Sitting on your hands and blaming ONLY Obama because the telecoms got immunity and some lawyers will not be making millions off of law suites is pretty stupid. Not voting, or voting third parties is exactly how we keep getting these stupid Republicans in office.

Obama has not moved on any of his positions. He supported the Dodd and Feingold amendments.. they failed.

Quoth Brother Kos:

Regarding Clinton, I have no doubt she would've voted incorrectly were she the nominee. She's shown over the past few years that on every controversial "national security" bill, she has voted incorrectly, whether it was the Iraq War authorization bill, the Kyl-Lieberman Iran bill, or plenty of war funding bills. It's easy to vote the right way when you don't have advisors telling you to "take issues off the table" by betraying things like, you know, the Constitution.

If this marks the end of the triangulating version of Clinton, so much the better. That'll make her that much better a force in the Senate. (Which apparently is necessary given the new triangulating Obama now arrived on the political scene.)

But I also have no doubt that given Clinton's high profile and massive platform, she could've agitated and campaigned against this bill before today, rather than issue a statement during the vote. Dodd and Feingold could've certainly used the support way back when.

Hillary is no hero in all of this. But to complain that her vote somehow undermines Obama? No one here has undermined Obama more than Obama.

Even as an Obama supporter, I can't give my man a pass on this one, but, again, there's no need to start being hagiographers for Hillary. Political courage is in short supply on the Dems' side of the aisle; that's the truth and the tragedy.

The last paragraph, btw, is mine, not Kos'. I couldnt figure out how to turn the italics off...yes, I'm a sad soul...

Yes he does have it right. Thanks for posting that.

What did you expect? Obama was never all that. And he will trim his sails as they all do to get elected. What did you expect him to say? "You can't just turn 150,000 troops around and march them straight out of Iraq. It needs to be a phased withdrawal, which will take some time." He wouldn't have won the nomination dishing up that bit of reality.

Still, I'll be voting for Obama come November. Just as I would have voted for Clinton, Dodd, Richardson, Biden et al over McCain, Huckabee, Romney, etc.

Shit, when was the last time you got to vote for someone you really really REALLY wanted for president? Hasn't happened in my lifetime.

But unlike you, I will not be blinking in stupid astonishment when it turns out that the Obama Admin has been responsible for furthering Bush's Orwellian policies just as if Bush had done a 3rd term.

That's funny, since we don't actually disagree on anything so far as I can tell. Maybe you're just a pretentious jerkoff? Something to think about.

With all due respect, you and your ilk are assholes. And classist, racist, and sexist. Your backhanded working to get McCain in might make you feel ideologically pure, but at the expense of a good hundred million plus working poor, who will have to bear the real consequences of a third term of Bush.

If you and your Ivory Tower buddies do to the US what Nader did to Gore, I am completely washing my hands of the United States, I'm moving to Europe permanently, where at least the ideas of Enlightenment and Rationality are still embraced. At that point our country will have completely jumped the shark, and the Founder's vision will have been a failure. The country can burn to the fucking ground at that point for all I care. Washing my hands.

End of rant....please resume the keyboard jockey Ivory Tower Emo circle jerk.

Well it is a good last paragraph also!

THe following Senators votes YES - JUST AS HRC DID.

John Edwards (D-NC)Former 2008 Pres. Candidate

Biden (D-DE)Former 2008 Pres. Candidate

Cleland (D-GA)The Anti-War's multiple amputee favorite poster child

Daschle (D-SD)FORMER MINORITY LEADER

Dodd (D-CT)former 2008 Pres. Candidate

Schumer (D-NY)OTHER SENATOR FROM NEW YORK

Reid (D-NV)CURRENT LEADER

John Kerry (D-MA)from SUPER-LIBERAL Mass.

Feinstein (D-CA)

Harkin (D-IA)Mr. ULTRA-PROGRESSIVE HIMSELF.

Kohl (D-WI)

So why do you constantly emphasize HRC's vote for the war?

Do you make a point of putting the phrase "craven vote for the war" next to these 26 Senator's names as well????

The rest of the Dem. Senators who voted for the war.

Baucus (D-MT)

Bayh (D-IN)

Breaux (D-LA)

Cantwell (D-WA)

Carnahan (D-MO)

Carper (D-DE)

Clinton (D-NY)

Domenici (R-NM)

Dorgan (D-ND)

Hollings (D-SC)

Johnson (D-SD)

Landrieu (D-LA)

Lincoln (D-AR)

Miller (D-GA)

Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE)

Rockefeller (D-WV)

Torricelli (D-NJ)

HRC was representing NY State the sight of 9/11 WHICH PEOPLE SEEM TO FORGET meant if she voted against it, she'd have voted against 90% of her state's voters desires.

HRC's vote was NOT KEY to the passage of the authorization.

IF she had opposed it with all her heart, it still would have passed OVERWHELMINGLY, because it was a reflection of the mood of the nation.

As the junior senator from NY withOUT a committee position, her vote in the scheme of the senate and political national leadership was 1 of 77.and should be referenced that way.

The fact she ran for the Presidential Dem. nomination does NOT elevate the importance of her SINGLE vote vs. a vs. the rest of the senate or all of congress.

Ms. Walsh, you are practicing the worst habit of modern journalism in doing this.

Rather than stating strongly what you believe is right and wrong, you decide "right and wrong" by staking out a place in the "middle" of the debate assuming each side is a little right and a little wrong. This is mindless, unthinking and debasing to the principles of editorial journalism.

By assuming "right" is synonymous with "half right and half wrong" you end on the "wrong" side, for when it comes to this subject, for the good and bad, right and wrong there IS NO BALANCE.

You are either right or wrong, and on this you are WRONG!

YOu end up being grotesquely UNfair, slamming HRC for that one vote.

You help create the "big lie" that she was key, that she could have done something to change the reality back then, when she could NOT have done anything to affect the overwhelming nature of the vote.

To condemn her for that vote, and NOT condemn, the half of the Senate Democrats MEANS ONLY SHE TO PAYs THE PRICE FOR DOING SO!

That is 100% WRONG.

And in terms of absurd, just as absurd as the many Obama supporters who paint him as an anti-war crusader for saying he would have voted NO if he had been a senator. Woulda Coulda - who the hell knows.

A speech as a state legislature against going to war does not qualify as a NO vote in the US Senate in my book, because he was mostly free of the pressures all national representatives have and that's representing an entire state. Obama had a SUPER SAFE seat on the South Side of Chicago. He RISKED NOTHING, and thus does NOT deserve all the accolades he gets for speaking out back then.