It's important to remember that the critical vote on the Senate FISA legislation Tuesday (once the Dodd/Feingold immunity removal amendment and all other similar efforts failed) was the cloture vote to bring debate, and therefore Chris Dodd's filibuster, to an end. That cloture vote to, in effect, 'move the question' required only 41 Senators voting no to keep Dodd's filibuster alive, and the Senate from violating the Constitution. Yet only 29 Senators voted no on cloture, to keep the Cheney/Rockefeller FISA bill from proceeding to a simple majority vote for final passage. [Final passage via simple majority was assured even with no Democratic votes in favor, because of Lieberman and Cheney's tiebreaker, even if Rockefeller somehow voted against his own bill.] Barack Obama was one of those 29 who voted to block the Senate from proceeding to final passage. Hillary Clinton was absent.

The cloture vote was held at 12:17 p.m. on Tuesday, after all remaining amendments had been voted upon during the morning. After the cloture vote, the Senate recessed for an hour and a half, and then debated a bit more on FISA and on other matters, delaying the final FISA vote (now a mere formality because assured of passage by the successful cloture vote) until 5:30 p.m. on 2/12. There were no intervening votes between 12:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. that day, and Obama had been present for the voting that started at 10:15 a.m. He had to get to Wisconsin by that evening, so knowing that final passage was a given, once cloture succeeded, Obama quite understandably didn't wait around all afternoon to cast a vote at 5:30 p.m., in addition to all his amendment votes that morning, and his crucial no vote on cloture at midday. McCain, too, had left the Senate by 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, made no effort to get to the Senate for either the morning, midday or evening votes.

We need to stop playing their game about the meaning of final passage votes when cloture votes precede them. As with the Alito nomination, the only vote that counted on FISA Tuesday, aside from the amendments, was on cloture, which is where the Democrats needed to stop the bill. Thus Dianne Feinstein deserves no credit for voting "no" on final passage after voting "yes" on cloture to end Dodd's filibuster; all votes on final passage were nothing but a formality - the damage had already been done. At least Feinstein was the only one who tried to pretend that there was any difference between her (60-vote-threshold) cloture vote and the final (simple majority) vote on passage. All the others who sided with corporate and government lawbreakers against our Constitution (Jim Webb, Sheldon Whitehouse, Kent Conrad, Claire McCaskill, Bob Casey, etc.) on cloture, also voted yes on final passage.

I want to salute Jon Tester. He stood his ground on FISA right down the line, through the amendments as well as on cloture and final passage, against not only Jay Rockefeller (who I understand has befriended and tried to ingratiate himself with Tester since he arrived in the Senate) but also in opposition to the actions of his more credentialed freshmen colleagues Jim Webb (with whom Tester worked on one of the Feingold amendments they co-sponsored) and Sheldon Whitehouse, in order to do the right thing for our country, our Consitution and his constituents in Montana. Thank you, Senator Tester. You showed them how it's done.

Not sure that you make the case that they are identical, since while he didn't vote on the final bill, which would have been meaningless except symbolically since it lost by wide margins, he did vote on the preceding amendments--and in the right way, of course--whereas Hillary didn't vote at all on any of the amendments or the underlying bill. How can that be called identical? That's literally empirically untrue.

Now, one could certainly offer up all sorts of possible explanations for this that are grounded in circumstance, not principle, such as that she had a much longer flight to El Paso than his to Madison, so unlike her he could afford to stick around long enough to vote on all but the bill itself, or that he was just being calculating, etc. But, not being a mindreader, I only have the actual known facts to go on, which is that he voted on the amendments, and she did not.

Even with Kyl-Lieberman, which Obama was absent for and which people who wish to show how that he's just as cynical and calculating as Hillary invariably bring up, the fact still remains that while he didn't vote at all on it, she did, and in the wrong (to most of us) way. And I think that most people who agree that while not voting on an important bill is bad, voting the wrong way on it is undeniably worse.

So I agree that he should have found a way to vote on the final bill, and, more importantly, taken a stronger leadership stance on this issue, but the fact remains that Hillary didn't vote on any aspect of this bill, nor take a leadership stance. In the final count, I see his role here as more impressive than hers, not only because he cast votes, and did so in the right way, but in doing so was willing to open himself up to the inevitable "soft on terrorism" charges that will be coming in the general if he wins the nomination, whereas Hillary wasn't (yes, I know, I can't prove that this is why she missed the votes, but her track record of triangulation makes this, I think, a reasonable assumption). I just can't see how their involvement in this is equal.

"I don't think I ever even heard a Bush official or any Bush follower make the argument that telecom amnesty was necessary to keep the "prying eyes of attorneys" away from Super-Secret Information about "The Program."

Immunity has nothing to do with spying "cooperation," it is solely intended to ensure telecom complicity with the administration's unconstitutional spying.

Read the government defense briefs in ACLU etal v. AT&T.

Big business wants to be immunized when the "Commander in Chief" gives orders, no matter how obviously they violate the Bill of Rights.

The ponderous error of Bush was in admitting, as prelude to defending, communications seizures without warrants. The program isn't a secret, but the entire "Intelligence" establishment is desperate to avoid any constitutional reprimand from the Supreme Court. They have to get the case thrown out, because they're losing.