right-wing governance which gives us the end result of a slow, steady right-wing trajectory of our government which leaves behind the We the People aspect of democracy.

Obama has also adopted the Republican framing of taxes and has offered a tax program that will continue to lose revenue for the federal government. Yes, it is more progressive and less bad than either Bush or McCain. But the reduction in funding will still hurt the non-rich more than the rich and if federal debt is not paid off the interest on that is going to burden the non-rich in the future. A tax on posterity.

Obama and Democrats are said to be helpless, but this state of events didn't appear out of nowhere as some sort of divine and irrevocable action. It came from conservative political activists.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/06/invasion-of-economic-underpants-gnomes.html

And the fact that their views were fringe and ludicrous didn't stop them from making them mainstream.

If not now, when is their going to be a push back for reality?

I wrote that Obama

1. is continuing the Faith Based program that Bush created by executive order (true)

2. will likely run the program in a less corrupt, less church/state violation manner

And that I stated my objection was the underlying principle involved and my concern with leaving in a place the precedent of the program, I'm not sure how that makes a difference.