If you actually believe that you have no choice but to vote for one party's candidate only, one questions whether you are living in a functioning democracy.

There are several repressive and/or undemocratic regimes under which people take the time and trouble to vote, even though they effectively have no choice in terms of who or which party to vote for, but they do so anyway...and hope for the best.

I love you Glenn Greenwald but here's the problem with your premise: Did "The Democrats" decide to bow to Bush's demands? No. Actually just SOME Democrats made that decision. Did they do it to avoid "looking weak"? I don't know, and I don't think you do either. Unfortunately, its entirely possible they actually decided it wasn't a bad bill. Unlike the Republican party (see Arlen Spector) Democrats often vote against the party line. Sometimes for craven political reasons, other times because of thier actual opinions. Which was it in this case? Can you support the contention that "The Democrats" decided to cave on this in order to not look weak? Or is that just the standard assumption when too many Democratic senators vote with Republicans?

I can't excuse the Democratic senators who voted for this bill, but I don't know if we can blame the whole party for it. We should be angry at the media - and Americans in general - for paying so little attention and not especially caring.

When? After years of reading comments by Salon readers who preach about being revolutionaries and Marxists from the comfort of their laptops.

Point being that Americans only think they are special. They are not. Your perceived freedoms are little more than anomalies. All over world including all those chi-chi western European countries everyone worships, the notion that 'state security' would ever need to get permission to spy on people is ludicrous. In the UK they can detain people, anyone, w/o charge for 6 weeks. And the EU Parliament is considering passing a bill to extend that to 18 MONTHS. In France and Germany the state police don't need warrants in fact the French security services have written into their charter phrases like "Industrial Espionage". In most countries the phone companies share everything with the government. In some cases they ARE the government. Sweden just passed a FISA type law even more open ended than ours. So has Australia.

Again Americans think they're special, they are not. There is no privacy, there are no protections. And sorry to say, yelling about UNinventing something is a complete waste of time.

You hit it right out of the park.

The Dems are involved in these illegalities right up to their eyeballs.

Why do you think Rockefellow led the charge? The leader of the Intelligence Committee since 2001, of course he knew everything that was happening. And he was a good little boy and kept quiet.

Anyway, that's not important now.

How do I go about getting Obama elected and where can I give some $$$$ to my favorite Dems?

I have a brilliant idea (I think) for the FIZA awareness campaign.

I need help from an animator and a constitutional historian.

Anybody?

(In a rush at the moment. Will explain more later.)

I fully support the Strangbedfellow coalition and its goals. IMHO we should also punish the companies that participated in the lawlessness, and then bought immunity, by boycotting them. A message needs to be sent to these companies that violated thier customers privacy and our countries laws. Just as you suggest that the folks in Washington need to know that there are consequences to be paid for these types of bills, so should these companies.

Glenn stated that Fisa is already the exclusive means to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance, but actually (at least according to wikipedia) that only happened in 2006 with the passage of the Terrorist Surveillance Act... he made it sound like that was already a provision in the 1978 FISA bill. If I am wrong about this, someone please let me know and show me the evidence because I think Dubya can use his war powers to get around alot of the unconstitutional actions because FISA has NOT BEEN the exclusive provision to all warantless spying until 2006.

Damn it, Greenwald, can you give us more than 20 minutes notice before you appear on NYC? We need to clone this guy, obviously. I'll just put on WNYC and leave it there, ok?

Did manage to hear his joint discussion with the former Clinton flunky yesterday on the Brian Lehrer show. I won't call it a debate, because she had nothing. There was no substance on her side at all, except to say that it was a good compromise FISA bill because things could always be worse. She tried to temper it by remarking as to what a kick-ass job Greenwald was doing in opposing hacks like her. Really convincing, if hand-wringing is your thing.

If winning debates was all we had to do it would be just swell. But we know what we have to do: get organized and donate if you can. If the libertarian anti-war.com right and the salon.com left and likeminded sensible people of all stripes can get behind a movement like this, then there is a bona fide reason to 'hope', if I might borrow that word since it's not currently being used. It's working in England.

Glenn stated that Fisa is already the exclusive means to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance, but actually (at least according to wikipedia) that only happened in 2006 with the passage of the Terrorist Surveillance Act... he made it sound like that was already a provision in the 1978 FISA bill.

You're mistaken. The "exclusivity" clause was in FISA from the day it was enacted in 1978.

The Dems repeatedly give the public some table scraps and tell you it's a Filet Mignon dinner. The good little boys and girls that we are, thank them repeatedly, and some, even give these babied millionaires some of their hard-earned money as a reward for getting some scraps.

Yes, there were some Dems who voted against the bill but it was the Power Structure and The Establishment Dems who allowed this to happen.

The Party should get and deserves no slack, and anyone who rationalizes THIS vote deserves what they get.