From the Wall Street Jounal:

The agreement reached will see a district court review the written authorizations handed to the phone companies from the administration stating the program had been approved by the president and the attorney general.

This allowed Democrats, the majority of whom have been opposed to immunity for the phone companies, to say there has been a court review of the legality of the program, while Republicans could be confident the lawsuits against the companies wouldn't proceed.

BTW, special thread award for Most Colorful Description goes to renzo capetti(p.67) for this regarding Nancy Pelosi:

She looked like an overmedicated stroke victim awaiting a slasher in a Joan Crawford horror movie.

Bravo!

Amidst the provocation and controversy, there is something I noted that confused me: is it the case that lobbyists actually make law (in the literal sense)? My understanding is that telecom lobbyists were directly involved in the "negotiations" over this bill.

Is this (a) correct; and (b) usual?

Yeah, there's a big difference between public perception of their own congress member and congress in general. But there is a clear trend in the general perception, and that is not meaningless. Nor is it meaningless that societal institutions as a whole are dropping in public perception. Nor is it meaningless that the military is viewed, in a general way, so very highly.

figure out the way to spend it that creates the largest impact

I am probably the last person to be able to answer this question (how to spend money for political advertising effectively). I do wonder, though, if there were any way to start a meaningful campaign to try and educate the American people as to what's going on... with the idea/hope/fantasy that they'll start applying their own pressure.

I guess, though, we'd be talking about tens (hundreds?) of millions rather than hundreds of thousands...

(h/t Kitt for headline)

...that Caroline Kennedy is re-thinking her endorsement?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0679744347/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

http://www.amazon.com/Right-Privacy-Ellen-Alderman/dp/0679744347/
ref=pd_bbs_sr_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214061235&sr=8-6

I read somewhere that she's on vacation. Surely, after the last 18 months, no one could begrudge her a few weeks off?

The democrats are afraid that the repubs will use this issue against them.

Boo Hoo!

Authors from Sophocles to JK Rowling have written that we sometimes need to choose between what is right and what is easy (or, in this case, politically expedient). So we now know that the dems are not merely spineless: they're devious at best and craven at worst. Unfortunately, we're in a pickle.

That pickle is the fact that the next President will most likely replace three Supreme Court Justices. So, while extending my apologies to Antigone and Dumbeldore, I will (less than half-heartedly) vote for Obama in November.

However, to assuage my guilt and my outrage, the only money I will spend on a political campaign this summer will go to Cindy Sheehan who is on the ballot running for Pelosi's seat. Why that campaign? As best as I know, it is the only place we can try to elect a true progressive and at the same time send a clear message to politicians of both parties that We The People will not be diddled any more.

(I did send money to the StrangeBedfellows but come on; do we really think Hoyer is gonna lose any sleep other those ads?)

Five days to go until my next Drinking Liberally confab. Sigh.

• Technical improvements to comments threads are always welcome. Personally, I can get by without an ignore feature; I've wasted time on enough troll-infested threads here and elsewhere over the years to have a fairly sensitive scroll-finger.

And apart from trolls, I also tend to scroll past stretches where the comments are spammed by two or three verbose regulars having catfights; like Mark Twain's description of "reading" the Mississippi river as a steamboat pilot, one learns to pick up "indications" of such stretches, e.g. when one notices a serve-and-volley between the same commenters arguing back and forth.

I may be missing interesting and useful information and insights, but so be it.

However, I would be thrilled if the comments could be tweaked to modify or even reject those long URLs that break the page and complicate scrolling by causing the page to shift from side to side while one is scrolling. It makes me seasick, and I have scant hope that everyone will eventually learn to use TinyURL or the like. Similarly, excessively long alphanumeric strings, e.g. "Arrrrgh..." should be blocked or modified to preserve the integrity of the page.

And of course, one dreams for a single-click feature that returns one to one's comments in situ. I do appreciate Salon saving my comments in one location, but I'd like it even more if one could readily return to them in context.

• I'm not about to go back (up?) and identify the comments that prompted this observation, although I believe that Retired Military Patriot largely inspired it with a comment that essentially sounded like, "Come on now, buck up and return to the realization that there's no one else to support but Obama!"

I appreciate that it was honest and well-intended, but it flashed me back to a little running campaign between my sister and my niece when my niece was in high school.

My sister was somehow acquainted with a boy who lived nearby, and attended the same high school as my niece. My sister thought this kid-- let's call him "Obama"-- had it all: he was good-looking, an honor student, an athlete, and was personable. (How reliable this assessment was is an open question.) Since my niece also possessed these qualities and achievements, my sister apparently saw a match made in Heaven.

So my sister used to encourage my niece to get to know him, etc. Whenever his name popped up, my sister would wonder aloud why my niece wasn't making a run at him, etc. She did it facetiously, with a tongue-in-cheek tone, but it was clear that beneath this, my sister really did think highly of the kid and genuinely hoped that my niece would share her opinion.

Of course-- as my sister probably realized, even though she couldn't help herself-- the more she touted Obama, the more annoyed my niece got, and the more resistant she became. And, possibly because I am not myself a parent, I didn't find my niece's resistance symptomatic of "immaturity", and conclude that my sister was "right" and my niece "wrong".

Nothing ever came of it, and eventually it did become more of a "joke". But I'm reminded of it because it has the same tone as the commenters who argue in Parent Knows Best terms that Obama is still the go-to guy, and that it really isn't thinking very clearly to repudiate him because he's doing the best he can in a tight spot.

I appreciate that Glenn hasn't repudiated or rejected Obama for flinging down and dancing upon the Constitution, and urges us to stay the course and institute damage control. But he's not self-righteous about it. Otherwise, not only am I increasingly put off every time some Pragmatic Political Parent tells me what a lovely boy Obama really is-- I resent their attempt to minimize the fact that their Golden Child just backed over us in the parking lot and drove away smiling.