I can’t figure it out – even looking from a crass political vantage point. If the average person doesn’t understand FISA, why go to all this trouble to piss off the liberal base?

Maybe Obama is feeling so confident he isn’t worried about a few DFH.

If FISA reverted back to its 1976 self, who would notice? Was he afraid of the potential of the “soft on terrorism” label? If it’s all crap, why not make up your own crap about fighting terrorism? Invent and peddle your own narrative. Why not?

I don’t get it.

Once the “he’s not really American” crap hits the fan, then how far behind is “he’s soft on terrorism” and serious problems for the campaign.

First, it’s very complicated since this is the Bush era and everything is complicated. During any other presidency some common sense would exist and we wouldn’t even be discussing this. Bush/Cheney want total power and will find every way to use weasel-words to get around existing law. Unfortunately FISA allowed some of that. The generally acclaimed provisions of this new Amendments legislation improves on that.

Second, we have technology to do vacuuming of information which we didn’t always have in the past and so it’s important for the law to make all the distinctions and provide for what’s allowed and what is distinctly NOT allowed for each class of data gathering and persons. That makes the whole bill larger and less easily understood. Naturally, it’s nicer if you just say one statement covers all situations.

I’ve argued the ‘immunity’ stuff isn’t terrible. It’s very narrowly defined and probably doesn’t cover more than half a dozen cases. But, if the discussion is what is going to be the law going forward, then on that there is also plenty to discuss.

My first question is what do you do if YOU are now president on Jan 20, 2001 and a white-haired fellow named Clark is telling you there’s a problem with Obama and you’ve got to get on the case. After a couple of minutes you realize he’s not talking politics and it’s Osama bin Laden and terrorism. Well, you wouldn’t want an attack in America on your watch and you wouldn’t be too crazy about another Cole attack or explosion at an embassy. So, the first priority would be to gather lots and lots of good quality information. What’s the law allow and will you get the job done or end up looking like Dubya?

The new provisions to cover US citizens abroad are obviously covering a base we need. Provisions for US-foreign communications are good too.

So, where’s the questionable stuff? It’s the mass vacuuming up of information. And, it’s the very gray area of “foreign intelligence” — what is it, what’s it relate to, how can we be sure that’s what it’s for?

If you’re president you definitely want to hoover all foreign communications. You definitely want to know where any foreign threat is coming from and if anyone in America is tied to it. And, having a large database you can comb for clues (as more info comes in) is an advantage.

In that position are you willing to stand up before America and say you can’t defend the country or our citizens & military overseas because FISA just isn’t complete?

I think Obama is considering that eventuality, though his explanation(s) is(are) pretty lame and seem more political than practical.

Generally I think the bill is headed in the right direction and all the liberals who have reservations need to have lots of amendments at hand to try and improve it. I don’t think they’re going to stop the bill, so they might as well try to ‘fix’ it. If that’s a slew of small bills which seek to specify and define and delineate and minimize and clarify, then that’s all good.

But, don’t just think of protecting the Constitution — do that while crafting a law which allows the Executive branch to do it’s job. After all, it’ll likely be a Democratic president and we don’t want that person to be hamstrung.

Amend it cause you ain’t gonna end it.

I’d love it if those who endorsed him (are you listening, John Edwards? Caroline? Al?) would say, “Um, on second thought…” and that the convention would then turn into a genuine nominating process with real debate about the important issues — and not just another rubber stamp.

The FISA “amendment” legislation hides, legalizes and perpetuates what was formerly the blatant, illegal search and seizure of private communications without knowledge of possible criminal wrongdoing on the part of the person whose data has been seized.

Presumably, this government, like the Chinese government (whose interrogation techniques, via the North Koreans, Bush seems to so fond of that he had our military and intelligence services copy them) will just keep it on massive, outsourced [ie, privatized] server farms. Good bureaucrats, or more likely far more highly paid “intelligence services providers” will search it from time to time with ever more sophisticated s/w, looking for “patterns”. What those are will depend upon the government’s “enemy du jour”. Vegans, anyone?

I’d think many delegates are pissed at our own flip floper & would like to do something to register disgust.

Problem is Obama seems a stubborn as our Dear Leader

Idea’s anyone

This is the part that I wasn’t aware of “she and her team busily scheduled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.”

Thanks ‘netroots’ I’ll take from here now is what Obama is saying.