BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

You trusted Obama, didn't you? What a maroon! What a rube! What a schmuck! Jesus, wait until the stuff about his relationship with Auchi the Iraqi billionaire arms merchant and Rezko really comes out in earnest. Then you'll be begging for Clinton.

Not that it matters; Obama simply lied to you to get your vote in the primary and you bit on the worm. Sucker. We Republicans always knew you leftwing Dems would get taken to the cleaners by this guy. He's merely paying the danegeld to the Scoop Jackson wing to keep them in line. But you poured your hearts out to him anyway. And what's really a howler is that you gave him your money too!

You wanted ideological purity? Go work at the Berkely Barb! Jesus, no wonder Jeff and Karl at Protein Wisdom are having kneeslappers at your expense.

We knew Obama was lying to you. You lefties are going to get thrown under the bus while Barack does his Nixonian Move to the Center.

Sorry, Glenn. You've become Mr. Expendable real fast.

Putz.

Forgot to mention i emailed Keith Countdown last night, urging him to speed over to Glenn G @ Salon.

He's running with it!

Wow.

Aint over till it's over.

We'll see how deep he penetrates.

Teased with 'appeasement!'

Yikes.

Prayer vigil continues..

The Huffington Post has a blog entry on FISA that needs some comments. I hope everyone will take a moment to comment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/19/democrats-side-with-repub_n_108162.html

All Dems, all of them deserve criticism for this bill. All of them deserve to be targeted as part of primary races where and when feasible. And all of them still deserve our vote and our advocacy. And if you don't agree with that, then I challenge you to explain why all of the Supreme Court votes that have gone 5-4 where the liberal/sane justices were in the minority somehow don't matter.

No, I'm willing to settle for a Democratic President and mixed control of the Senate and House (I oscillate between wanting to dethrone Reid and to dethrone Pelosi). Or if Democratic candidates to Congress take a pledge to not back Pelosi as speaker of the next House....

Wrt the FISA "The Day The Constituation Died" news and your congressman Rahm Emanual (you have my sincerest condolences!), here's what Times Karen Tumulty had to say earlier this afternoon (http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/06/intern_survival_guide.html#comment-500339):

...I'm on a train between NY and DC, so my ability to work the phones and go beyond what's in the stories is limited. My emailbox on my BlackBerry is jammed with statements from Democrats like Emanuel saying the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good...

Always a brown-noser, never a brown-nosee. If one wants to know what is the "right" thing to do, ask Rahm and then do the opposite.

What's particularly amazing about this whole process is that the House leadership unveiled this bill for the first time today -- and then scheduled the vote on it for tomorrow. No hearings. Nothing. They all have less than 24 hours to "read" the bill and decide whether to eviscerate the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment. -- [Update IV]

___________________________________________________

This circumstance depressingly recalls the scene in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", when John Conyers admitted that Congressmen don't always have time to read what they vote on-- especially 1200-page omnibuses like The Patriot Act.

Though I haven't seen the film since I saw it during its first release, I well recall the way Conyers facetiously "educated" the interviewer (Moore, I guess) with a twinkle in his eye rising to the level of an incipient wink.

At the time, I still thought that Conyers was one of the Good Ones who would hit the ground running as soon as the Democrats got a leg up. So I found his droll, knowing style charming. But in the intervening years, it's become plain that he really is a rogue-- and a charlatan, and a scoundrel.

It seemed somehow cute then that Conyers would admit to the absurd and farcical circumstance of legislators not actually reading the legislation they were enacting into law. But it really wasn't very cute, in retrospect. It's an affirmation that the fix is in.

And we can't lay this off on the criminal maladministration and the corrupt and decadent Republic Party with which it is intertwined. This appalling and reprehensible circumstance arises from the transformation of Congress and the Executive Branch into a para-corporate symbiont, in which political power and financial power are hot-wired together without the insulation of principle to counter the serious hazard that results.

So not only have they obviously planned to take another dive, they don't even mind if it's transparently obvious that they're dogging it. The hubris of power! The dirty deal goes forward inexorably (so far), and the political leaders enabling it simply offer a few patently false, evasive, ambiguous, equivocal and flatly inane comments in the face of massive public opposition.

So now the memory of Conyers' whimsical cop-out is more disquieting than funny.

When I was a child, an older neighbor boy who was my hero took delight in getting me to do things that would get me into trouble. He did this both at home and at school. And when I was caught and the punishment followed, I learned very quickly that "Bobby told me to.," was not an acceptable excuse.

Whether it was my parents or the principal, the response to "Bobby told me to" inevitably involved a question along the lines of "If bobby told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?"

How sad that our Democratic leadership lacks this simple common sense. The telecoms are saying "Georgie told me to," and our congress critters, instead of asking "If Georgie told you to shoot your sister, would you do it?" are responding with "Oh, well, that's OK then."

This is Pure, Unadulterated Bullshit. Every single congress-critter who supports this capitulation absolutely must be removed from Congress in the next election. Thank you Glenn for taking the lead on getting the wheels moving toward that exact end.