"And you don't think that had already happened by March 2003?"

Authoritarian sentiment was alive and well in 2003, but the country was still in a state of hysteria then. What the coming election will determine is what will count as the new normalcy. Will it be Republicans against the rule of law and Democrats in favor, at least sort of? Or will it be Republicans and Democrats against the rule of law, with liberty a quaint sort of concern on the margins? If Democrats pass this awful legislation, we'll need to keep them in the opposition and try to build up a third party as best we can. This is the only chance of preserving the character of the country, and perhaps Democrats will, with sufficient pressure from the Nader side, be ready in 2012.

Paul Dirks said, "They think it will help Obama in the general election if this passed now and was a non-issue by August. Unfortunately they are probably correct."

No they're not. The ACLU hired Mark Mellman to do a poll for them on FISA and he found that large majorities of voters are opposed to the contents of this bill. That's the same Mark Mellman who polls for Hoyer, Barrow, and Reid.

Large majorities oppose warrantless wiretaps. And they oppose telecom immunity. How it helps Obama to cave in on a matter of principle in order to take the minority position on the same side as the least popular president in history escapes me.

Is it really that diffcult to provide the source of the report here? You don't really expect me to believe a copy & paste on this site do you?

Yes, Harry Reid's latest statement is a sign of the complete defeat of anti-immunity activism. All liberals, progressives, Democrats, libertarians, and assorted fellow-travelers must now admit that they have lost. Why? Because the Linc Chafee of the Democratic Party has offered a tentative opening for opponents of telecom amnesty, rather than a massive festival of kissing their asses.

It's time to take all your money and go home. Don't donate to anyone. Don't vote. Don't even think about politics anymore, because you didn't get your way immediately.

After all, isn't that exactly what the guys on the other side do? All those industry lobbyists and corporate shills? When their efforts on behalf of telecom immunity were set back this past spring, man, they just curled up and died. In conference rooms all up and down K Street, teary-eyed lobbyists sobbed in each others' arms and murmured about their disillusionment and how nothing will ever work.

They just gave up right then and there, and vowed to take all their money and influence and go home. That's why it's perfectly appropriate for all of us to do exactly the same thing now.

After all, four long months ago Harry Reid was promising the slaughter of his eldest child if it would make telecom immunity happen — until the telecom advocates got stung by the rising anti-amnesty movement and had to retreat. It's only natural to expect that Reid would have completely reversed his entire ideology by now.

But no! Instead, we have this lame-ass "I will hold a separate vote on the immunity provision." There's no possible way that that represents an opportunity for anti-immunity activists to strip the Senate version of the provision. None. It's probably actually a pretend vote, like where he bangs his gavel and says, "Ready, Set ... Vote!" and then "Wait, I didn't say 'Simon Says!'"

So clearly, yes, the only rational course is to despair, entirely and utterly, and decide to give up. That is the only courageous, long-term strategy that will work.

Also, it means absolutely nothing that Barack Obama, who didn't even bother to show up the last time the Senate voted on this crap, is now admitting that he has to take a stand on the issue. There is absolutely no progress to be seen there, and it's clear that Obama is actually a child-rapist, and not the Mahareshi Obami Yogi that we were promised.

How could any reasonable person do anything but utterly forswear Obama, his campaign, his family, and anyone in the same party as him? That is a logical, rational, and entirely justified reaction.

It's so great to see such fortitude in the face of adversity from the activists on whose efforts our liberty and well-being depend.

Wire tappping for national security was legal until 1972 when the courts decided Nixon (and the Republicans) couldn't be trusted with it. While it was legal Bobby Kennedy tapped Martin Luther King's phone for'national security'. When King was sweet talking some woman Bobby used to pass the best bits on to his brother John. It probably never occurred to either of them that what they were doing was wrong: after all it was LEGAL. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. All murdered by the secret state. Two of them because they were outside of it and two of them because they were inside of it and got too close to its power.

Nixon went into a wire tapping frenzy after 'secret' documents about the Vietnam war were leaked and published in the New York Times in an article by William Beecher. This was information the American public was entitled to have but not in Nixon's rather strange mind. The FBI was put on the case and within a day came back to say that the leaks came from 'arrogant Kennedy people'. Nixon now went to war with his own people, never mind the Vietnamese. Wire taps were put on government officials and journalists. In the end about seventeen of them. This broke with a tradition that domestic wire taps were supposedly only used on racketeers, organized crime and foreign embassies. They were almost never used on government officials and use of them on journalists was non-existent. Nixon threw all of that out the window, sticking with the real tradition of the Republican party, which is that they're not conservatives at all but wild-eyed reactionaries who will resort to any desperate means to wield and retain power. J. Edgar Hoover, when asked about wire taps on journalists said he would never be stupid enough to do that because it would come out and 'the press would murder us' (interesting choice of words). Those were the days, when the FBI and the government and the CIA were afraid of the press! Now the 'press' is afraid of them.

When it comes to these matters both political parties have blood on their hands(so to speak)and might not want to throw that pebble into the pond (by hauling the telecoms into court) because they don't know where the ripples will end. Making spying on Americans legal might make it legal but it doesn't make it a good idea. Saying 'We just want to spy on terrorists/Muslims' is like Hitler saying 'I just want to spy on Jews'. When you consider how much their ability to spy on their own citizens has been enhanced by technological developments the lawmakers should be limiting the state's ability to carry out domestic spying, not assisting it. Terrorism, as ever, is their smokescreen for abuse of power. I read the other day that the chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack is 1 in 93,000. In other words an American is far more likely to be hit by lightning or hit by a car or to slip on the sidewalk and break their neck than to die in a terrorist attack. Trapped in the Washington bubble it might be hard for these political hacks to realize that. Their obsessions are not those of the people they govern and until they are the present dysfunctional system will continue, whoever's in government. The first step is to get rid of the Republicans because no progress at all can be made with them in the White House. My guess is that the issue of the telecoms and the surveillance laws is just another wedge issue to divide and distract the Democrats and their electoral base. From that perspective only, the Democrats have done the politically savvy thing. They should be judged on what they do if they win government.