FISA RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY: OBAMA CAN LEAD-- AND HE CAN LEAD NOW

Blind follower/visionary leader? We hope so

-by Matthew Grimm

Something's been bugging me, and I know I'm not the first one to raise it, but as Barack Obama essays gracefully to the status of presumptive nominee, I think it's worth asking again: Could our would-be leader maybe lead on something, y'know, vital towards saving the republic he wants to and we need him to save? Like maybe start with the thing he vows in the oath of office I would genuinely like to see him take Jan. 20, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

You want to look presidential, Mr. Obama, now would be the time, because, see, you've pretty much won the bully pulpit and you have already taken that same oath. For a candidacy so recently bombarded by the quibbling, ugly, Rovian sophistry, the opportunity to show yourself on the side of the angels would seem no more evident than the current FISA fight.

Yet every goddamn day I see hints and dark clouds of Steny Hoyer conspiring with turncoat Blue Dogs to become accessories after the fact, helping Bush suspend the rule of law and grant giant corporations super-citizen status. I've gotten calls-to-action from every list in the progressive netroots community, warning me of a deal afoot to grant the potential RICO-targets at AT&T and Verizon retroactive immunity on abetting the Bush administration’s spying on US citizens. They have broken the law, egregiously and with ample, expensive legal counsel to make it aforethought, and rogue collaborationists in "our" own party are ready to cede just that little bit more of principle seperating us from the darkness, to rubberstamp a sell-out Senate bill that Obama voted against.

So I respectfully bid the candidate: lead.

The progressive netroots did their jobs the last round, bombarding their congressmen with calls and emails, pleas and demands to hold the country fast to its Constitution. We will do it again, of course, but now as then, we could use a champion, y'know, one whose every words ring loud and clear into mainstream political dialogue, who has publicly pledged himself to bring government back to the people from whom it has been hijacked, even if that seems a bit heady for the pabulum that passes for political reporting..

On a day when Politico is reporting, as Howie has already covered, that Hoyer and his Vichy Dem fellow travelers are entertaining "proposed immunity language by the telecoms"-- awesome, let's bring Manson in to help draft new qualifications for justifiable homicide-- I've watched five hours of MSNBC today and heard nary a word mentioned on the subject. I have seen a report that Obama has sat down with the vile, posturing Blue Dogs, something or other about him courting them as superdelegates, but nary a mention of how this critical issue, and their intransigent defense of corporate malfeasance, weighed into the conversation.

The dullards who pass for mainstream media journalists naturally will argue that this is too arcane, too Inside Baseball, an issue, and better to let the national prattle be about use of the word "bitter" and somebody's goddamn preacher and some preposterous, contrived cart-before-the-horse metric called "electability." This is where a plainspoken voice, with ample microphones tilted towards it, can cut through such bullshit and make it simple and clear how the FISA bill lands on the doorstep of every American who doesn't get super-citizen status and who doesn't go along with draconian agendas for the war profiteering involved. Retroactive immunity for the telecoms is nothing more or less than laissez-faire taken to the Republican wet-dream of where their archaic economic dogma supersedes the Constitution.

There would seem to be no more prescient test as to Obama's commitment to his contention, here in Iowa in November and since (as featured on his own website), that "I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over," and to come squarely down on the side of people versus power.

What evinces exactly that other than AT&T and Verizon printing their own get-out-of-jail-free cards?

Look, we understand why Clinton hasn't rung in on this, and it's why progressives have long been wary of her, which is, like the Blue Dogs, she is a fucking right-wing politician-- what with the wholecloth-fabricated populism amid the reams of corporate money and "obliterating Iran" and all. Yes, she voted against the Bush-friendly Senate FISA bill, like Obama, which given her present company can easily be read as pandering for actual democratic Democrat votes, at least before she called us all bullying radical weirdos. Let's go over to the website of the Democratic Leadership Council, where she sits as chair of the DLC American Dream Initiative, and see where her most concentrated block of "New Democrat" cronies stand on the issue. According to Jim Arkedis of the deceptively-named Progressive Policy Institute, the DLC's propaganda arm:

"House members shouldn't be intimidated by pressure groups who view the FISA bill's immunity clause as a litmus test on respect for civil liberties. It's not. Rather, it is an over-emphasized aspect of a broad bill that could constructively define the rules of signals intelligence collection in the 21st century. This bill represents an excellent opportunity for House members to strengthen their civil-liberties credentials by supporting a law that improves and clarifies the standards for intelligence collection.

By "pressure groups," Arkedis meant progressive Democrats, the kind in the netroots and in the Congress that stood up to the quisling House FISA bill the DLC advocated , and by "an excellent opportunity for House members to strengthen their civil-liberties creditentials" he apparently is just engaging in outright Orwellianism. Slavery is freedom. Destroy that Fourth Amendment to save it, Jim.

No, here’s what telecom immunity comes down to: somebody gets überequal status under the law, by dint of being incorporated in Delaware.

This is indeed the "old politics" Obama has railed against. This is where he should be walking the talk, and where he can prove his intentions to make politics more than just "politics," but what it should be, elegant, reasoned debate that helps us participate in the great question of the time, whether we are to be governed by ourselves or by our legally codified betters.