What’s relevant is that this bill passed under a Democratic Congress, despite not being anything close to a centrist bill. It is, in fact, breathtakingly radical. Yet Obama joined the House leadership on this for reasons that still remain unclear. And it matters not one bit if you’re an Obama supporter or not (one of the bill’s most eloquent critics, Glenn Greewald, was–and remains–an Obama supporter). What matters is the merits of the bill itself, even if it also raises serious questions about the Democratic nominee.

Incidently, Nancy Pelosi’s support (she’s from San Francisco, you know) makes this dark chapter in American history all the more baffling. Was it about protecting Jane Harman from possible prosecution, or what? What on Earth was the motivation?

Unfortunately, during election years people tend to get consumed with political spin, which doesn’t usually come close to reflecting reality: it certainly doesn’t in this case.

P.S., you need a new CAPTCHA function. This is ridiculous.

I do not have a problem with Obama failing to keep his promise. I understand that political and governmental facts change and some promises must be broken.

I do have a problem with 72 Senators failing to vote against this bill (69 voted for, 3 did not vote). I believe that by granting retroactive immunity in cases pending before the judicial, the Senate (and the House before it, and the President after) infringed our right to petition for redress of grievances. The power of the people to correct the government without violence ends with the right to petition for redress. How can infringing that right ever be justified?

By “democracy” here, the author means majoritarianism (the rest of the paragraph makes this clear). However the very idea of a “right” as in “Bill of Rights” and specifically as in “Fourth Amendment,” is that of something that is not subject to negotiation or compromise in the everyday world of political horse-trading. If you can’t grasp that, you just don’t know the first thing about what is at stake here.

So this is the Democrats’ strategy for getting the president to obey the law: rewrite the law to say, “the president can do whatever he wants.”

Now, you have to admit this is brilliant. There is no way the president can break that law. Go Dems!

I believe a leftist cannot be elected to national office because they tend to be liars.

No, that’s not guaranteed. The Court is already unreliable on such issues (Kennedy being the swing vote), and the issue of demonstrating “standing” (i.e. actual harm which deserves judicial redress) is notoriously difficult when all the details are classified. A similar challenge to Bush’s illegal program was punted by the Court on just such reasoning.

And eliminating civil liability for the telecoms retroactively, apart from the abuse of the litigants’ due process, will make it that much to harder to find out those details, and the higher standard of proof for criminal prosecution of the telcos (which won’t happen–count on a last-minute pardon) will make redress all but impossible.

What this bill did what legalize Bush’s spying program and cover up the illegal part. Plain and simple.

Yet another person who clearly knows nothing about the bill, or even its opponents (since when did Amnesty International or Bob Barr become part of “the left”?), and is perfectly comfortable with that woeful ignorance.

Thanks for making my point for me.