OK, there's revolutions, and then there are Revolutions. I tend to think of them in the big "R" sense, as complete ejections of one political order for another, either by uprising (American Revolution), military junta, or even massive political realignment (Russia 1989-1991).

You seem to be using the term more in a cultural, albeit also political, sense. The anti-war, civil rights, and other massive upheavals of the 60s. Small "r" revolutions.

One thing both types of revolution have in common is that they are often more a symptom and consequence of a confluence of factors, and can rarely ever be precipitated as a sort of end in and of themselves. By the time the genuine possibility of even a small-"r" revolution comes to be, the groundswells, public sentiments, and other factors undergirding it have already reached critical mass.

In other words, we can't possibly wish for that sort of a solution to our admittedly fundamental problems until (1) the problems themselves are widely recognized as fundamental, and (2) these problems are widely recognized not to have intra-systemic solutions. Not even amassing a million people in Washington, DC, even in this time of increased anti-war sentiment, could come close to accomplishing what the movements of the 60s -- or the (17)70s -- had, because this kind of mass awareness and frustration has not reached the necessary levels.

In that sense, revolutions are both solutions and cataclysmic failures. They are system crashes. System crashes are the result of pervasively flawed systems that fail to correct themselves. A system crash is never a good thing in and of itself. It is neither "good" nor "bad." It is simply inevitable or not inevitable.

Did you all see the cowardly lion, Harry Reid, advocate unanimous consent for a base 60-vote requirement for any amendment to the pernicious bill now on the floor?

In essence, he said, because Republican members told him they would filibuster, why inconvenience them by making them do so and be subject to an actual cloture vote?

Democracy Inaction, indeed.

Glenn - what do you think about putting question of telecom culpability in front of FISA court?

I know you addressed this question to Glenn, but allow me to interject.

I saw her speech in which she filed her two amendments (one proposing putting telecom liability before the FISA Court, the other "strengthening" the FISA exclusivity provision), and was left breathless by the apparent disingenuousness of the exercise.

Feinstein sits on both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and has significant clout on those committees. She said in her speech that she "wanted" those newly introduced provisions in the Intelligence Committee bill that was given precedence on the Senate floor by Harry Reid, but only offers the amendments once the bill lacking those provisions had already been given primacy, and once it had already been established by the Democratic leadership that 60 votes would be required to amend the bill.

Feinstein thus allows herself to be able to say that she supported more reasonable immunity and exclusivity provisions, all the while knowing that they will go down in inevitable defeat due to the 60-vote requirement. While I am not intimately familiar with the Intelligence Committee proceedings, and whether Feinstein legitimately fought for those provisions while the bill was still in that committee, this latest speech and parliamentary tactic strikes me as highly duplicitous.

But this is not to say I am surprised. This unprincipled manipulation has been the hallmark of most Senate Democrats on the most imperative issues of the day, hasn't it?

As for Feinstein, I'll write more about the substance of her compromise, but the way she did it was completely deceitful. It is EXTREMELY difficult to get amendments like that into the base bill once the bill hits the floor. The time to introduce those amendments - if she really believed in them - was during the Committee process. She's on both Committees and didn't do this.

This strikes me as a way for her to have the bill she wants passed -- including the basically unconditional immunity she VOTED FOR in both committees -- while being able to claim that she tried to water it down with compromises. Now that there's more time, we'll be able to call that bluff and see how serious she is. She's the last person I trust in the Senate.

That was exactly the sense I got too, as mentioned in my previous comment. Feinstein's tactic was, in so many ways, just a microcosm of many other Senate Democrats' behavior on this and other important topics.

How many times did I hear Harry Reid say that he was against retroactive immunity, while doing everything in his power to procedurally facilitate its adoption? I swear, my nickname for this newly minted Democratic Congress is the Hand-Wringing Congress: oh me, oh my, it pains me so much to do this, but I must, oh dear!

Someone else earlier put it perfectly when they noted how Reid said he believed that there should be no telecom immunity, but that this belief wasn't necessarily right. That about sums up the Democratic congressional "leadership" right now.