Olbermann was right on last night. He said no matter what Obama says he can't win on the FISA issue because he is being hit by both the left and the right. Frankly I have no prooblem with immunity for Telecoms as long as they get warrents going forward.

I love this:

Phoenix Women, Page 14:

"But the anti-Obama feeding frenzy here at Salon long ago hit self-reinforcing Lord of the Flies territory."

susan sunflower, Page 16

"Yes, I'm one of those who considered Glenn 'in the bag' for Obama."

-- GlennGreenwald

You love what? I agree that Phoenix Women is off but how are you not, as Susan writes, "in the bag for Obama?" I don't really care mind you, but how can you dispute that when you make statements like:

There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important.

How is that not "in the bag" at this point? You may not have always been and you may yet change your mind but... What am I missing? Maybe I don't know the definition of "in the bag."

So for you to come off with this horse-shit about, "a vote for Obama is a vote for anytime Obama takes a shit on the constitution or anything and everything else that Obama has done of might possibly do is nonsensical and self righteous. Is that really that difficult for you to understand.

-- Kitt

What is difficult for me to understand is why you would vote for a person who would shit on the constitution.

If you vote for a candidate fully cognizant of what he is capable of doing, it makes you responsible for his actions when he actually follows through-because you have given him the power to do so.

You know, kind of like how the Bush dead-enders are responsible for returning him to power even knowing of his corruption and lust for war.

But go ahead, vote for him. I'm sure the fact that you dislike his positions on constitutional rights will stop him from trampling on them.

Something stinks here. Either Obama's a spineless fool who's making every Gore and Kerry mistake in the book (how long before he hires Naomi Wolfe to teach him how to look manly?)

-- kovie

Please tell me that you know that the 'Namomi Wolfe advising Gore on wardrobe' lie/myth was as fictional as the 'Gore said he invented the internet' lie/myth.

"Webb: McCain Should 'Calm Down' on Using Military Service "

What I do not agree with is going after the lone progressive host, sucking his much deserved credibility from progressives (and I'm not talking about the sexist hillary supporters he lost already) :)

Obama and olberman are not the cause of all the worlds ills. Just brave patriots going up agaisnt judgenauts in their feilds. show some damn respect.

Remember when all obama supporters/progressives were getting banned from any and all forums (including this site)? Seems so long ago. Olberman and obama opened us up and allowed our voices to be heard, when they wern't. Without them we would not be where we are. Obama may be losing site of that. But what are the alternatives? nader is a nut. Barr is bush.

Nobody's perfect. Think of the huge steps both have made the last 3 years. Not just for themselves, but for progressives/liberals.

Now whine cry and complain. Lie spin and discredit. It's what you republcain coward propogandists do. You used to hate the pc polic, gop. What happened? hahahahha

You acknowledge (I think) that there is a difference between attacking a candidate's qualifications to hold office and attacking his ideas about what the holder of that office should do, ie. his policy positions.

Theoretically, yes. Practically, no. If my experience is in efficiently running death camps, I should be attacked for that, regardless of whether I say that we should not have death camps. I shouldn't be allowed to use that to fill in the blank for "government experience."

The problem here is that you and Obama have accepted the media's and McCain's framing of the conversation. There's no reason to do so. This is truthiness over truth. It's corrosive.

Your complaint is that in his attack on Clark, Obama is playing only by his own rules, while Clark has not agreed to those rules.

Nope.

Clark, by the way, no doubt understands this, takes no offense at Obama's attack, and imagines he is still being useful to Obama's campaign, even when in this case being useful requires, paradoxically, being condemned.

I agree.

I was wondering about the feasibility of attempting to arrange a protest outside of the Senate on July 8th where everyone recites the Fourth Amendment while the updates to FISA are being debated. Does anyone think this is a good idea? -- Silash

I do, Silash. I think one of the main hurdles to being heard is that Senators never see Americans protesting their actions face to face. Of course, having the idea, and finding a way to feasibly implement it, are two very different things. I've long thought that protestors (not decked out in pink crowns, etc., but wearing their normal attire) in Congressional offices, in the House and Senate galleries, and walking the halls, carrying protest signs and video cameras (if possible) is the way to put pressure they'll notice on Members of Congress. But, realistically, how many Americans can afford to travel to D.C. to do that?

As for the current "District Work Period," when theoretically members are in their home districts closer to their constituents... Ben Masel's diary Monday - that was on the recommended list at DailyKos for more than 12 hours - asked commenters to list public appearances this week by their Senators. 250-some-odd comments later, I spotted one allusion to a possible appearance by Senator Salazar in Colorado this Thursday. The first order of business in this effort may be to call the offices of the 20 Democrats (who last voted for cloture on the bill itself, including immunity, in February) and ask them to list scheduled public appearances, if any, by their Senators during this self-described "District Work Period."

Again, these are the Democratic Senators who voted in February, post-amendments, to invoke cloture on the FISA-shrinking, American-data-funneling bill containing immunity:

Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Tom Carper, Bob Casey, Kent Conrad, Dianne Feinstein, Daniel Inouye, Tim Johnson, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Blanche

Lincoln, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Mikulski, Bill Nelson, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Ken Salazar, Jim Webb, Sheldon Whitehouse

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2008_record&page=S891&position=all

The thirteen I think we should focus on pressuring (because we need just 11 of them to join the 29 Democrats who opposed final cloture in February, in order to block final cloture July 8th):

California's Dianne Feinstein

Colorado's Ken Salazar

Delaware's Tom Carper

Florida's Bill Nelson

Hawaii's Daniel Inouye

Indiana's Evan Bayh

Missouri's Claire McCaskill

Montana's Max Baucus

North Dakota's Kent Conrad

Pennsylvania's Bob Casey

Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse

Virginia's Jim Webb

Wisconsin's Herb Kohl

Jesselyn Radack made a valiant effort to call many of these offices on Monday [I don't think she was asking specifically about July 8's critical cloture vote, post-amendments, though; the less we focus on cloture, the more that vote will be blown off as irrelevant by Senators, though it's our best shot at stopping immunity]. But getting a staffer's vague account of what a Senator will do, is not the same as getting it in the Senator's own words in response to a reporter or a constituent question. The problem is finding the Senators so that they can be publicly asked and pinned down as to why they hold the position they do.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/30/82056/9464/70/544027

For the record, since Nancy Pelosi and others are trying to pretend that the House somehow amended the bill that the Senate passed in February so as to make it meaningfully better (Pelosi still calls the Senate bill "unacceptable"), here's how the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (who, along with the White House and Rockefeller, originally wrote the Senate bill in the first place), describes the changes that were made to the Senate bill by Hoyer's frenetic backroom dealing:

"We sat down together on the Senate Intelligence Committee and began, on a bipartisan basis, to work out a permanent solution to FISA. I am very thankful we could do it. We put in a great deal of work. We spent a lot of time with the DNI, with the lawyers and the operatives for the program, and Senator Rockefeller and I worked, in a bipartisan fashion, to come up with a strong committee bill that we passed out of the Senate later on a 68-to-29 vote.

.

I thank my colleagues on the committee, their staff, and all the Members of Congress who supported us, particularly the 68 who came and voted aye to pass the FISA amendments in February.

That started the process that led us to where we are today. There is a strong bipartisan product before us. There were changes, cosmetic changes largely, made that the House believed were important and the intelligence community assured us would not interfere with their ability to collect information under the structure we had set forth in the FISA amendments that were passed by the Senate.

That is where we are today." - Kit Bond of Missouri, 6/26/08

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2008_record&page=S6214&position=all

[Jfitzgerald, I think you've come to the right place to discuss that topic. You are absolutely right about the glorification of the presidency in modern America, in my opinion. The national (corporate-censored) media effectively covers only the presidency today, to the exclusion of Congress, and many Americans now think that their future is entirely in the hands of the man who will be our next benevolent Constitutional dictator. Partly, of course, because our own power as vested in the Article I branch of our government has effectively been ceded - with or without our approval - to the corporations who now fund the seats of cooperative Congressional incumbents. Yet no president - Obama included - can force the Congress to re-exert its own powers to check the Executive Branch. Idling those abusive presidential powers until the next faithless Republican president takes office to re-assert them is absolutely not equivalent to a Congress forcing back those encroachments upon its authority whether the incumbent president likes it or not.]

P.S. Many thanks, selise.