I was just on a conference call with Obama foreign policy advisor Dennis McDonough. The Huffington Post's Scott Bellows asked about Obama's abandonment of his rhetoric vowing to defend the Constitution in order to support this bill, and McDonough adopted the Hoyer line, claiming that this bill has all sorts of great oversight protections including the requirement that the Inspector General submit a report on Bush's spying program (audio is here).

Looking "strong on defense" is a bogus excuse, and there is no Democratic constituency in favor of the bill.

Tell me, do you find it equally outrageous when progressive websites call Joe Biden the Senator from MBNA, for example?

Will Feingold try to filibuster? I'm not sure. It's possible that he won't, to spare the Democrats the embarrassment of voting to break it.

This is straight politics, nothing new and nothing hopeful about it. If he really believes he has to tilt right and/or take no stands to win, he should have stayed in the Senate and exercised courage and leadership there.

And by the way, though he has said he stands against this bill, in fact he has tilted to the right wing on this and every other thing that has come up, including the FISA bill, since Clinton suspended her campaign.

He has capitulated to the right already. Actions speak louder than words. How much farther will he go?

With the vast majority of Americans hating the provisions in this bill, there was no real courage required if he had spoken out honestly on it; but he chose not to. Yes, lobbyist money does seem to make sense.

He continues to prove he is not trustworthy. The buyers' remorse about his nomination is becoming palpable among his (now former) supporters since he has taken this craven stand on FISA.

He isn't getting more support from these right-wing stances, he's losing it. Had he shown leadership and courage, he would be gaining much more support, especially among Clinton voters and independents.

He is either the courageous, honest, progressive leader he said he would be (apparently not) or he is and has been a fraud. Fallible humans can also be courageous - but Obama is not.

Very disappointing. Half the Dems were not for him in the primaries. Now many of the half who were with him are bailing out. No comparison to someone like Bobby Kennedy, who was straightforward and honest in his campaign. Everyone knew where he stood. Ambition did not stand it the way of his convictions, and he would have been elected anyway. Obama is taking the exact opposite course.

Either the USA is a country  run by the rule of law or it isn't. Simple.

this law and the way the bush admin. has been trashing the country's laws, violating their oath of office is going to encourage future presidents to do the same. I don't look forward to it at all.

This has been a season notable for various folks in the blogosphere launching nasty attacks on the candidates -- 90% of which have been from Obama supporters against Clinton.  That doesn't justify the same happening back to Obama from Clinton supporters, but it goes some way towards explaining it.

Here's another link to use from the True Majority site.
http://www.truemajority.org/StopFISA

I'm not disagreeing with you. Let's see what happens when the bill comes to the Senate (and in the meantime, let's do everything we can to apply screws to the Obama campaign so that he does the right thing here). If he folds like a cheap tent, I'm totally ready to be every bit as pissed about this as you are.

Thing is, he hasn't exactly done that yet. What he's done is give a very lawyerly statement where he proclaims support for the bill as a good compromise and then proclaims disagreement with the provision on which everything turns.

What if --- not saying it will happen --- but what if he can put together a coalition to stall the bill unless retroactive immunity is dropped, and then succeeds in framing his position as the sensible, middle-of-the-road, non-ideological position, and the Republicans as crazy extremists who want their way or nothing? If that does happen, can you agree that there's something to Obama's approach of pushing the liberal line with soft-spoken, conciliatory rhetoric, that it has some advantages over the angrier tack you and I prefer?

These are tactical questions, and I can imagine your response to the effect that, "even if it works out in this case, it's still bad practice because it shifts the whole debate rightward." I see something to that. But by the same token, there's a benefit to reframing things so that retroactive immunity becomes the position not of angry civil libertarian extremists but of the non-ideological center. Beyond that, ultimately, I care much more about substantive results, so I really can't regret any tactic (within broad ethical constraints) that succeeds in killing this thing.

A couple of other things. We both know what sort of a clubby setting the Senate is, and that many, and maybe most of the decisions are made way off the floor. What if Obama tried to put together a filibuster within the Democratic caucus and the support wasn't there? If he can't stop the bill from passing, I can't really blame him all that much if he casts a meaningless vote to cover his right flank in an election. (My deep, deep worry is that he might actually quash a filibuster in the cloak room; which we probably wouldn't find out about for a long time.)

Anyway, where is Dodd on this? Shouldn't he be promising a filibuster? If his will to fight is crushed (Countrywide etc.?) I think the cause is already lost. (Where's Hillary for that matter? I don't bring this up as an excuse for Obama; I bring it up because any Democrat who caves on this gets a share of the blame --- and if his is the biggest share, hers is still pretty big.)

he can't go into an election and be seen to be undermining spying operations and expect to survive the patriot games the GOP will play.