Do you feel the constitution has a left, right, and center. Just where, constitutionally, do you think that Obama has placed himself given his FISA capitulation and his telecom immunity turn about?

Why do I have to be in the same party with all you losers? (Well, I guess not anymore, since so many of you will be reregistering as Greens or whatever. Bye and good riddance!) I understand your disappointment over this, but please, stop acting as if anyone who accepts the political justification of Obama's FISA vote is some sort of brainwashed, traitorous zombie. I agree that too often in the past Democratic candidates have shot themselves in the foot by caving to right-wing pressure to jettison certain ideals and get behind the Republican definition of "tough on national security." And I definitely can see a strong argument that Obama doing the same here is a bad move politically and morally. But I can also see, from the point of view of a campaign trying to win the presidency, a choice being made not to expend the enormous amount of energy and political capital involved in opposing this bill and deflecting the attacks from the right over it in a valiant, Quixotic and utterly futile fight.

Obama *is* a progressive. He's also a pragmatist. The fight to restore 4th amendment rights to what they should be will go on, and hopefully Obama, whether as president or as senator, will come back around to the right side of the fight. In the meantime, I'll still vote for the guy who won't guarantee a lifetime conservative majority on the Supreme Court, isn't angling for a fight with Iran (not to mention Russia), and who will start addressing climate change, and who will restore some sanity and fairness to the tax code and economy in general. The rest of you can go live on a commune while the country goes to shit and let your steadfast convictions keep you warm at night.

And Joan, just as much as it's a self-serving fiction to assume that Hillary would'nt've voted against the FISA bill if she'd been the nominee, it's also not an entirely hard-to-believe scenario. And it's also very convenient that your harshly worded post calling Obama's vote a "betrayal" and an "unforgivable sellout" comes only after the vote finally happens and we finally see Hillary ended up voting against it. Just sayin'.

I also do not roll over for my husband, but I asked him about this FISA bill because he is an attorney.

This new FISA bill does not take away your civil liberties. It has protections.

The big fuss over this FISA bill was Telecom immunity for past deeds. How many of those civil suits ever turnout anything for the people sign on to them. It would take years and lots of money. You already know what's in your e-mails, so what would you gain?

Since I believe Clinton's craven vote to authorize the Iraq war in 2002 cost her the Democratic nomination, I do find myself wondering whether she learned her lesson about caving into GOP threats. It's funny how so many defeated Democrats – Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and now Clinton – seem to become more progressive after they learn that pandering can't protect them from the attacks of the GOP and its friends in the media.

I totally agree with this sentiment. However -- and I don't wish to denigrate Clinton -- I don't think it's "silly" to surmise that she probably would have voted for the FISA bill if she had won the primary, as it would have been consistent with her political career thus far. If she had been rewarded for her votes for the Iraq war and Kyl-Lieberman with the Democratic candidacy, then I see no reason why she would have changed her usual political strategy of appearing strong on national security (by right-wing standards) by suddenly making a principled stand against the FISA bill; after all, it springs from the same cynical ideology as the other two bills, and she has consistently stood by her votes on those. Obviously there is no way to know for sure how she would have voted in that scenario, but I don't think it makes sense to say (as some people have been saying today) that the FISA vote proves that people who supported Obama in the primary made the wrong choice.

Even so, I highly respect and am very grateful for her vote against the FISA bill today. I wish Obama had shown similar spine. He has disappointed me tremendously. Clinton lost the candidacy not because of GOP or media attacks, but because she alienated the Democratic base and couldn't see which way the political winds were blowing. Whereas before Obama seemed to have understood those things very well ... well, so much for that.

WTF?!

The 4th Amendment isn't some bargaining chip that can be abandoned to win an election. The Republicans are going to call him soft on national security no matter what he does. To defend yourself, you reframe the debate. You don't trample all over the constitution. He's a weak corporate tool, which is why the corporate media fawned all over him.

But when I was discussing the FISA "compromise" with my husband, he brought up an important point I hadn't considered -- if there were lawsuits and criminal prosecutions brought for warrantless wiretapping, who do you think would end up getting jailed and/or financially ruined? The high level CEO's and board members who made the cozy deals with the Bush cabal, or hapless midlevel executives who carried out instructions from above?

I don't think any telco people would face serious consequences.

One of the big lies in support of this abomination was that the telcos couldn't defend themselves. The fact is that they could easily defend themselves by presenting their evidence to the judge in closed session.

The harm that has been done is to close the only path that might have lead to an examination of Bush's crimes. Bush's DOJ sure as heck isn't going to investigate.