What we Learned from the FISA Debate...

Now that the Senate vote is complete, and the immunization of lawbreakers has been solidified into our laws pending a Supreme Court review, time is opportune to analyze what exactly we learned from this debacle:

Barack Obama is hardly the "Candidate of Change": As I documented at length yesterday, Obama punctuated his reputed "move to the center" (embrace GOP positions on gun control, pander to media narratives about "patriotism", plunder 4th Amendment) by totally reversing his course on the FISA bill in a stark display of sheer political calculation. Obama had initially promised to vote against the bill, and also to filibuster if need be; he did neither, and he utilized patently misleading arguments to justify that.

Hopefully progressive realize that the reputed "change" candidate has apparently metamorphosed into the quintessential Beltway politician, one who will eschew both his previous statements and his legion of supporters. Barring another whole scale change, Mr. Obama's conduct of late illustrates his "Change We Can Believe in Mantra" as utter poppycock.

Current Politicians Don't view the 4th Amendment as Important: A hallmark of our Constitution, since it was originally drafted by our Framers, is that citizens could not be spied upon without a warrant from the authorities naming the cause of the intrusion. That is now irrevocably been changed. When Americans communicate with individuals out of the country, they could be spied on by government officials without probable cause. More over, the government will not suffer any recriminations, no matter how brazen, or wanton the spying might be.

This provision is in direct conflict with all case law precedent as well as the 4th Amendment. Strikingly, this argument did not resonate with the large majority of Congress. Instead of respecting our Constitution, they instead chose to kowtow to a President run amok, and institutionalize a program that disenfranchises millions of citizens from attaining their privacy protections that were once viewed as sacrosanct.

Republicans, as a whole, Do not Respect the 4th Amendment: As aforementioned, Congress defected en masse to the dark side, and sanctioned the President's lawless conduct with yesterday's FISA vote. Of particular note: In the Senate, all Republicans voted for the bill, while all but one did so in the House. If this doesn't cement into the voters minds that Republicans disregard the Constitution much like Britney Spears disregards a treadmill, I don't know what will.

When millions of voters go to the ballot box in November, here's to hoping they don't forget what little esteem the Republican party holds our Constitution, namely it's 4th Amendment protections.

A Congress led by the Democrats is Worse than one led by the GOP: As delved into at length at Salon.com by the inimitable, sagacious and courageous Glenn Greenwald, this FISA bill was past at the behest of the Democratic led Congress, after it was shut down just a few years ago when the legislative body was run by Republicans. No wonder Kit Bond and Roy Blunt are practically giddy about the prospect of this bill: never in their wildest dreams could they thought it would have been passed. And yet, inexplicably, the most concerted effort to erode out privacy protections in years has been ratified, and the blood is on the hands of the complicit Democrats.

This is the ultimate insult to Progressive voters who lent their money, and support so vociferously to electing these very same representatives in 2006. Instead of listening to their demands, or at least remaining neutral, the craven leadership of Nancy Pelosi, and specifically Steny Hoyer, instead decided to deliver to the President legislative lagniappe's he never thought would materialize.

That the Democrats would endorse the most radical aspects of the Bush agenda is both baffling and incredibly enraging. It is perhaps the most puzzling development of the entire FISA story. Can these complicit Administration apologists really buy the patently false Beltway myth that, if they don't gut the Constitution, they will portrayed as weak on national security? Are Hoyer and Pelosi that disingenuous to claim that this bill serves as any sort of upgrade on our "protection from terrorists?" Apparently so. Hoyer, Pelosi and their ilk have proven both their cravenness, and their inability to attend to their constituents. Voters take heed.

Their complicity hopefully will be one of the last lessons for the legions of voters who supported these candidates in the hopes that they would reverse Bush's abuses, not reify and endorse them. Perhaps that memory will stay in their consciousness long to provide a silver lining: next time these enables stand in front of the voters, they will be summarily rejected as spineless, partisan hacks, as they have proven themselves dutifully to be during the past few weeks.

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This fight is far from over. The sobering reality that Democrats are just as complicit in propagating the lawless, Imperial presidency as their Republican counterparts has been burned into the consciousness of the legion of Progressive voters. No matter how much the mainstream media tries to rationalize, justify or excuse the behavior of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and most distressingly Barack Obama, the American people are lucid enough to see through their rhetoric. The American people can see their diaphanous rhetorical veil crumbles in the fact of the facts of this bill. Hopefully, it has enacted a new realization about the two leveled system of justice that pervades our political institutions.

We will fight anew, burnished with the credentials of both our Constitution and the brave few legislators who did not succumb to the fear mongering and distortion at the hands of Imperial Presidency. Yesterday was not the final word on this debate.