Ugh. I wrote an email to Obama's Senate office last Friday when he announced his support for the legislation. Today I received his offices response. The text of the reply and my response are below.

Dear [als_Chicago]:

Thank you for contacting me concerning the President’s domestic surveillance program. I appreciate hearing from you.

Providing any President with the flexibility necessary to fight terrorism without compromising our constitutional rights can be a delicate balance. I agree that technological advances and changes in the nature of the threat our nation faces may require that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted in 1978, be updated to reflect the reality of the post 9/11 world. But that does not absolve the President of the responsibility to fully brief Congress on the new security challenge and to work cooperatively with Congress to address it.

As you know, Congress has been considering the issue of domestic surveillance since last year. Just before the August recess in 2007, Congress passed hastily crafted legislation to expand the authority of the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant or real oversight, even if the targets are communicating with someone in the United States. This legislation was signed into law by the President on August 5, 2007.

As you are aware, Congress has been working on reforms to FISA. On November 15, 2007, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3773, the “Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed, and Effective Act of 2007” (RESTORE Act) by a vote of 227-189. The House bill did not provide retroactive immunity for private companies that may have participated in the illegal collection of personal information, nor does it provide immunity for Administration officials who may have acted illegally.

On February 12, 2008, the Senate passed S. 2248, making its own reforms to FISA. During consideration of this bill, I was proud to cosponsor several amendments, including the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strike the immunity provision, which would have enhanced privacy protections while maintaining the tools to fight terrorism. However, with the defeat of this amendment, the bill did not provide for a mechanism that would allow the American people to learn exactly what the Bush Administration did with its warrantless wiretapping program and provided for no accountability.

The House and Senate worked out a compromise, reconciling differences between the two versions of the bill before it can be signed into law. While I recognize that this compromise is imperfect, I will support this legislation, which provides an important tool to fight the war on terrorism and provides for an Inspectors General report so that we can finally get to the bottom of the warrantless wiretapping program and how it undermined our civil liberties. However, I am disappointed that this bill, if signed into law, will grant an unprecedented level of immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the President's warrantless wiretapping program, and I will work with my colleagues to remove this provision.

The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe, and that our intelligence gathering capability needs to be improved. What they do not want is for the President or the Congress to use these imperatives as a pretext for promoting policies that not only go further than necessary to meet a real threat, but also violate some of the most basic tenets of our democracy. Like most members of Congress, I continue to believe that the essential objective of conducting effective domestic surveillance in the War on Terror can be achieved without discarding our constitutionally protected civil liberties.

Thank you again for writing. Please stay in touch as this debate continues.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

United States Senator

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I received your office's form response (pasted below) to complaint that you are not doing enough to stop the sham FISA legislation that is pending in Congress and apparently will be rammed through despite the widespread opposition of the American public. Your expressed "disappointment" in this bill is not enough. You are a Senator and the presumptive Democratic nominee for President - you do not have to sit idly by while legislation that you disagree with passes. Rather, you can lead and try to generate momentum to prevent this bill from passing. I cannot believe that a former constitutional law professor would permit this travesty of a bill to even reach the floor without raising every possible procedural and rhetorical obstacle to its passage. If you truly believe that we can conduct surveillance without "discarding our constitutionally protected civil liberties," you should start now.

Just know that your support for this legislation has cost you the support of this constituent.

Actually Max Cleland's senate loss is even more telling than you suggest, Glenn. While most commentary from the left on Cleland's loss focuses on the way in which he was attacked, as a then-resident of Georgia, I always laid the responsibility with Cleland's own ads.

In running against Saxby Chambilss, a Republican, the Cleland campaign paid for ads whose content was basically: 'I support and vote with President Bush.'

If you're running as a Democrat against a Republican challenger, and you allow the central question of the campaign to become 'which candidate will better support the Republican president and Republican politics,' who do you think voters are going to go with on that issue?

Offhand I couldn't find any of Cleland's campaign videos on the web, but here's one from Chambliss which cites the same claim from the Cleland campaign website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKFYpd0q9nE

I quick-read the thread, such that my eyes are spinning like the three lemons displayed on slot machines.

I happened to be listening to "Democracy Now" while skimming; it's televised at 6PM(EDT) here, although I have the impression it is actually recorded early in the day.

Anyhoo, I was hardly encouraged by Feingold's comments. Granted, I have a minimal-- and rapidly diminishing-- respect for the powers and principalities in our duopoly. Even so, I still hope for something encouraging.

Feingold's somewhat clipped and authoritative delivery usually resonates positively with me. But even though I was only half-listening while catching up on the comments, I picked up the standard weasel doublespeak.

First of all, he did not directly affirm that he would filibuster in response to Amy's repeated question. Perhaps I should change the emphasis: he did not say he would filibuster. What I caught was a rapid description of various "filibusterish" things that he and allies would do next.

When Amy asked again, "But will you filibuster?" He said-- quickly, even given his usual rapid cadence-- "That's what we're doing." I think he was being disingenuous, and conveying the impression that what they were after was a sort of virtual filibuster. But he should've just said, "Well, we're giving them a run for their money, anyway."

And, especially because Feingold is one of the least evil Lesser Evilites (e.g., Democrats), his doublespeak about Obama and holding the criminal maladministration accountable was painful.

On the one hand, Feingold frankly disagrees with Obama's response to the FISA legislation (and the public financing issue)-- but on the other hand, Feingold is as enthusiastic as ever about what "President Obama" will accomplish. Impeachment? Warranted-- more for the illegal surveillance than the bogus justifications for the illegal invasion of Iraq.

But, Feingold (quickly) says, there's "no will" to impeach. And that's that. He didn't say "that's that", but Amy didn't ask him to clarify. (Whose will is lacking? Why, principally the party leaders. Both of the "real" parties, in fact!)

He went on to advocate censuring the War Criminal-in-Chief, even while noting that even this farcical slap on the wrist, the barest nod to History, would never happen.

Man, what a bummer! The only thing missing was "Tea for Two" playing in the background. When the Feingolds are reduced to this kind of lame tapdancing, one has to believe that the Democratic Party is truly too corrupt and rotten to live.

Next we'll hear that the Obama campaign is adopting "Tomorrow" from "Annie" as their campaign theme. I almost expected Feingold to go down on one knee and belt it out.