Shame on you, Barack!

Hunter explains "Why Do We Care About FISA?"

The first reason:

It goes to the heart of illegal actions by this administration. The Bush administration has broken law after law, and been enmeshed in scandal after scandal, and been met with no substantive actions. There are investigations that never end; there are stern letters that are never answered; there are subpoenas that are simply ignored. So to respond to a clearly illegal act by, of all possible things, writing legislation that offers retroactive immunity for those acts, maintains the secrecy of those acts, and declares that the Bush administration itself will be responsible for the future integrity of those acts -- it is patently asinine. It is an insult. It demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the law, and for the very responsibilities of each branch of government. In this, it is symbolic of the entire current Congress, which has proved itself all but nonfunctional when it comes to checking abuses by the executive branch -- or even by their own branch.

Mcjoan discusses "Amnesty, Obama, and the Good Fight."

Glenn Greenwald exposes the bullshit propaganda. He takes on Obama too, at whom I am mightily pissed at the moment. He should do better than this. I am not fond of single-issue approaches but Obama lost a donation from me with his stance on that shitpile of a FISA bill.

As Greenwald notes: "Between (a) relying on the limitations imposed by the Constitution or (b) placing faith in the promises of a political leader not to abuse his unchecked power, it isn't really a difficult choice -- at least it ought not to be, no matter who the political leader in question happens to be."

As Emptywheel says of Senator Obama, "He gives nice speeches! And when he tells you to "fuck off," he does it ever so politely."

Digby weighs in.

This FISA compromise was orchestrated by Pelosi and Hoyer personally. It was not a conspiracy of Blue Dogs, as much as Hoyer may want people to believe it. There's too much at stake in this election for the Dems to be doing end runs around the nominee and they know it.

I'm upset with Obama but Nancy and Steny are on my personal shit list (as noted below). I doubt they will ever get off it.

Do not let it be said that I don't hold Dems accountable too.

--the BB