Since Senator Obama has a degree in Law from Harvard and is Constitutuional expert. I'm sure he has just as much if not more expertise on FISA than even Glenn.

You sound just like Britney Spears, from 2003, that prompted such extreme ridicule:

SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.

CARLSON: Do you trust this president?

SPEARS: Yes, I do.

That's you.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/cnna.spears/

Glenn still has not addressed the exclusivity clause.

This is false. I've written lengthily about the exclusivity provision.

Thanks for the response, Glenn. As I have thought about what will best bring the Bush Administration into following the constitutionally sound aspects of FISA, I think that having the telecoms lose their lawsuits is the most likely to work.

Bush has already shown that mere laws do not matter to him. Signing statements and OLC opinions allow him (he thinks) to ignore whatever law he wants to. However, should the telecoms find themselves looking at high probabilities of multi-billion dollar liabilities in the lawsuits, I think they will immediately pull out the indemnification agreements they must have insisted upon before violating the law. Further, I believe at that point that they will threaten to cut off all surveillance until only legal, warranted activity is going on. I think that the cut-offs of individual taps when the government got behind in payments was their warning to him on that front--it seems to have picked up his intensity in getting this bad bill passed.

Perhaps this is just a case of trying to put the loss in the Senate into the best possible light, but I really think it might lead us into a situation where the telecoms are joining us in insisting that only constitutionally sound surveillance takes place.

Republcans are trying to take family plannig funding from Planned Parenthood. Write your representatives an e-mail in support of PP and funding for family planning.

So then you are saying the old FISA was flawed also, and you are saying we cannot trust Obama to be like Bush..right?

I'm saying that the solution to lawbreaking is to hold lawbreakers accountable -- not to pass the same version of the same bill they just violated and think it's going to be better next time.

I have the same view of Trusting Our Leaders as the Founders had. You should read them some time.

Yes. I do have calls from people oversee, receive e-mails, even wire fund transfers. However I'm not doing anything illegal.

I'm asking this seriously, then. Since you have nothing to hide - since you do nothing criminal -- can I put a tap on your phone and computer and record all your calls and personal emails and then post them here?

So our comparing Obama to Bush and me to Britney Spears. Give me a break.

And I didn't even have to go to law school to get it! We should all be thankful to Glenn for his tireless efforts. I listened to the NPR show in which he and Katrina Vanden Heuval were on. I subscribe to The Nation, and it was disappointing to hear her same old, same old on organizing, when there was not just starry eyed projection of fantasy onto Obama in which we didn't "listen" to him at work progressives' response to the FISA bill. There was activism. I still can't believe how quickly the three digit figure of money was raised on this issue.

Yes, of course, we have to push Obama, as she put it, but that's what people are doing. Why does the editor of The Nation not appreciate the netroots? Is it because the Nation is print media and in competition? No one on the "left" ever thought Obama was Mr. Progressive, but he also said somethings publically. One caller said "you don't play politics with the 4th Amendment." Amen.

No you cannot put a tap on me because you are not the Attorney General or a FISA judge, or a congressional member. Under FISA you it would require the AG & the Intelligence community to have good reason to believe I was a terrorist and get a warrant in 7 days.

This just came to my inbox from Robert Wexler:

Capitol Hill is buzzing today with major developments regarding our campaign for impeachment hearings for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Just today, in what could be described as a perfect impeachment storm:

• Karl Rove once again thumbed his nose at Congress and the American people by brazenly ignoring a lawful congressional subpoena to testify before the House of Representatives;

• Judiciary Chairman John Conyers indicated his willingness to use the power of inherent contempt against Rove if necessary;

• Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced another article of impeachment on Bush's lies regarding the Iraq war; and

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted today saying that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Kucinich raises in the House Judiciary Committee.

After years of work by so many of you, the time appears ripe to finally hold Bush and Cheney accountable.

Do we dare hope that action finally could be starting? Is impeachment finally on the table? Now I'm really looking forward to hearing Pelosi answer questions at Netroots Nation.

The elephantman reading comprehension project.

Can we include bernbart, too?

But who on earth would, willingly, be the project director?

Obama is a politician.

'Nuff said?

But who on earth would, willingly, be the project director?

A masochist with boundless patience?

FWIW, I very much second LT Bohica's emotion regarding considering support for Cindy Sheehan.

I admire her. I support her. I've wondered, even worried, if she has decent, experienced campaign strategists-- those very same pragmatists that generally induce anaphylactic shock in yours truly-- to be the yin to her yang of heartfelt, passionate, humane politics.

There is an iconic Tom Godwin science-fiction short story entitled "The Cold Equations". It's chilling, poignant, and heartbreaking. And in the remote chance that someone who hasn't read it will abruptly break away and search for a copy: Spoiler Alert!

The plot is very straightforward: a starship pilot is on an emergency mission to a planetary outpost where colonists have fallen ill. The fuel supply is determined by exact calculations of the ship's mass and flight path.

Then he discovers a stowaway; a teenage girl who hoped to visit her brother, a colonist. Short story shorter: her hundred pounds or so of mass will critically deplete fuel and alter the flight path. The ship just won't make it. And there's a colony full of sick people needing medical supplies.

There's not a happy ending.

Yes, very melodramatic indeed. But-- unless Glenn has specifically responded while I'm chuntering away here-- I get that "cold equations" dread regarding Cindy's campaign. Not because I am convinced she can't or won't win, but because I know that she has to win friends and influence political organizations unimpressed by her natural and straightforward intelligence, integrity, and passion. By her rightness.

The audacity-- to borrow a slightly soiled and shopworn term-- of an obvious non-bullshitter and true progressive maverick running for Congress is so compelling that I have to root for her. Her personal and political qualities are the antithesis of the principle-free para-corporate technocrats who have colluded and conspired to undermine the rule of law.

And I think if her campaign is successfully reaching out and building local support, she might just do it. I'm hoping that that's going forward in her district; it's hard to tell from this coast.

In any case, it's obvious that providing financial help to Cindy, and supporting her candidacy on principle might precipitate a quantum leap in her campaign. But the Cold Equations probably dictate that her candidacy is not cost-effective, especially given a restricted budget. Still, if we're not all tapped out on "cutting slack", I think Cindy deserves some because of her opponent. We may not have a woman president, but we could have a woman Saint George.

Call me a sentimental old fluff, but I feel that we all deserve the spectacle of Cindy Sheehan knocking off our home-grown Lucrezia Borgia. A few bucks and some buzz might be a wiser foolish investment that the cold equations predict.