From a senator big boy. Congrats, gg. thanks again for all youu hard work, and courage fighting for us.

"Yesterday was a sad day for the United States Senate.

It is my hope that the courts will undo the damage done to the Constitution.

But let us stand tall, knowing that by working together we were able to make wiretapping and retroactive immunity part of the national discourse these last number of months.

We came together – all of you, Senator Feingold, bloggers like Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald, organizations like the EFF and ACLU, and untold hundreds of thousands of Americans who simply wanted to make sure that this one, last insult did not happen with ease.

I'm sorry we weren't successful.

I just hope I'm lucky enough to have you by my side in the next fight, whatever that may be.

Thanks for all you've done.

Chris Dodd

"

I needed something to clean the palate after seeing all those self-satisfied smirks in the signing ceremony photos GG linked to in his update.

As Congressman Kucinich continues to take a stand on Impeachment today, I decided to again watch his words on FISA.

My signature takes you to the YouTube posted here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM2HLbcUafA

I was looking for a clip of "Kneel before Zod" from Superman 2, to make the point that unlike Superman Congress would do as commanded and kneel.

I googled for a clip and the second link was to RedState, to a post titled "Kneel Before Zod", gloating about the Democratic FISA capitulation.

That's just it, isn't it? This whole exercise in ritual humiliation is patently obvious to everyone except perhaps the ones being humiliated. Why do Democrats insist on thinking the whole world can't see how spinelessly they are behaving when they do this? What is possibly allowing them to delude themselves that they are being politically smart?

If I may be somewhat reductionist, I think the sooner they realize that establishment media and overpaid consultant conventional wisdom does not equal popular sentiment, the sooner they will be able to recover from this agonizingly long bout of Stockholm Syndrome.

hahahahhahahaha.

Exactly. The dem's have nothing to gain and everythign to lose. I don't get these people. no wonder the democratic congress has a 13% approval amoung democrats. That's nto supposed to be possible.

Two sides to the same fascist coin. One day we will get another coin. That is the day america is a democracy governed by the people.

Glenn, you are making the comment below up from pure nothingness. You do not know what is in Feingold's heart regarding Obama. I'd remind you that you have claimed not to like to speculate about things you don't know, in reply to comments I've made in the last few weeks. Yet here you are doing it.

It's also possible that some people may admire Russ more than you do. Many of his constituents might be contenders, for example. It's really hard to say who admires him the most at this juncture. He's pretty damn admirable right now, no doubt about it.

I don't think it's your place to say what it is Russ can and can't and is and isn't saying. He said what he said. Let his words speak for him.

--GG--:

Feingold on Obama

It's important to remember that as heroic as Feingold is - and nobody admires him more than I do - he's still a Democratic Party politician who is constrained in what he can say. Of course he's going to be limited in his criticism of Obama and say things like (paraphrasing) "I have confidence that President Obama will recognize the error of his ways and try to fix this."

He can't go on MSNBC and discourage people from voting for the Democratic nominee. He only said that because Rachel asked him directly about Obama. I really don't think he was trying to say that there was no need to worry since Obama had a Secret Plan. To me, it seemed more like it was almost subtly pressuring Obama -- "I expect you to fix this" -- while towing the party line that, of course, you should still vote for Obama.

Given his position, there wasn't much else he could say.

I was somewhat struck by how similar some of the sentiments were to what I wrote last night. I have no theories on this, mind you.

Portion of my post last night (at signature):

At least on FISA, Obama's disappointing new stance is not even a perceived attempt to "move to the center." It is instead an attempted inoculation from the manipulated misperceptions of the low-information voter. True, most polls show that a majority or a plurality of Americans are opposed to telecom immunity, but the Obama campaign likely figures that alienating the far smaller number of passionate immunity opponents is worth the perceived mitigation of the issue as a potential line of attack by McCain in the fall.

.

This is where the Obama campaign has badly miscalculated - not necessarily in terms of the above formulation, but in failing to see how a reversal on FISA plays directly into the very common criticism of Democratic candidates that they lack strength and conviction. It also heavily undermines one of Obama's most important assets: being seen as a new kind of politician, one who does not "triangulate" for political gain. The Obama campaign, it would seem, has been entirely too fixated on cliched establishment media and beltway micro-formulations of seeming "strong" on national security, to the detriment of overarching thematic narrative.

What catapulted Barack Obama - young, black, new to the political scene - above the Hillary Clinton juggernaut was not just meticulous campaign organization and opposition to the Iraq War from the beginning. So much of his appeal during the primary season was the intangible sense that he spoke to people like adults and wouldn't play the typical and transparent political games to which so many people have grown wearily accustomed. His blatant reversal on FISA, regardless of how "underground" an issue some think it to be, only contributes to the counter-narrative that he will calculate as nakedly as any other politician. To a candidate like Barack Obama, this is highly, highly toxic.

Portion of Kos post today:

He or his advisors (or both) decided that they'd rather capitulate on the issue than face GOP attack ads claiming Obama is weak on national security. They let fear of political attacks (that are inevitable anyway) override respect for the Constitution and even his prior promises to the American people. The press insists on calling it a "move to the center", but really, it was a move borne out of fear. It wasn't an ideological decision (i.e. a "move to the center"), but a tactical one. It was a strategic retreat.

.

Like all retreats, this one came with a price. Much of his veneer as a transformational politician has faded. He's a gifted and inspirational politician, no doubt about that, and he will make a great president. But at the end of the day, he's a politician, with all the triangulating goodness that's become a hallmark of our presidential candidates. That has cost him some intensity of support, some bad headlines, a new avenue of attack for Republicans...

I couldn't help but be somewhat surprised at how similar our thoughts were on these particular points.