AKA. do you really believe Obama is caving on reproductive choice? He has always worked with NOW, PP and NARAL to protect choice. AKA this whole stupidity of parsing every word a candidate speaks instead of looking at his voting record on the issue so pointless. I am strong supporter of reproductive rights and understand Roe & DOE very well.

Obama made it clear that he supports late term abortion for healths reason. I think his comment could have been phrased better on the "slight mental health issue, but I took his comment as a counter to the claim by antis that later term abortion is used for causal reasons, which it is not. Everyone has chosen to ignore his statement in the same conversation he made in support of late term abortions for severe health situations women face late in pregnancy.

ON April 19, 2007, the Supreme Court in "Gonzales v. Carhart" and "Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America", the Supreme court upheld the first-ever federal abortion ban without a Health exception. The decision had far reaching implications for both pre and post viability abortion as it and blurred the line on viability. Obama does NOT support these bans.

Seems to me a lot of people should be getting involved in pro-choice activism instead of jut blowing hot. Women between the ages of 40-50 have been almost totally absent from the reproductive choice cause in the past 10 years.

Sorry, Joan. While I agree with the gist of your argument about Obama's needing to be careful vis-a-vis alienating his Democratic base, I cannot buy the part about his not taking public financing also being a sell-out.

Surely you are aware of what a joke the whole concept of "public financing" is, when the Republicans can channel unlimited amount of cash from the RNC, etc., to their presidential candidate---not to mention all the Swift Boat money that enters into play the last couple of months of the campaign.

Obama, unlike Kerry or Gore, is doing what it takes to not handicap himself when confronting the Big Boys on the Right. Knocking him for being willing to use the money he can raise is a Republican talking point, not worthy of the editor of Salon.

Vote out every last Republican in the house and senate, half the democrats in same and write in Ron Paul for President, I am.

"What about those working class whites that everybody was so concerned about a month ago--are they riled up about FISA? I don't think so."

Really, how many do you know? Have you seen polling to show this? If so, please share, because I haven't. In fact, the majority of the American people were against this law, in particular the amnesty provision.

"But a commercial suggesting Barack Obama wants terrorists to be able to make calls freely in the US because he's afraid not to coddle them?"

The Democrats are going to be accused of being week on terrorism no matter what they do. The best way to defend against that is to stand up for what you believe in and don't back down. Capitulating and giving George Bush absolutely everything he ever dreamed of is not exactly an awe inspiring way to attract voters.

Hells Liberal.."The Democrats are failing to learn from history. If progressives don't get what we want from the Democrats, we'll go with third-party candidates, like we did with Nader in 2000. Or, we might just stay home."

Yea, far lefties defecting because they do not believe in compromise, but 'My way or No way" is exactly why Republicans have been winning, and we are in the mess we are today. Staying home or voting for a third party in a TWO PARTY system, solves nothing.

Thank you for asking those question that I didn't ask. I asked you about the Consitution of the United States. Do you have a position about the right, center, and left of that particular document, because your guy just voted to betray the Fourth Amendment? That's where the betrayal lies in my opinion. Joan wants to preempt this anger for the progressive cause but there are a few things that progressives are weak on -- like understanding that people realy do own their own bodies and have a right to decide what to do with them, for instance, not surrendering themselves up for national service or a draft or not letting others decide whether or not they will continue a pregnancy.

Sorry, but it is just not that simple. For instance Roe v. Wade was decided as it was in part because the Supreme Court decided that privacy was an implicit right found within the constitution. The Fourth Amendment -- which Obama just betrayed -- is about the right of privacy. I want to know where Obama stands. Does he think we have a right to own and keep private our own papers and communications or does he think the government has a right to snoop on our privacy without a warrant?

Greenwald's blog just doesn't have just progressive leftists reading and participating in his letters thread. He has a dedicated following of people interested in limiting certain powers of the goverment that would overthrow our constitutional rights. Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats (of moderate and left) and libertarian-influenced progressives like me followed his very extensive and detailed explanations about the FISA and telecom immunities issues. Frankly, I don't think anyone's lawyer husband who is posting here knows more about these issues than Glenn Greenwald does. He has done more for the layperson's understanding of constitutional and hypocritical media issues than anyone whom I know of.

Please tell me what election "win" or "advantage" trumps the very document this nation was founded upon?

He voted for it because he doesn't need to hand the Republicans a bludgeon with which to hammer him for the next four months.

If he can't disarm this demonstrably impotent line of attack, then he doesn't deserve to be president.

The truly sad thing is, he easily could have. The Right's fear machine is running on fumes. With confidence and the right tone, Obama could've parlayed defense of FISA into a defense of America and true red, white, and blue Patriotism, and he could have done it walking away from Bush, Cheney, and this whole eight year nightmare. How do you argue against that? What horseshit craven bogyman are you going to put on a robocall that anyone will see as more than cynical desperation?

Lessig is right. Obama's campaign swiftboated itself here.