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.
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