And the end of President Tupac Osama's first term, when he's proven he's unable and unwilling to wrest the shitstorm that George Bush created from the flames, it's you people who have chosen being craven toadies no matter what who will say that up is down black is white and it's all good. -- Gustatus Similis Pullus

Its absolute crap, of course. Borderline racist and utterly incoherent. But its Pullus' absolute legal right to spout it.

Ain't this country grand?

If this has already been posted, I apologize. It is an email from Senator Dodd. I've added the URL for signing on and have also made it the link to my signature:

For the last nine months, when retroactive immunity has surfaced, we have been able to delay its passage.

We were able to stop it in December because I had an army behind me.

Two months later, it stalled again -- this time in the House.

And last week, we managed to delay action one last time.

But when the Senate returns from the July 4th recess, we will vote on FISA legislation that includes retroactive immunity for telecom companies that may have illegally helped the Bush administration spy without warrant.

It's a bad bill and we need action to stop retroactive immunity from becoming law.

I've introduced an amendment with Senator Feingold to strip immunity from the bill.

This amendment has the support of Majority Leader Reid and Senator Obama, but it needs 51 votes to pass.

Will you sign on as a citizen co-sponsor of our amendment?

Sign on now!

(http://advomatic.bm23.com/public/?q=landingpage&fn=Mail_LandingPage_Link&id=1c1sal9lif76e2hlphhjcjllpc0d9&page=subadd&type=p&ssid=9531)

Together, we can prevent this assault on our Constitution.

Let's do it one more time. With your help, we can stop the further erosion of the rule of law.

We'll be in touch soon.

Chris Dodd

I'm sorry, I took so long writing a response to you that salon reset, or something. Too bad. Perhaps we can discuss it in another thread someday.

Obama is the key to the problem: is he truly the progressive individual, albeit with centrist characteristics, that his rhetoric leaves one to believe, or, is he a blatant opportunist politician, with no character at all?

The rhetoric of the early primary campaign left one to believe, certainly me to believe, that Obama is a true progressive, hiding behind the “post-partisan” facade about his politics. The only non-progressive position that his early campaign took was the non-mandatory nature of his health care reform proposal. Most progressives believe that, ultimately, in order to reform the health care delivery system, one must have a mandatory system, where all people must be included.

Even Obama’s initial response to the Jeremiah Wright matter was “progressive,” in that he did not throw Mr. Wright ‘under the bus,’ but allowed him to continue to be loosely associated with Obama. His later response, in May, following the primary win that essentially locked up the nomination for him, was to ‘throw Wright under the bus.’ It seems to me that at that point, he had come under the influence of the Mainstream Media’s, (MSM) and, therefore, the Right Wing Noise Machine’s (RWNM) influence of the political discourse in this country.

Obama needs to return to the roots of his campaign, which is borne of the blogosphere, with a big push, of course, by Oprah Winfrey. If he ignores the blogosphere now, it will be to his great peril, and possible loss of the Presidency itself.

Most of the “centrist” positions he has recently taken have simply been in speeches, with no actual law at stake. That is not true, however, of the FISA debate. With FISA, Obama has a chance to demonstrate true leadership, one borne of conviction to principle and the Constitution. He can “change his mind,” once again, on FISA, and come out strongly in favor of the rule of law, and against retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

Make no mistake, Obama is the key: if he comes strongly out against the retroactive immunity compromise, and promises not only to “amend” the bill to strip the retroactive immunity language, but to filibuster the entire bill if the amendment fails to pass (or, as is more likely the case, is blocked by Republican parliamentary procedures), at least 40 Democrats, if not more, will follow his lead, and result in no bill at all. If, on the other hand, Obama only supports the retroactive immunity-stripping amendment, but does not advocate a filibuster of the entire bill, his actions should be seen as one of a “follower” and not a leader, one who is not worthy of being the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Obama can’t try and be “all things to all people.” He needs to be true to the progressive principles that he at one time espoused. If he cannot support the Constitution in the FISA debate, one wonders if he will live up to any of the other promises he made in the primaries, including bringing the troops home from Iraq, and encouraging direct talks with the Iranians prior to invading them.

And I can't wait until you become a regular contributor on Countdown

your beloved candidate is supporting a terrible bill that eviscerates the Fourth Amendment and rule of law in exactly the way he inveighed against when seeking the nomination.

Obama is being "practical" and "realistic". Don't we live in the Real World, where doing anything other than slithering around on your belly and being practical might require standing on those icky principle things that only exist in the Fake World? It is repeated over and over again: baby steps, compromise, win win win, even when you are up in the polls by double digits. They say that in the real world your principles must bend in order to conform to the agenda of the malevolent morons that control the status quo. That is called being a team player, as opposed to being a non-centery radical leftist.