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• Thursday, June 26, 2008 05:59 PM

  Jkalos

  There's another diary on DKos that rebuts one of the points of the original diary's author and is consistent with what Glenn has said. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/26/105029/657/828/542268

  I think focusing on the Patriot Act (which definitely needs work) is itself a bait and switch. The PA is not before the Senate at the moment and standing against the FISA amendment doesn't mean it can't be addressed in the future. In fact, I think this amendment exacerbates the problems of the Patriot Act, because if it passes as is, more communications can be swept up (but see pow wow's excellent comment below) and there is less oversight.

  The author promotes (in comments) some of the Dean/Olbermann/Alter "new conventional thinking" - that Obama can criminally prosecute the telecoms once he's in office. Glenn wrote this downthread:

  "The whole point of that John Dean interview was to concoct the painfully ludicrous defense of Obama that because the bill doesn't foreclose criminal prosecution of the telecoms, Obama's secret, super-clever reason for supporting the bill must be that he is aware of this loophole and is supporting the bill because he wants to prosecute the telecoms."

  On Monday, Markos was on Olbermann, who asked him about the criminal prosecution option. Markos said that if that's the strategy, Obama hasn't said so, and it's not the sort of thing that needs to be kept quite. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emvC6CMRFec

  This criminal prosecution option is having a negative effect - it's making some people think this amendment isn't worth fighting against and it's giving Obama an easy way out.

  The author (in comments) says we should pick our battles and FISA isn't an important battle right now. I think that's wrong and that part of that is to hold Obama to his word. No one should be cut slack on the FISA amendment, especially since the lawsuits that would disappear if this passes, are right now the best chance we have of exposing the Bush administration's lawbreaking.

  I'm not willing to wait until next year just to hear Obama say that we need to move on, heal, unify, whatever...

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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