While I have tried to understand Sen.Obama's position on the FISA "compromise", I have not been able to get behind his support for a bill that gives the president, any president, this kind of power. I read and re-read his response about having an Obama Justice Dept. look into all the surveillance efforts currently underway and make a determination about what's proper and lawful. He seems satisfied with the "exclusivity provision" that says that the FISA court is the ultimate authority on surveillance matters. Still, on the merits, based on everything I've read, this is a bad bill. It must be if the ACLU is going to challenge it on constitutional grounds in federal court. One could argue that he can vote against the bill with the view towards scrapping it entirely or doing an overhaul that actually makes sense and does not violate the Constitution and our civil liberties once he's in office. A ruling in court against this bill would give him all the fuel he would need to get his version passed.

So why vote for it? The only conclusion I can come to is that this is a strictly political calculation, which Obama is quite capable of when it suits him. Unfortunately, as Markos Moulitsas has pointed out, it lessens the intensity of support among the "liberal" crowd. I get that. I'm not pleased with his position on this, nor am I in favor of giving President Bush another victory. Having said this, it should be kept in mind that Barack Obama has gotten it right on so many more things than this and there is so much patently bad law on the books since Bush took office that we cannot take the risk of the "Straight Talk Express" getting in and stinking up the White House even further. Barack Obama is not a perfect candidate, but he's as good as we've had come along in at least the last 15 years, and this wholesale re-examination of the last 25 years of conservative governance is welcome. Particularly if we can get some of the more radical items on the agenda reversed.

Glenn wrote: I'm increasingly convinced that the effort to battle the growing lawlessness of our political class and the sprawling surveillance state that assaults core Constitutional liberties will come not from the Democratic Party, but from citizen coalitions of this sort. Does yesterday's episode allow any doubt about that?

No. Might future steps include tracking and publicizing the efforts like the one being made by the group who is opposing the fingerprint registry? Or make other efforts like the one below more widely known? I'm sure many, including me, would be willing to help.

The House has voted 286-137 to expand the National Archives and Records Administration’s powers on the oversight of federal and presidential record-keeping practices. However, the bill failed to get a veto-proof majority and the White House has said President Bush likely would reject the legislation if it reached his desk.

The Electronic Message Preservation Act would amend both the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The measure would create mandatory minimum requirements for electronic records management systems to be used by federal agencies and require agencies to preserve electronic communications in an electronic format. The measure passed July 9 would also have NARA set standards for the management of presidential records, including specific standards for managing electronic messages.

The bill's backers say it represents necessary reforms to records laws because of the increasing use of electronic forms of communication in government. They also cite what they say have been unsatisfactory record-keeping practices by the Bush administration which allegedly resulted in the loss of White House e-mail messages....

The Senate is not considering a similar bill.

http://www.fcw.com/online/news/153093-1.html

Here's the bill that passed the House yesterday: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR5811:/

This particular bill doesn't have a chance of going anywhere now, but very few even knew about it.

How cool!I would just love to vote for someone named Dweezil. I mean, since all things are now equal and all that.

Your whisker is clouding your mellon, Darlin.

The problem with the article by Kos is that he then goes on to say "Obama will make a great president." Excuse me? A great president? Obama demonstrates how effectively he can negotiate a 180 degree turn-about - and that proves he'll make a great president? I realize that Kos is unabashedly a Democrat first and foremost; but could he just maybe say that "Obama will make a good president" and leave it at that? Not that I think he would even make a piss-poor president. But oh well, that's life in the big super-power.

"Kiss my ass, Democrats." And they did.

In this case, Walsh looked more like a kid trying to get her ball back from the neighborhood bullies.

...and one does not do that by running away whining about how badly one's ally acted.

One gets his ball back by beating the living shit out of those who stole it with whatever weapon is at hand, even if that weapon tends to misfire occasionally.

There are no rules in a street fight and that's what we're in. A mean, nasty, kick 'em in the nuts, bite their ears off street fight and Obama is our only weapon at this time. If he screws us, we'll gut him and toss him back to Chicago in 4 years.

Of course, that's only possible if we hang tough and not give the bastards of the opposition the win by default.

There are no R's or D's in US.

Most politicians will waver in the face of a poll that tells them to do this, or do that. Why such a person is termed a "leader" is beyond me.

In this instance, the Dems flew in the face of multiple polls that indicated that their constituency actually wanted something entirely different. So by your standard, the D's showed real "leadership" on the FISA issue.

Your batting average, sadly, must still be represented using scientific notation...