...Joe Klein has just penned a masterly analysis of the FISA bill and its consequences:

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/01/on_fisa_reform.html#comments

Money quote:

"...how big a deal is immunity, really? In effect, it is a grandfather clause: it essentially says that telecoms should not be punished for acts that were illegal in the past but now become legal in the FISA reform bill..."

...my 2008 nominee for the This Is, In Effect, Exactly The Opposite Of What I Say It Is Award.

Truly living on another planet or too stoopid to live.

Rather, it seems, misrepresenting the argument.

It was an old gambit when Schopenhauer described it:

https://www.teach12.com/ttc/figs/38waystowin.asp

assume for the moment that the stategy of the Clinton campaign is to depict Obama as the "black candidate" in the mold of Jesse Jackson

It's not even really necessary to ASSUME it, they have come right out and SAID it:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won in South Carolina.

No, not Saturday's primary _ though it's no longer outside the realm of possibility that Clinton will defeat Barack Obama here. What she has won in South Carolina is the larger campaign to polarize voters around race and marginalize Obama (in the insidious words of one of her top advisers) as "The Black Candidate."

http://tinyurl.com/ywgh2f

Believe, if you want, that Glenn is "oversensitive" and AP's Ron Fournier is inventing shit. But I kind of think you have to ask yourself why you feel the need to go through such mental gymnastics.

If the Clinton campaign utters the name of a black person, its outrageous racism

What a ludicrous straw man.

Clinton's stated policy is to paint Obama as "the black candidate to cynically peel off white support for him. If Obama is the nominee, expect McCain/Romney/Himmler, whoever the R's nominate, to do just that. And expect the howling from "the left," aghast at such a cynical ploy.

I think all Glenn is suggesting is that selective outrage is, indeed, fake outrage.

Harry, neither you nor I heard what the anonymous staffer said to Fournier - if he even talked to anyone. It is certainly possible that he invented the quote, or that he maliciously or mistakenly twisted what was said. We will, in all likelihood, never know.

In the absence of evidence, I can't see a reason to assume Fournier was lying, other than pure wishful thinking.

Can you?

What is the problem here? It's politics. It's a campaign.

If you are as sanguine if/when McCain pulls these tactics in the general, then no problem.

Ockham's razor, as I understand it, recommends the theory that requires the fewest assumptions.

It is certainly a plausible theory that Ron Fournier lied or distorted what the staffer said on Friday, and that Bill Clinton just happened to casually mention Jesse Jackson completely out of context on Saturday. But it sure seems to require a lot more assumptions than the theory that the article was essentially true and that Clinton's statement was in furtherance of that strategy.

Harry, just so I am clear, are you saying that Clinton was not trying to marginalize Obama as "the black candidate," or that it was just no big deal that he did so?

In reading some of the offended comments here, it's hard not to be reminded of the standard right-wing trope that people that criticise America "hate America."

I think a minimum of what one should expect is holding politicians you support to the same standards you apply to those you don't support. My own opinion is that progressives should hold Democrats to higher standards than the other guy... that politics mean something, it's not like a sports contest or a numbers game where the goal is to turn as many states blue as possible for its own sake.

But maybe that's just me.

"Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

I don't really have anything to say about bare-knuckle politics or the desire to win at all costs. All that's fine, as far as it goes, but I am not a politician. All this Machivellian bombast doesn't really speak to the idea that people you agree with should be held to the same standard as people you disagree with.

If you believe that the ends always justify the means, that's fine, but we pretty much have nothing to talk about in that case.

Watching people come by every day, twist some random sentence into an instance of the commenter's own hobbyhorse, and then bash Glenn over the head post after post for writing stuff he didn't write makes me glad I'm just a random guy with a blog nobody reads.

the Republicans are seizing this opportunity to make the Clintons (who, along with Obama, seem to be playing the race game in some capacity) more evil than they are

That theory doesn't hold water with me -- for one thing, Republicans generally don't understand or deal with identity politics, so their forays into this field are usually heavy-handed, gross confabulations like Willie Horton and the McCain-black-child smear. "Clinton is trying to marginalise Obama by painting him as the Black Candidate" sounds a little subtle for these guys.

Secondly, Ockham's razor. Ibid.

A wise man once said something about Scotch and poetry. Maybe if your scrolling finger is hurting, take a break, have a drink, read a book!

It's not nice to come into a bar and start trying to throw out the other patrons.