As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out repeatedly, FISA hasn't (indeed, cannot) expire. This isn't a matter of a parachute, ugly or otherwise. It is a matter of preventing the judiciary from hearing cases involving the Bush Administration's felonious behaviours.

The Democratic "leadership" shares Bush's interest in this matter since they went along with his illegal activities. I can't speak to Obama's motives, whether he made some sort of secret deal with superdelegates, is somehow beholden to the lobbying powers-that-be, or simply desires the power conferred upon an increasingly unitary executive.

What is obvious, at least to me, is that he demonstrates no interest in holding to account an administration that has, by its own admission, repeatedly broken the law. Many people have said that Obama, once elected, will have the authority to attend to these criminal actions, even as he sanctions them to gain the presidency. This is the very definition of a Pyrrhic Victory.

Why the false choice? Asking, "Really, what's more important to you, Bush and the telecoms in jail, or universal health care?" implies an inability to walk and chew gum at the same time. As the folks at Balkinization point out, "we are in the midst of the creation of a National Surveillance State, which is the logical successor to the National Security State." This is a creation of both parties and has nothing to do with "new term momentum" or "political capital" or any similar cliches.

We fool ourselves if we think our so-called elite are making "necessary" choices of expediency in order to bring about changes such as universal health care. The illogic of that argument is remarkable to behold.

Let me conclude with this statement from Balkinization: "If you are worried about the future of civil liberties in the emerging National Surveillance State, you should not try to console yourself with the fact that the next President will be a Democrat and not George W. Bush."

The issue of accountability, or rather its absence, has clearly infected all levels of our "establishment elite" (and how it pains me to grant that title, even within mocking quotation marks). Certainly, a torture regime and illegal state surveillance are the harsher, fouler emanations of this rotting corruption. Yet media refusal to seriously challenge, as an actual human might do, the casually murderous statements by McCain of killing Iranians, his consistent contradictions on the economy and healthcare reflecting his functional ignorance, and his gross embedding of lobbyists in his campaign, all of which--despite this evidence of unsuitabilty--merits only the Chuck Todd response (regarding murdering Iranians), "That’s what makes him real and that’s what makes people who disagree with him say ‘ah, you know what? The guy seems like any guy you’d want to have around the dinner table or the bar stool.’"

The absence of accountability that Glenn writes about is so widespread that it signals, like metastatic cancer, the terminal end of a society governed by the rule of law. What is so painful is that it doesn't have to be.

"Is there anything he can do to get his [McCain's] campaign back on track? Tell us your ideas in my comments section, or submit a video reply at Current.com, and I'll share the best ideas in my video next week."

Why would anyone want to do this?

I fail to see why you're objecting to Accountability Now and Strange Bedfellows given that the path you advise we take, ("If you want to have some influence right now you should be talking to people you know who are Obama delegates to the convention. Get some influence going on the party platform") won't produce the outcome many desire. Obama and the Democratic leadership will set the party platform and the latter are the principal problem to begin with. (And you might recall the Jane Hamsher observation of Obama, that "He really doesn't feel that much kinship with the priorities of the netroots and I don't think he has made any secret of that").

Moreover, I'd think Greenwald's extended piece on money man Steve Farber would punctuate exactly why your approach is in vain. He says,"What I am now selling is Senator Obama and the excitement he has created in his candidacy." Note the phrasing: "the excitement he (Obama) has created." Not a word about those voters who are the creators of that excitement. It would be difficult to find a better rhetorical example of dismissing the role of the voter-citizen.

You further say, "You can't just blog. You have to get on the ground and be activists." And what do you think is the purpose behind ANSB (if I can create an acronym)?

Friedman once condescendingly said of the late Lebanese President Gemayal, "he began to behave with typical tribal logic, which says, When I am weak, how can I compromise? When I am strong, why should I compromise?" Oh, those Lebanese. How benighted. How backward. How uncivilized.

Naturally, then, it's come as no surprise that we've had the marriage between "typical tribal logic" and the neoconservative murderousness (with the wedding officiated by Friedman, Hiatt, et. al.), which has produced a twisted, thuggishly brutal offspring.

Yet Friedman, with wounded voice, wonders why this seed is rejected by the world. "I find," he says, "some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and borderline silly." Except for "borderline silly," that sums up American foreign policy these last 7.5 years.

Friedman is of a kind with Newsweek's Jon Meacham who said (as reported by Dan Froomkin), in response to why Vincent Bugliosi's book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder," has recieved little (if any) MSM coverage, "I think there's a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there."

That must be it. Meacham prefers to warble on about the Founding Fathers and spirituality while Friedman, I'm sure, wishes to return to pondering the flatness of all things.