Ian Wright's Blog

Is there some particular reason for the unrelated postings?

Ian — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:00:11 EDT

The purpose of the FISA group as I understood it, was to discuss FISA and encourage Senator Obama to take principled stands on FISA related issues. It seems like the majority of the group page is covered by material that's completely unrelated.

Now, some may say "the debate on FISA is over, so why should you care?" The answer is that although the FISA bill passed, it's important that the Senator have a constant reminder that this issue and the precedent that was set by this Congress is an important one, and one that needs to be addressed next year.

Instead of discussions of this issue, where it could go, or some of the new information on it (such as Cass Sunstein's position from the Netroots conference), I mostly see general information posts about the Senator or John McCain (and, really people, McBush/McSame gets pretty old. I think that Senator Obama has a bit more meat to his campaign than pseudo-witty mockings of his competitor and it certainly is more the Senator's style to take the high road). Most of these posts seem to be of the "rah rah" type.

While there is a time and place for such posts, it doesn't have anything to do with discussing the issue that the FISA group was started for, and truly seems to be a tool to beat back and discussion of the issue by spamming FISA/Civil Liberties discussion off of the page.

One of the things that drew me to Senator Obama, and which keeps me in the camp of voting for him despite his 180s, is that his campaign is supposed to be open to discussion and dissenting points of view. It is the signature method of the Bush administration that says that everyone must be loyal, all transgressions must be ignored, and discussion can only happen if no one is going to hear it.

The sad thing is that when I see some of the responses from, let's say "True Believers" (no offense, Mr. Lee) they seem to be intent on quashing discussions of dissent by categorizing anyone who continues to discuss what Senator Obama has done wrong as being a McCain supporter, a Troll, or (recently directed at me) "a single issue voter". The parallels to the supporters of Bush over the past eight years are rather frightening.

We all say that we want change. The only way that you get change is by embracing that not everyone has the same opinion as you. That perhaps it is possible that someone feels like your candidate really sold you out on an issue, but is still worth voting for. If you don't agree, then maybe you have some questions to ask, but if the only thing you can do is hurl insults, then maybe you need to really look at your way of viewing decent compared to the Senator. If he can say that he wants us to be out here and making our case, then maybe you should be too.

Again, it's a trademark of President Bush that only those who share the exact same line of thought get to count. Dissent is a bad thing for him and hashing out an issue in a discussion without a predetermined ending is unthinkable.

As this applies to the original subject of this post... If you have something of interest to say that deals with the subject matter of the group, then by all means say it. You can even be contrarian if you want. But, have the respect to keep the posts you put in the FISA group FISA related. Spamming us out is nothing more than a show of disrespect.

So, I heard a funny joke a little while back

Ian — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:08:31 EDT

It was while the whole FISA debate was going on... Prior to the actual vote but after Senator Obama had voiced his support for the bill.

The joke was said by lots of people. Keith Olberman tried it first, but his delivery was a bit lacking and needed to be spruced up. I've heard it here and on other boards. It goes something like this with my own additions

A guy walks into a bar and complains about Senator Obama's reversal on his pledge to support a filibuster of the revised FISA bill with telecom immunity.

And the bartender says "Well, that's ok because it doesn't rule out criminal prosecution".

I'm not sure if that's the punchline or if it's Cass Sunstein's statement that Senator Obama won't prosecute them

Either way, the joke isn't all that funny.

I'm starting to lose hope that the Senator is going to come out with a statement of clarification on this and reassure us that the rule of law is still important and those who violated the law will have to prove their innocense in a court of law, just like all American citizens.

I've been thinking quite a bit about Clinton's shift

Ian — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:03:26 EDT

I've been thinking quite a bit about Clinton's position on FISA. I still don't trust her based on many things ranging from items as big as her stance on Iraq to as (politically) minor as her stance on restricting video game purchases (because, to quote Mrs. Lovejoy on the Simpsons "Won't somebody think of the children?").

Still, I have to wonder if Clinton had a crisis of conscience after Iraq (among other things) cost her the election. I've seen some thoughts that she just voted against FISA to undermine Obama, but I disagree completely. If she wanted to undermine Obama she never had to do any campaigning for him. I think she's starting to realize just how much her position on Iraq cost her. One has to wonder how this is going to haunt Obama... Is the loss of enthusiasm from people like us going to cause issues throughout the election and possibly beyond.

Call me cynical, if you will

Ian — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:38:46 EDT

But I have absolutely no faith that the Democratic Congress will do anything about Karl Rove refusing to testify. Afterall, every other time that anyone in Bush's administration (or even formerly in the administration) has refused to appear pursuent to a subpoena Congress has done nothing.

Obama severely disappointed us yesterday. Let's see if he takes leadership on putting some real consequences on Karl Rove's contempt.

Well, if there's a silver lining to all of this

Ian — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:18:48 EDT

It's that the ACLU and EFF are planning on challenging the constitutionality of the immunity provisions in court. Let's hope that there's no "state secrets" BS that keeps it locked up.

That said, this whole sad tragedy has convinced me that some of our Congressional Democrats need to go: No matter who replaces them. My Representative is Steney Hoyer: The man who sold us out in the House. When I called his office prior to the vote his staffer told me that it wasn't "blanket immunity" but didn't seem to have any real conviction in his voice.

Come November, I hope that Hoyer is voted out. I'm supporting the Accountability Now PAC and I encourage everyone who's frustrated and angy about the passage of this bill to join me in the "Money Bomb" on August 8th.

When we voted in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we didn't do it just because there was a D next to their name on CSPAN (I hope). We did it because we wanted real change and a Democratic majority, we were promised, would allow us to get out of Iraq, bring an end to warrantless wiretapping, and bring some accountability to the Bush administration.

Instead, our brave representation has chosen to fund the Iraq War (no questions asked), exchanged the Democratic minority platform of filibustering telcom immunity for a Democratc majority supporting it, and has held investigations with no consequences or even challenges for Bush officials or former officials who ignore a subpoena due to "executive privilege".

We deserve better.

By all means, let's get Obama in the White House, as disappointed as we are in his decision to turn on us on FISA. But let's also send the only message that Congress will get through their thick skulls about how disappointed we are-- Throw the bums out