Precisely. I have nothing wrong with people raising a stink. But we can't lose sight of the real issue at hand: not allowing John McCain and his GOP cronies to get into power. If we let that happen, it's over. It's completely over.

Like I said elsewhere, the question is not whether to support, but when. If a politician sees his coffers swell whenever he takes a courageous stand, he'll do it all the time. So save your 20 bucks for the right moment.

And why stop there? Everything that happens after inauguration day is a strategic battle over the next election.

And those Congressional Democrats ought to keep keepin' their powder dry, too. 'Cause we're never more than a couple of years away from the next election. And there are always seats to defend and win.

But rest assured. As soon as we stop having those darned elections, the Democrats will reveal themselves to be the true, dyed-in-the-wool progressives that we keep imagining them to be!

I only have one thing to say in most of our defenses. It was never about her policy stands when we decried the say anything to win strategy, also known as the Kitchen Sink.

"Barack's not a Muslim, as far as I know...." and "Shame on you, Barack Obama!" and "I would not have Reverend Wright as my pastor." and "They had to cancel the welcoming ceremony due to sniper fire."

For many of us, it was the more personal attacks that came directly from Hillary that were the most egregious. I agree with most of her policy positions. I also never held her accountable for the crap other people said. Ditto for Barack. But some of the stuff that actually came out her mouth was cringe-worthy for me.

Otherwise, I agree with you. In a general election, some compromise of rhetoric and some drift to the center is to be expected. Where the rubber meets the road this year is the American voter. Will we hold Barack accountable for the race he ran as a primary challenger to an "establishment" opponent? I certainly plan on being a thorn in the side of an Obama administration if he fails to move immediately to the left upon taking office. He ran to the left and got republican votes in the primary. He may need to tack center to win, but I don't believe his supporters expect him to govern that way, despite his general election campaign.

I will hold him accountable for his platform (very progressive) and for his books and for his speeches. All of those things are matter of public record. Barack won't get a pass from me if somehow he is actually not the man I think he is, however, between now and November, I will forgive his tactics. As I would have forgiven Hillary if she had made it through.

there's still a hell of a lot of difference between us and the republicans.

You and I may see it that way, but I really wonder if the average voter at this point sees a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans. After the mandate that Democrats got in 2006, what have the American people got to show for it? Yes, Pelosi and Reid can rightfully claim that they didn't have a veto-proof majority, but to fail to even show up to fight only serves to further disillusion the public about Congress -- note that the only group that has approval ratings close to Bush's is Congress.

Perhaps if we had a few more principled stands and a few more insurmountable vetos, the Democrats could make a more persuasive case for getting more Democrats elected. But to watch Congress sit on their hands for the past two years and then to see the new Democratic leader adopt a "pragmatic" (i.e.: ends justify the means) stand on such an important issue as the FISA compromise will probably not serve to distinguish the Democrats from the Republicans at this particular moment.

Thank you, you correctly state the problem for me. For at least a few of us, and I'm not naive enough to believe there are enough of us, we've seen the Democrats cave for so long on so many issues that really matter that it really doesn't make any difference to us anymore which party wins. The issues have become more important than the party. (You can even see that on the right with Paul and Barr.) Sure, the Dems may throw another quarter at the minimum wage or insure a few thousand more lower income workers but they have so undermined all fundamental change and even fundamental rights that all we do is go one step foward and two steps back. We continue to lose more than we gain.

This bill is a loss and it's a loss for the rule of law. You can support it for expedient reasons if you like, but don't kid yourselves. You're giving up some very precious rights here. You are making it easier to lose more the next time around. You are affirming that we really are a nation of men and not a nation of laws. If the "king" breaks the law, we will make it legal after tha fact. When it's a choice between obeying the law or responding to the man on the phone ordering you to break it, you better say "yes sir" and do what the man wants, law or not.

Yes, you do have to pick your battles and we won't all pick the same battles to fight. But the battles have to be fought, even when we lose them. Surrender is not an option if you really love your country.

For them to criticize Hillary as do anything/say anything and such a politician (in the most negative way) was hypocritcal.

dijamo, that wasn't hypocritical. It was savvy political advocacy. Your charge is like telling a poker player that it's dishonest to bluff. We played the game better and we won. That's all it was. No hypocrisy.

Kos (and others) felt that the best way PR-wise of attacking this bill was to focus on TeleCom immunity since everyone hates those ComCast facist bastards anyway.

Ah also: The GOP was willing to live and die by TeleCom immunity, so if there was no immunity, there would be no bill. So by keeping the Dems united on this issue which was good PR-Wise as well, they would ensure the GOP would never let a non-TeleCom Immunity Bill pass, thus making them the obstructors.

It's not a bad strategy. It would have worked--actually it was STILL WORKING--if the Democratic Party was not full of traitors to the United States.

Also I spelled fascist wrong above.

Tena - I disagree. The telecoms are not allowed to turn our information over to the government without proper legal authorization. The Bush Admin asked pretty pretty please with sugar on top. That is NOT proper legal authorization.

The telecoms are civilly liable if they release your communications to anyone including the government without lawful authority to do so. Quest asked the question whether proper authority existed and when the answer came back that it didn't, they refused to participate and were financially punished for it. Why should they get the telecoms get a pass for willfully violating the law and the privacy of their customers?

Actually it's the right to sue the telecoms and to collect damages, as we're entitled under the 1984 Telecom act that's at issue.

The government violated the 4th Amendment. But the telecoms illegally aided and abetted.

Of course there is another constitutional issue with telecom immunity -- I should have the same right to protection under the laws as the telecoms do. So if congress will pass laws making their illegal acts legal, I want that same congress to hold hearings about changing the law if I get into any trouble.

The problem with granting immunity to the Telecomms is that, without the threat of a lawsuit, they have no reason to resist when the government asks them to conduct illegal wiretapping. The fear of being sued gave the Telecomms some incentive to resist the President when he asked them to violate the Fourth Amendment. Now there is no incentive, and given that saying no to the President is a risky and difficult thing to do, no Telecomm will ever say no again. Immunity essentially removes the most powerful check against the Telecomms simply ignoring the law when the President requests them to ignore it. If they can't be punished for going along with the President and breaking the law, they will never not go along with him. Helping the President violate the Fourth Amendment is not longer a crime, which means the Fourth Amendment no longer has any teeth.

It's buyer's remorse. Taking it out on Obama for letting them nominate him. Just part of the OMG what have we done? any way out of it? that set in when Clinton conceded.

Billy, you're so bitter. Join in the fun. Don't be such an old sourpuss.

And I thought misinterpreting my post couldn't get any worse.

You don't see what I'm saying, or you wouldn't have followed up with what you did. Go back and read it again.

When did I ever say not to criticize him, and be hard on him? When, and where? When did I say he shouldn't be held accountable? As I've said, I myself have emailed both Obama and Bill Burton. Read some of my comments above as well (I'm sure you didn't before replying).

And if you can't see the difference between bickering about Hillary vs. Obama and what we have here, then I think you need to do some rethinking and reassessing of the two situations.

Greenwald describes "The New Republic Syndrome" and how it has effectively destroyed checks and balances:

"The reason these posts are worth noting is because they so perfectly capture the mindset that needs to be undermined more than any other. It's this mentality that has destroyed the concept of checks and limits in our political system; it's why we have no real opposition party; and it's why the history of the Democrats over the last seven years has been to ignore and then endorse one extremist Bush policy after the next. It's because even as The New Republic Syndrome has been proven to be false and destructive over and over -- even its practitioners have been forced to recognize that -- it continues to be the guiding operating principle of the party's leadership.

The defining beliefs of this Syndrome are depressingly familiar, and incomparably destructive: Anything other than tiny, marginal opposition to the Right's agenda is un-Serious and radical. Objections to the demolition of core constitutional protections is shrill and hysterical. Protests against lawbreaking by our high government officials and corporations are disrespectful and disruptive. Challenging the Right's national security premises is too scary and politically costly. Those campaigning against Democratic politicians who endorse and enable the worst aspects of Bush extremism are "nuts," "need to have their heads examined," and are "exactly the sorts of fanatics who tore the party apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s." Those who oppose totally unprovoked and illegal wars are guilty of "abject pacifism."

It's exactly that mentality that has brought us to where we are as a country and a political system today. It's not at all surprising -- and wouldn't have surprised the Founders in the least -- that a radical and corrupt political faction (the Bush-led Right) has been able to take over parts of the Government and sought to consolidate political power. The expectation was that this would happen, and the solution was to devise a litany of checks -- the Congress, the media, opposition parties -- that would stand up to and vigorously oppose that faction and prevent it from running rampant.

It's primarily the failure of those institutions, rather than the emergence of a corrupt and lawless faction, that has made the Bush era so unique and distinctively destructive. Those institutions have failed because they have been, and continue to be, defined by the meek, amorphous, principle-free New Republic Syndrome, which thinks that its restrained tolerance and complicit embrace of patent Bush extremism is some sort of mark of political sophistication and Seriousness."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/