I've been sitting on this for a few days, and I still think it's tough to sort out. Here's the thing. Obama is one senator, and even on a good day, almost three times of his Democrat colleagues jumped ship. Obama has a stake in it because, as we're seeing, sometimes it's really hard to create compatibility in what you really believe and how others will represent your beliefs.

Obama knows that his vulnerability is in foreign policy. No, it's not even that because he has pride and confidence in taking diplomacy in a new direction. His vulnerability is in the "war on turrorism" because THAT debate has been on the table for seven plus years before the man decided to run. Ass backwards as it is, Republicans learned a while back that they can champion this cause and use emotional rhetoric and verbal attacks to demean people who don't fall in line. If anything, their tactics make a good match for this wedge issue.

Even if most of the country is firmly against the war, a lesser proportion still get anxious and scared about protecting our safety. Maybe they have troop relatives, husbands, brothers, fathers overseas. Maybe they would rather be the aggressor than the fearful. It's all a bunch of head-trippin', but effective nonetheless.

Obama has to show the public that he can be strong on terror even when the only way to do that for the average American is to do the saber-rattling, no matter how artificial that is.

That said, it's probably a compromise that hurts his heart. When you do something against your sense or intuition, it is very painful. But at the end of the day, and like I have said before, I trust Obama a bit more to exercise these powers with discretion than what we've seen the Administration do that goes well beyond abuse and deception. For that, the Republicans have set the bar very, very low. I would hope that we won't inadvertently trip over the line.

You better be significantly older than me to be calling me pup. Grrrrrr... yip!

I'm not asking you to vote Obama. That's completely up to you, obviously, and I read your letters anytime I see 'em, so I know the score on that.

I'd love it if you'd apply your acumen and intelligence to making sure McCain doesn't get elected, though. There's a difference there.

I'd also love it if I'm just being paranoid, but, yeah, I think the right to vote is slightly more important than the FISA bill. Our franchise already been eviscerated by Bush, and it's hanging by a thread. All McCain needs now is a sharp pair of scissors.

So, if McSatan comes to power, hopefully you'll get your chance to vote for Hillary in 2012. I'll vote for her too, if she wins the primary. Even if she did plagiarize several lines from her husband's speeches (just kidding, cribbing a few lines from a few speeches isn't plagiarism).

I am curious as to just what sorts of long distance communications with others do you consider worthy of privacy? If they "cross a border" (which is after all just a line on a map) are no conversations entitled to any sort of constitutional protection?

Did you approve of Hillary's vote concerning going to war with Iraq? I have heard people use the same excuses for her that are now being offered for Obama on this so-called FISA "compromise," which I prefer to call a sell-out. To excuse Hillary's vote people said that, as a woman, to show weakness on matters of national security would have derailed her political career. (At the time she cast the vote, this may have been true.) Or they said that, as a senator from New York, she had no choice but to show herself as tough on terrorism. Do you buy those excuses?

Oddly enough, you are now offering a similar sort of rationale for Obama's (new) point-of-view on this warrantless eavedropping and the telecom amnesty bill. You are saying that he must do what he has to in order to be elected.

I am curious. Just how do you define a stand upon principle and why do you so disdain it?

@ Renegade Iconoclast:

Where do you find in my previous letter in this thread a statement about how I intend to cast my vote in the fall or whether or not I intend to vote at all? Moreover, your assumption that you must somehow bring everyone into line to vote for Obama is rather silly. This sort of sheepherding is for sheep. I don't BAAAAA. I suggest you nip at someone else's heels. Try some fool who thinks that the only power of the ballot applies to whether or not he likes the candidates, someone who would be swayed by an "I like Ike" sort of button, someone who did not spend the 80s making sure the Libertarian Party ended up on the ballot. I actually ran as a Libertarian write-in candidate for state office in Texas. The more a vote runs with the herd, the less effective it really is.

As always, I will vote my conscience and not at the bidding of some yapping pup.

Just for the record: I enjoy your posts here. You keep everyone on their toes.

Thanks. Compliments here are few and very far between.

You actually benefited from this provision. What if, just speaking hypothetically, you wanted to have phone sex with your boy- or girlfriend who was in Spain on business?

One has to differentiate between a tap installed on a phone here in the US, or in Spain. A tap here requires a warrant. A tap there doesn't.

So. Let's assume there is a tap on my girlfriend's hotel phone. If I call that phone from the US, the tap in Spain picks up my side of the conversation also. Nobody was after me, I just blundered into someone else's inquiry. Do you expect that only one side of the conversation is going to be recorded? I think not.

When crossing our border all sorts of things can be searched without a warrant. Your laptop, luggage, car, and your body cavities. I consider international phone calls fair game under the border search exception.

That's what the new FISA "compromise" bill makes room for, because that bill makes no provision for a meaningful review by a judge of the facts that support such a wiretap. Does that sound okay to you?

Why in the world would a warrant be required for a tap in Spain? Not even Feingold thinks that's legitimate.