The ability to retroactively sue phone companies, who complied with what they either thought were legitimate requests from the government to help go after the bad guys or simply feared alienating their regulatory overlords, has always struck me as a tertiary issue.

Well we cant pre-emptively sue them, we have to wait until they actually did something wrong.

The intention was never to punish the phone companies, it was a means of determining who was instructing the phone companies to break the law, whether or not that person knew they were asking them to break the law, and whether or not the telephone companies were told they were breaking the law.

It was an end-run around the Administrations use of "executive privilege" to stop investigations of the Executive Branch.

Coming from you, that actually means the opposite.

Thanks for the confirmation!

Dave, I think you'll find that you're portrayal of the Obama supporters is rather naive. Most of us lived through 2000 and understand quite well that he's a politician first and not the great political messiah.

No, I think Dave's got it pretty well nailed, actually.

James Coburn: Everyone hates the phone company.

But we've learned a number of lessons from Karl Rove and the Grover Norquist 10 point plan for party discipline. What you see as a "great disappointment" is actually disappointment, but the reaction of the netroots is more akin to how the right has been dealing with their own moderates.

Perhaps what scares the right most of all is that we're learning some of the same effective tactics and strategies that y'all on the right have been employing. And even more terrifying is that we seem to be having measured success and not losing elections because of it.

In the words of Norquist: Bwaaaahahahahahahahaahaha <lightning crash>

even if it upsets the netroots

It's a condition they'd best get used to. I think they'll find President Obama a great disappointment to them. He won't be nearly as radical as they hope, not even as radical (which is not very) as he was during the primary campaign.

The intensity of outrage over telecom immunity continues to puzzle me.

Really? I should think it simple; That bill as such takes away a weapon the far left might have used against the hated BooooshhhhhChecneyHiterManster. Oh, and of course let's remember the assocation of the left with the ATLA. A lot of lawers missed out on a lot of lawsuit work when this bill passed.

Hmm.
Does this mean they're going to do America a favor and not vote for 'em?

(Crickets)

I didn't think so.