it begins.

I'm as pissed off as anybody else about the FISA. I feel like Obama deserves any flack he's going to get from former Clinton supporters saying "I told you so."

But for you or anyone else to claim you knew better from the start is disingenuous. There are two issues here: one is conflating every so-called "centrist" position Obama's ever taken with FISA (as Gail Collins also did this morning). The other is claiming we'd have know this was coming if we were just listening. The death penalty case and Obama's intention to restore the safeguards to Church funding that Bush eviscerated are consistent with positions Obama's always espoused. If you read "Dreams of My Father" or "Audacity" it's all there. Clumping these things together with the FISA reversal makes it real easy for Fox News to paint us as partisans-to say that we object not to the principle of the matter but to any instance where he happens to differ from our liberal "agenda." And indeed, they have.

And for anyone considering an "I told you so" listen first to Obama's speech before the Wisconsin primary. I voted for Obama because I believed he would compromise on issues where common ground could be found (indeed I disagree with his views on the DP, gay marriage, guns, and mandatory health care) and hold fast against false "compromises" (as in the war, FISA). I did not vote blindly for the man, like a robot of a cheerleader. I looked carefully at his record and listened to and read everything I could get my hands on.

This is just lazy journalism. You asked for our empathy about the impact of Hillary clinton's candidacy on women (and got it), but clearly you're not willing to learn the first thing about Obama, his supporters, or the reasons we voted the way we did.

I'm considering a protest vote for Nader, and probably won't follow through (unlike the Emily's Listers). But you don't know the first thing about why.

Nader is a good place to flush a vote away as any.

and if you have a good word for Obama you must be a bot.

So, for YOU it is EVIL if Bush violates our Constitution and ignores, or intentionally violates, our Bill of Rights, but if your god, Obama, does this, it is GOOOOOD.

His shit just don't stink does it?

It is better for Obama to do ANYTHING to serve his personal ambitions but it is baaaad if McCain does PRECISELY the same thing.

I think I understand now. When you are buried up to your neck in your own bullshit thinking, you can't smell the foul odor coming from that orifice that Obama calls a mouth (it ain't his mouth, by the way).

Who accrues the power of this additional level of spying?

If it goes to Bush, it'll go to Obama. If so, then why are the Republicans voting to give Obama all this power?

Because the power doesn't go to the President. It goes to the intelligence community.

You see the leash, folks. Recognize who's wearing the collar.

[Oh, and Joan, thanks for your lack of intelligence and depth in your editorials.]

The vote yesterday was about much more than FISA, as important as that statute is. It provided us with a window into Obama's soul, into the stuff he is made of.

Obama has said that he would have voted against the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) if he had been in the Senate at that time. Given his cowardly performance in the FISA vote, does anyone really believe that anymore? Obama half-heartedly sought cover under amendments that were destined to fail, and then he voted to eviscerate our civil liberties. That is the essence of triangulation. The FISA vote was a much easier and clearer vote than the AUMF. In 2002, Bush's approval was in the 80's%, and we did not then know about his wide-ranging criminality and law-breaking. The FISA vote was a no-brainer for a Constitutional lawyer, and Obama still did not have the back-bone to oppose this unconstitutional Bill that has no support among his real constituents and is really only designed to provide a cover up for Bush's impeachable offenses..Obama would have done the same thing in the 2002 AUMF vote. He would have triangulated, and then voted with the herd.

Obama not only cowers: it is truly embarassing to see how little it takes to make him cower, and how easy it is for him to abandon clear principles. .

This was Obama's first test as the Candidate. We now know all that we need to know about Obama. He does not have the the courage to stand up for fundamental principles. That is his essence and it will never change. That is Obama.

I will not contribute to his campaign. I will contribute to people who really DO have the back bone to stand up for our Constitution and fight: groups like the ACLU, Electronic Freedom Frontier and progressive candidates at www.ActBlue.com.

I urge you to invest your Obama dollars there, too.

I can't fucking believe the ignorance and blindness I'm seeing in the comments to this page.

After I posted my comment I scanned the posts for one letter, EVEN ONE, that was willing to separate the deplorable and unconstitutional flip flop on FISA from either some uncritical cultlike support or some holdover "I told you so" grudge from the primaries.

NOT ONE well considered response. NOT ONE.

Greenwald's onto it. Is is SO HARD? So everyone who supported Obama did so because they were duped and not because they took a comprehensive look at things-including the SPEECH about telecom amnesty he's basically contridicting LINE BY LINE with his present position? And everyone who thinks the FISA vote was deplorable claims they knew all along?

Go back to American Idol. Maybe our grandkids' generation will elevate the discourse, but I doubt it. We deserve the leaders we get.

I worship no idols. What do you worship? Your temper tantrums?