a) There is a separate vote for the bill and for immunity. Obama can easily vote for the bill and against immunity. The issue with the bill is, after all, the immunity it grants, is it not? b) Obama has pledged to get the immunity out of the bill. While it is doubtful that he will be able to accomplish such a thing, it cannot be ignored that he would do this. c) If the bill is passed, then the laws that have been broken cannot be broken again. Such wiretapping that took place will not take place again, and that is an important step in my eyes.

I missed your first post, but here after having researched it, you have a complete misconception of this bill and process.

a) No, there is a fig leaf vote on stripping immunity, guaranteed to fail, before the bill with immunity is put up, guaranteed to pass.
b)Repeat- fig leaf.
c)False. This law allows for further wide-net warrantless surveillance. The courts only make limited rulings beforehand on general methods.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/35731res20080619.html

As a constitutional law attorney and professor, I beleive Obama is being very careful.

Please note, Keith interviewed John Dean on Friday and John Dean said he read the legislation and found that it was poorly written. Most important is Dean stated the legislation DOES NOT GIVE IMMUNITY FROM CRIMINAL PROSECUTION!

I don't care if the companies don't have to pay out damages for their illegal acts, but I do want people brought to justice who broke criminal law. This would be those who agreed to go along with the Bush administration and those in the Bush administration who thought they were above the law. So I am all for passing this legislation if as Dean says the criminals can still be brought up on charges.

Also, Obama is also being versed as to what he could do once he is the President with regard to changes in the bill once passed. An Obama administration could challenge the law and take it to court on Constitutional 4th Amendment violations basis. During the challenge he could suspend the unconstitutional practices in the FISA law passed.

Just because Obama has been silent or even agreeing to vote for the bill as written, does not mean he has abandoned his principles or his support for the constitution.

If Obama is as smart as I think he is he will be laughing all the way into the White House where he will have the power to fully support the constitution and civil rights.

One can only hope.

This "We don't know what you did, but it's OK with us" stuff is bullshit.

What would be really nice would be instead of immunity, they gave amnesty for any acts that telecoms document to congress via sworn depositions in the next 90 days. ONLY such documented actions would be shielded from prosecution.

I have a question...

a) Has the bill been revised by the Senate yet?

b) If so, what are the changes to the bill from its original form in the House?

c) Has the bill been brought to a vote by the Senate yet?

If these questions can't be answered, it's hard to make such speculation over the bill's future. It's also a little shaky to condemn Obama by withdrawing support and donations simply on the basis of his support for the House compromise.

We have presidential elections every 4 years, only because the Constitution specifies that we must. No president can overrule this.

We have a Congress able to impeach a president only because the Constitution specifies that they have that power. No president can overrule this.

We have freedom from warrantless searches only because the Constitution specifies that we have that freedom. No president....oops! So, just how sure is anyone about the first two paragraphs above? That is the issue we are discussing here. If a president can overrule the 4th amendment he can overrule any portion of the Constitution, just as Bush has been doing by little bits and pieces. You just can't go for being just a little bit pregnant.

Any politician, smart or stupid, good or evil, Democrat or Republican, has only two operational goals:
1. Get elected;
2. Get re-elected.
So any politician's position on a controversial issue tells us which side of the issue he thinks the bulk of the electorate is on.

Consider, then, a smart man like Barack Obama who happens to be a Democrat and (from my point of view) not-evil. If he decides to acquiesce to an objectively repugnant bill, it's because he calculates that noisily opposing it will cost him votes.

It's our fellow citizens who cast those votes. Our problem is with THEM, not with Obama. Nobody here is denouncing McCain's position on the FISA "compromise"; only Obama has the power to disappoint us on this issue. By "us" I mean, literally, us here. Obama knows (or at least, thinks) that OUR votes won't be enough. He has to get votes from people who would actually consider voting for McCain. Those people include our relatives, co-workers, neighbors, and friends.

It's up to us to talk to THEM before we beat up on Obama. That takes more fuss and bother than typing into a comment box, but it has to be done.
Obama is a good guy, but he's not magician. He can not win unless WE do what we can to minimize the Stupid Vote that has been Dubya's base for years.

-- TP

There are a couple pretty big problems with this post. The main one is the idea that Obama can get away with simply "voting against" the bill. He's the presidential nominee and the defacto leader of the party. If he wanted to he could bring pressure to bare at least to the point of filibustering the bill.

With Lieberman in the senate, there is no way that the bill would fail, and there is no way an amendment stripping immunity would pass.

The only way to stop this bill is to filibuster it until an amendment stripping immunity is added.

Unless he does that, he's not actually doing anything to stop the bill.

bslev, hoppycalif2, sbcook, and DaddyD, great comments here. Yours are the best replies on this topic I've yet seen in TPM today.

No one with a brain in their head is trying to tell Democrats to dump Obama over his position on the FISA bill, but being an Obama supporter shouldn't make one so blind and fanatical that when it comes to something as vitally important as our Constitutional rights we're are willing to automatically make up lame excuses for how horribly wrong it is.

Voting yes on this proposed FISA bill -- with or without the immunity provisions -- isn't the kind of "Change We Can Believe In" from Democrats, and we can only be doing Obama a favor to let him know that this is the case.

I also think that Obama's supporters should feel free to talk about this. It's totally bogus how within leftwing blogs people are now being immediately labeled secret Republican trolls, or sometimes embittered HRC supporters with an axes to grind whenever we dare to mention our disgust and disappointment with this outrageously bad "compromise" FISA Bill.