When you ask:

"How can you receive "lawful orders" to conduct unlawful activities?"

I presume this is rhetorical.

Just in case it's not, the answer is simple: if the President orders it, it's legal.

(But you already knew that, right?)

djmagaro,

Try to grow up, not throw up on the comment threads.

TIA.

You are correct, the problem is systemic. People are realizing that fact and, as a result, fewer and fewer people are listening to you.

Feel free to keep digging your hole though.

-- adnoto

So let me ask you again, and probably not the last time, what do you propose we replace "the evil system" with? If a police force in a town is plagued with corruption, do you abolish the police force? Because that is what some people suggest we do. Or do you attack the corruption in the system, not the system itself. Try to think about medical analogies and metaphors here. We can kill the cancer easy, the trick is not to kill the patient in the process.

Then Obama should have simply stayed the f*ck OUT of it!

How can you receive "lawful orders" to conduct unlawful activities?

Sorry for the repeat post, but somehow my prior post was truncated.

Two points, and I'll ask Glenn for confirmation. I don't think our dear press's use of the term "lawful" is really accurate. I think they should have said "authorized", i.e., the government order/request was in fact authorized by the appropriate authorities in government and not just the act of a rogue bureaucrat.

Secondly, I don't think the government could "order" the telecoms to these things under existing statutes. The government could request, but the telecoms retained an obligation to determine whether the request was in fact lawful. The standard was whether the telecoms reasonably believed the order/request to be lawful.

Obviously the new legislation would eliminate altogether even the permissive standard under existing laws.

sCREW THIS SITE. yOU WIN. i'M GONE

Bad batch of meth, eh?

Bad batch of meth, eh?

-- Jebbie

One down. Thousands to go.

He can show his true colors: Ben Franklin green. If you truly thought that Obama would challenge his Corporate Masters then the world is definately to complex for you. Obama is no different than Bush. He will make sure his buds are making their money and he will screw the rest of us. It's just that simple. This country is over. Get out the brown shirts.

(sigh) It brings me no pleasure to read this article, nor the one about public campaign financing on salon. I have been no doubt impressed with Obama from the very start but I must say that I have always been concerned that Mr. Obama has been very ambitious in his charge to take on a very powerful system that itself, does not want to be changed and has every means at its disposal to resist said change.

Before this turns into a sound board to flame Obama and paint him as the lesser of the two Democratic contenders, let me also point out that Ms. Clinton has done little to nothing specific to block this Amnesty deal either. In a worse case scenario, they are cut from the same cloth.

To be fair, there are 435 districts in the house, and being consumed in the current political race, Obama and strategists are likely looking at poll numbers, not voting records as a source of alignment inspiration. True, by that very definition, Obama is clearly playing by the "old politics" strategy and has been since the inception of the race. For the nay-sayers out there, it would be next to impossible in this day and age for any hopeful to get half as far as Mike Gravel did without sipping this toxic political kool-aid.

That said, I would love to think that Obama is just too distracted by the election cycle to fully disgest the gravity of this endorsement, but if I were to speculate on that logic I would be dishonest if I didnt consider that there are likely political motives in the works here which aim to get Obama closer to the presidency. Even if this is not the case, its unlikely that Obama would retract his endorsement mid stream out of fear that it might be used against him by his opponent down the road or may make him look wishy washy. This is the complicity of politics which should also be changed. Either way, I just dont see it being a "political opportunity" for his campaign. Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

The reality is that we live in a corporate financed Democracy, where big business has the means to destroy political careers. Safe gaurds are in place should an elected official happen to go rogue or stops greasing the wheel. While the current Telecom Amnesty deal is of paramount importance and every factor is crucial to fostering its demise, I have to admit that I have never been optimistic that we the people would be able to enforce accountability, much less the law, to the mega-wealthy class or its vast power infrastructure.

Still, I cannot thank Mr. Greenwald enough for challenging that cynicism imbedded so deeply in me, as he has all but been assigned as lead prosecuter on this issue. If anyone has the clear, concise skill of language desperately needed to give this issue its voice, then it is you my friend and I truely hope you succeed in this endevor.

Change of any sort requires an undermining of current thinking. It is not made sweepingly but in small increments. I am still hopeful that once Obama is elected, once the proving grounds have been run, and the political posturing fades from necessity, there will be a real opportunity to begin down that road. If we can change one thing, that thing should be transparency in our government, and I am still optimistic that we have the right person for that task.

According to Policito.com, this is the language of the proposed bill:

http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_080619_fisapromise.htm