Month: June 2008

Change We Can Believe In

by digby

The Strange Bedfellows Campaign is really gaining steam. The reason, of course, is because we are watching a sell-out of epic proportions happen right before our eyes and people are angry.

We hear a lot about how people want change in Washington. It’s assumed by the Village media to mean that everybody is just desperate to stop fighting and get along — comity, compromise and good feeling between good friends. I’m sure there are people who feel this way, first among them Washington wags and hostesses, who love a big bipartisan guest list.

But there is just as much reason to believe that the change voters want is actually an end to the back scratching and glad handing that characterizes the bipartisan symbiosis between the political and corporate world and the incumbent protection racket that makes it possible. Nothing illustrates that corruption better than this FISA fight.

Pace Godwin, the idea that it’s a good principle to indemnify corporations from law breaking when its done at the behest of the government is getting close to the definition of fascism — the joining of corporate and government power, beyond the scope of law, in the name of national security. We should not go there. Judging from the amount of money raised in a very short time for this campaign — and more to come from the libertarian side of this argument — there are people in this country who actually do care about these things. And with the new technology, they are able to organize and raise money to make their voices heard.

Today, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Stoller and Howie Klein call upon Senator Obama, as head of the party, to lead on this as dday has been doing for the past couple of weeks. They point out in particular that Obama has decided to intervene in the primary in Georgia’s 12th District and back reactionary incumbent John Barrow, one of the worst FISA sell-out, Bush Dogs in the House, over progressive challenger Regina Thomas, on the eve of this vote.

Stoller writes:

70% of the primary voters in GA-12 are African-American. Barrow is white and has $1.3 million, Thomas is a progressive African-American and a state legislator, and has very little money…As Obama consolidates his power within the party, note who he is bringing with him in terms of economic policy and foreign policy, and note who he is protecting politically.

It is up to us to create a progressive check on Obama, and we might just have our first opportunity.

Thomas is a wonderful progressive candidate who Blue America has endorsed enthusiastically.

Obama wants to redraw the electoral map and thinks there might be a chance in Georgia. I’m sure that’s why he’s doing this, even though it’s the longest of long shots. I think it’s our year, but you can’t take anything for granted, so I understand they are single mindedly focused on getting to 270 and have decided they need to make a right turn to do it. It’s the predictable (and probably smart) move. I just don’t think playing this particular incumbent protection game is worth it unless there’s a really good chance of winning in that state. Guys like Barrow are toxic and will pay you back by voting against you when you need them most. It’s how they do business.

With Obama’s recent appointments of centrist and conservative people to his economic and foreign policy teams and his endorsements of such reactionary creeps as Barrow in the primary, it’s probably a good idea for progressives to start pulling on our end of the rope a bit. I think it will help him, not hurt him. If people want change in our politics then seeing our gifted, young candidate stand up strong for the constitution against corruption and institutional torpor would be a breath of fresh air. I would love to see him do it.

Christy Hardin Smith has more information on the impending FISA vote. The Strange Bedfellows web-site is here. You can join the alliance here. You can donate here.

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Let’s See What Congress Bought

by dday

So a deal has been reached on no-strings-attached war funding well into the next President’s first year, and all the Democrats get out of it is a GI Bill that isn’t paid for (they had to drop the tax on millionaires), some appropriations for flooding in the Midwest and Gulf Coast and modified unemployment insurance for an additional 13 weeks. That’s not nothing, but given that it’s a signing of a death warrant for tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, it’s perverse to even talk in terms of what you “get” out of the deal.

But it’s worth looking at the country we’ve bought for another year or so, just to kick the tires and see where it’s going. Turns out that the “political progress” that is continually touted by war defenders is more like a press release than actual progress that gets implemented:

When the Iraqi parliament passed a law in January aimed at rehiring former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, U.S. President George W. Bush praised it as a step towards national reconciliation […]

But five months later, implementation of the law is bogged down by infighting between politicians, and the committee once tasked with hunting out Baathists in government has found itself in the odd position of overseeing the process of rehiring them or offering them state pensions.

The government has still not appointed a seven-member panel to replace the deBaathification Committee, whose enthusiastic purge of Baathists from government posts prompted minority Sunni Arabs to accuse them of conducting a witch-hunt […]

The committee has received 14,000 applications from former Baathists asking for either reinstatement or for pensions, he said.

But Iraq’s presidency council — which comprises Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, and his two deputies — and a separate Accountability and Justice Committee in parliament have ordered [the committee’s head] and his colleagues to freeze their work.

This is merely an example of a persistent pattern where the ruling government makes a show at reconciliation and then uses their power as a tool of repression. The root causes that presage all the sectarian violence we have seen remain and will certainly be acted upon at some juncture.

In other news, we are reminded that this was not a war for oil but a war for oil services contracts.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

Gee, I wonder how the US oil companies got the upper hand and those no-bid contracts? It couldn’t be the consequence of a decision made at the initial moments of the invasion that the “victor” in Iraq would get the spoils, could it?

As Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional panel on Wednesday, “We didn’t take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant, dominating control over how it unfolds.”

And there are similar quotes from that time, freezing out Germany and France from the plunder. Not that any country should profit from the natural resources of Iraq except for Iraq.

So, for the low low price of $162 billion dollars, we have secured a ready-to-explode colony in the Middle East, full of black gold that we will pump out of their sand and mainline directly into the bank accounts of Big Oil.

Awesome.

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Dear Neal Pollack

by tristero

Dear Neal Pollack,

Screw Salvia. That’s the Walmart of psychedelics, oxycontin for yuppies. You wanna get high? I’ll show you high. Try a taste of this if you really wanna fry your brain.

Or put a spoonful of this stuff in your pipe and smoke it, if you can handle the trip, Neal. Or a mere 1/4 gram of this will transport you to realms of ecstasy the Salvia goddess couldn’t even begin to imagine.

And when you’re ready to float back to earth, man, why bother when you can go here? Or here? Or here?

When you’re ready to take the training wheels off, Neal, and cop some serious dope that will mess with your head for the rest of your life, gimme a call.

Love,

tristero

It’s Out There

by digby

Dave Niewert does a nice job taking down the latest Obama smear from bottom feeder Floyd Brown. I notice that one of his commenters observes that they “no longer care if they have any credibility.”

I think it’s important to remember that they don’t care about “credibility” at least the way we think of it. This is about the death by a thousand cuts, not any particular story. They start with a few tales that acclimate people to the idea that the Democrat has something to hide. He’s not being forthcoming. Something’s not quite right. Over time it creates a general sense of discomfort with the person, eventually even on the part of those who know it isn’t true. (They resent the victim for making them have to deal with these things. It’s exhausting.)

If you believe that credibility ever mattered to bottom feeders like Floyd Brown, who’s been doing this ever since the Willie Horton ad 20 years ago, check out the story of The Clinton Chronicles. That one was so outrageous that it even included murder charges and drug running. Jerry Falwell participated in it and they sold it in churches across the country. Millions of people saw it and ordered it on Christian television.

Sure most people *knew* it was bullshit. But over time, if they spread enough of these tabloid stories, on some level, people start to wonder about the person, even if they know better. It is a powerful weapon and I don’t know what the hell to do about it. In our tabloid culture, it’s probably more likely to penetrate a broad swathe of the public more than anything else.

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s out there. We analyze it and deconstruct it,ignore it and make fun of it and yet it never stops.

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Contact Governor Jindal

by tristero

Barbara Forrest of the Louisiana Coalition for Science has sent this urgent email about the latest, and exceedingly dangerous, shenanigans of the creationists. The Louisiana legislature has passed a bill permitting the teaching of creationism in the public schools. It is very cleverly worded, but that is the clear intent of the bill. You can find more informatin at the LAC website:

Friends,

I am hoping that LA Coalition for Science can get some help from our friends around the country. We have reached the point at which the only possible measure we have left is to raise an outcry from around the country that Gov. Jindal has to hear. What is happening in Louisiana has national implications, much to the delight of the Discovery Institute, which is blogging the daylights out of the Louisiana situation.

SB 733, the LA Science Education Act, has passed both houses of the legislature, and the governor has indicated that he intends to sign it. But we don’t have to be quiet about this. There is something that you and everyone else you know who wants to help can do:

The LA Coalition for Science has posted a press release and an open letter to Jindal asking him to veto the bill. Louisiana Coalition for Science

It is time for a groundswell of contacts to Jindal, and this must be done immediately since we don’t know when he will sign the bill. The contact information is at the LCFS website.

The vote in the legislature is veto-proof, so any request for Jindal to veto the bill must stress that the governor can make this veto stick if he wants it to stick. Please contact everyone you know and ask them to contact the governor’s office and ask him to veto the bill. Please blog this or send it out with your e-newsletter. If you have friendly contacts in your address book, please ask them to also contact the governor’s office.

We want people all over the country to do this, as many as possible, since Louisiana will be only the beginning. Your state could be next. Here are the talking points:

Point 1: The Louisiana law, SB 733, the LA Science Education Act, has national implications. So far, this legislation has failed in every other state where it was proposed, except in Michigan, where it remains in committee. By passing SB 733, Louisiana has set a dangerous precedent that will benefit the Discovery Institute by helping them to advance their strategy to get intelligent design creationism into public schools. Louisiana is only the beginning. Other states will now be encouraged to pass such legislation, and the Discovery Institute has already said that they will continue their push to get such legislation passed.

Point 2: Since Gov. Jindal’s support for teaching ID clearly helped to get this bill passed in the first place, his decision to veto it will stick if he lets the legislature know that he wants it to stick.

Point 3: Simply allowing the bill to become law without his signature, which is one of the governor’s options, does not absolve him of the responsibility for protecting the public school science classes of Louisiana. He must veto the bill to show that he is serious about improving Louisiana by improving education. Anything less than a veto means that the governor is giving a green light to creationists to undermine the education of Louisiana children.

You can pull additional talking points from the LCFS press release and our online letter if you want them.

Now we have to get the message out to people. People can contact the governor and and also contact their friends, asking them to do the same. We need to create a huge network of e-mails asking people to do this. Where they live does not matter at this point. What is happening in Louisiana has implications for everyone in the nation. The Discovery Institute does not intend to stop with the Pelican State.

Thank you,

Barbara

For your convenience, here is Governor Jindal’s contact info. I will be writing the governor now and calling first thing tomorrow.

E-mail: http://www.gov.la.gov/index.cfm?md=form&tmp=email_governor

Phone: 225-342-7015 or 866-366-1121 (Toll Free)

Fax: 225-342-709

You Know The Drill

by dday

So John McCain and George Bush think they’ve found the mother lode, and have decided that they’re going to carry the policy of lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling on America’s coasts all the way to another four years in the White House. They’ve got the whole conservative movement on their side with this coordinated effort, too. Newt Gingrich is babbling about a cyber-petition (his words, I stopped using “cyber” shortly after I read my last William Gibson novel in 6th grade) with 750,000 signers, some of them possibly real, calling on America to “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.” The wingnut minions are inundating members of Congress with phone calls (that means a couple hundred). And I wish I could have seen the look on poor Charlie Crist’s face when he had to grudgingly go along with this charade, as the Governor of Florida, and put his political career at risk:

Crist, last week:

Q: Gov. are you dropping your opposition to drilling for oil off of Florida’s coast?
CRIST: I am not. … No. 1, I don’t like it.

Crist today:

“What we ought to be willing to do is study it,” he said. “Reaching a conclusion about what is right or not right at this juncture is hard to do.” […]

Florida politicians of both parties “have worked to keep the drilling ban in force along Florida shores for more than 25 years,” the Miami Herald observed today. Many fear “it would harm the state’s beaches that are so vital to its tourism.” Former Governor Jeb Bush (R) has also pushed hard for the ban on drilling.

MSNBC noted today, “No Republicans in Florida have gotten elected statewide without endorsing the moratorium on off-shore oil drilling…if Crist tries to rationalize the McCain decision then we’ll really find out just how much he wants on the ticket.”

GOP Sellout Alert! (and like McCain needs more help losing Florida, right?)

Now, I think the best way to understand what the right is actually proposing here is best typified by this chart:

With the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, you’re talking about dropping the price of a barrel of oil between $0.50 and $2 over a 30-year time horizon when the price has gone up $100 since the beginning of the Bush Presidency. It’s the same for drilling offshore. As Bill Scher put it,

UPDATE: Just to put a fine point on it, lowering the price of crude oil per barrel by $1 is roughly equal to a reduction in price at the pump of 2.5 cents per gallon. So lifting all of the above moratoriums, lowering the price of crude by $2.25 per barrel, would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents by 2025.

Meaningless, after prices have skyrocketed more than $3 a gallon between Dec. 2001 and today.

Even John McCain’s top campaign adviser has admitted that drilling would have no immediate effect on higher gas prices.

But even if it did, it would be a catastrophic mistake. Debbie Cook, who is the Mayor of Huntington Beach, sits on the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (APSO), and who is running for Congress this year against our favorite Taliban lover Dana Rohrabacher, characterizes this quest for drilling as merely an effort to “divert our attention away from the real problem” of flattening world oil production, peak production being reached in 50 countries, and a dissipation of fossil fuel resources worldwide. From her statement:

George Bush and Dana Rohrabacher’s failure to understand the fundamental economics and geology of oil and gas production is matched only by their failures as leaders.

The true solution to our energy problems starts with conservation efforts, and investment in alternative and sustainable energy sources, which will create new American industries and jobs and jumpstart the sluggish economy.

But you have to look a little but further to get to the truth here. If two oilmen in the White House and a majority in the Congress, as Bush and Cheney had for 6 years, wasn’t enough to get the job done of drilling in ANWR, do you really think they and their oil company buddies want to? The truth is hinted at in Harry Reid’s response.

The facts are clear: Oil companies have already had ample opportunity to increase supply, but they have sat on their hands. They aren’t even using more than half of the public lands they already have leased for drilling. And despite the huge tax breaks President Bush and Republican Congresses have given oil and gas companies to invest in refineries, domestic production has actually dropped.

Private corporations have potentially billions of barrels of oil sitting in capped wells and untapped leased fields, some of which have been lying fallow for as much as thirty years. They won’t open them because they are more profitable as untapped reserves, which inflates the stock price and goes directly into the execs’ wallets. Bush and McCain say they want more drilling, but the oil companies don’t. They want more untapped reserves so they can pump up their balance sheets.

This is all a game. Bush and McCain want to funnel oil services contracts to corporate boardrooms, not oil to consumers. They either have some polling about how fear of higher gas prices will allow them to gain some populist support for these measures, or they’re just following the Republican playbook since the energy crisis of the late 1970s. Whatever it is, they certainly aren’t interested in delivering more oil.

UPDATE: Environmentalist at Kos reaches the same conclusion.

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%. And did you see your gasoline costs drop? How about your electricity costs? Propane? natural gas? Uh…no. There is absolutely no correlation between the industrialization of public lands and the price of fossil fuels […]

What’s going on here is yet another cynical attempt by the GOP and the oil and gas robber barons to increase and assure huge industry profits at the expense of the American people. These companies don’t want to drill these areas. They want to hold them as assests to limit the amount of oil and gas on the market so that prices rise still further – and they make more money. They want to hold on to these areas so that they can drill them ten or fifteen years from now and make an even bigger fortune.

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Whoever We Want Him To Be

by digby

I’ve finally realized what “maverick” really means. It means someone who takes both sides of every issue but everyone thinks he really means it. (And it helps if the media portrays them as someone who only panders because he “has to” implying he will only carry out those promises the individual voter wants carries out.)

Back in 2000, McCain got himself into a little maverick “pickle” on abortion. It’s a perfect example of how this works. Get a load of this mish-mash:

McCain struggles with sensitive abortion question
By Jonathan Karl/CNN

January 26, 2000

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain, when asked Wednesday what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter Meghan became pregnant and wanted an abortion, said it would be a “family decision.”

“The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel,” McCain said, speaking of himself and his wife Cindy.

“I would discuss this issue with Cindy and Meghan, and this would be a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else,” McCain told reporters in New Hampshire on board his campaign bus nicknamed “The Straight Talk Express. “Obviously I would encourage her to bring, to know that baby would be brought up in a warm and loving family, but the final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel.”

McCain describes himself as a “pro-life” candidate and says he favors a ban on abortion except in the case of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother. But he has also angered anti-abortion advocates last year by saying that reversing Roe v. Wade now would force thousands of young women to have illegal and dangerous operations.

McCain grew irritated as reporters pressed him on the subject. Asked if that was the same answer an abortion-rights advocate would give, McCain said, “I don’t think it is the pro-choice position to say that my daughter and my wife and I will discuss something that is a family matter that we have to decide.”

Less than an hour later, his campaign issued a statement from McCain clarifying his position.

“What I intended to say is that this is a family decision. This family decision would be made by the family and not Meghan alone,” McCain said in the statement.

The anti-abortion group Citizens for Life, the New Hampshire affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, did not find fault with McCain’s comments, but indicated concern about his overall position on Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.

“The statement about his daughter is a private family matter. It is somewhat ambiguous, but the larger problem is that Senator McCain does not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade,” said Roger Stenson, a spokesman for the group.

But the anti-abortion group American Life League condemned both McCain’s initial comments and his clarification.

“That is not a pro-life position,” said American Life League spokesman Steve Sanborn. “Because that means that the final decision could be the murder of a pre-born human child who has a right to life.”

In August, McCain said he favored repealing the decision but the ban shouldn’t happen until “we stop this dangerous operation” through counseling, adoption and other alternatives.

He also has said he would choose a vice presidential nominee and nominees to the Supreme Court based on their overall qualifications, and would not require that they oppose abortion rights, which angered anti-abortion advocates.

That’s what being a maverick is all about. Incoherence. No wonder the press loves him so.

Here’s the problem. That little contretemps, along with his overall image as someone who doesn’t particularly care for the religious right, has made quite a few people think he’s pro-choice. (I don’t know what he is, personally, but I don’t think it matters. It’s quite clear that he doesn’t really give a damn about this issue and will, therefore, use it to throw some red meat to the base if he gets elected. He won’t use up any maverick chits to stand up for the rights of women, that’s for sure.)

As it turns out that is a fairly electorally expensive misunderstanding:

Once balanced information about Obama and McCain’s respective positions on choice is introduced, Obama gains 6 points overall, with his lead in battleground states expanding from a net 2 points (47-45 percent) to a net 13 points (53-40 percent).

….Despite the fact that the national focus seems to be on the economy, among pro-choice Independent women, pro-choice Republican women, and liberal to moderate Republican women, the issue of abortion produces a larger advantage for Democrats than the economy, the war in Iraq, or health care. Moreover, among these three groups critiques on McCain’s anti-choice position are the strongest attacks against him, trumping attacks on the economy, the war, and special interests.

It seems surprising that this issue should rate higher than the others among Independent and pro-choice Republican women, but if it’s true, it should be taken seriously. There are a lot of ways to court swing voters in this country. You can crunch numbers in any number of different directions. (And a lot depends upon how the press decides to frame the electorate for us.) But it would be nice if we could court some swing voters who aren’t actively hostile to our fundamental principles for once.

In the past few cycles we’ve seen the press make it all about a referendum on “values” and religion which they defined exactly as the Republicans wanted them to. The result was that Democratic politicians felt they had to pander to the right. We’ve seen this even in this campaign which isn’t being waged on those terms. Unfortunately, it’s the Republican who has successfully blurred the lines — and he picks up six points because of it (13 in the battlegrounds…)

Considering the zeitgeist around “identity politics” (a pejorative term for which I wish we could find an alternative) this may be the election on which the Democrats should make a point to reach out to those swing voters who aren’t socially conservative but who are concerned with things like the constitution, civil liberties, a woman’s right to choose etc. They are a far better fit with the Democrats than social conservatives who are always going to have a deep and moral objection to gay and women’s rights. (That’s pretty much what defines a social conservative, after all.)

John McCain has had it both ways mostly because the boys on the straight talk express want him to be their buddy and so portray him through their own prism. He gets to be whatever he wants to be. But as I said, he may not be a social conservative but neither does he care about social issues at all. That’s the meat he’ll give these issues to the far right to stay in their good graces if he gets elected.

I hope Obama’s team takes a good hard look at these numbers and decides to veer away from the usual blurring of lines on this issue and makes a play for those independent and Republican women instead. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s good politics.

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Back From The Dead

by digby

I’m not sure what to make of this list. I assume that most of it is to let the military and foreign policy establishment know that he isn’t going to be employing kids from his Facebook list to run American foreign policy. (Hey, don’t laugh. Bush hired interns from the Heritage Foundation to build a new nation in Iraq. It happens.)

But Boren and Nunn? Really? Did they have to go that far? Those two are the Bobsy twins of back stabbing. There’s a lot of ego on that list, but these two really believe the world missed out when it failed to make them Emperor. Let’s hope neither of them gets it in his head, as they are wont to do, to put the new president in his place by running to their friends in the press and publicly disagreeing with him in the middle of delicate negotiations. They’re older now. Maybe they’re wiser too.

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Shiftless and Lazy

by dday

The floodwaters in Iowa all flowed into the Mississippi River, and now it’s a floating hazard running downstream, encountering levees throughout the Midwest and breaching them. 19 levees have thus far been compromised in Iowa and Illinois. This is going to play out all week, and Bush is back from his European vacation vowing quick action.

This is a disaster, but it’s largely a property disaster. Towns on the river are not surrounded by water on all sides, and deaths have been thankfully minimal. Most reasonable people would see this and be happy that this is not the challenge residents faced on the Gulf Coast. Rush Limbaugh sees it and can only see color.

Limbaugh: I want to know. I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois—I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and Illinois that dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property…I don’t see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don’t see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street. I don’t see a bunch of people doing everything they can…whining and moaning—where’s FEMA, where’s BUSH. I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America.

How it must feel to be so aggrieved that any opportunity to denounce blacks as lazy is taken.

Now I could go ahead and debunk all of Rush’s lies. The devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf was orders of magnitude above anything we’ve seen this decade. Nobody in New Orleans shot at cops. The lurid stories of rape and murder and gang warfare weren’t true. But there is no point, really. Because all we’re seeing here is a stone racist, convinced of his own biases, assured of his beliefs in how Heartland Americans are real Americans.

These next eight years of a biracial President are going to put him over the top. Who, by the way, filled sandbags in the Midwest over the weekend. I guess John McCain isn’t a real American, then.

* text errors fixed

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Times Contra Domestic Spying Bill “Compromise”

by tristero

Heavens to Murgatroyd!The Times stomps the proposed “compromise” that the lily-liver Democrats in Congress are prepared to support with all the gleeful enthusiasm of our own Glenzilla!

[A]fter Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush bypassed the FISA court and authorized the interception of international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant. Then, when The Times disclosed the operation in late 2005, Mr. Bush claimed that FISA did not allow the United States to act quickly enough to stop terrorists. That was nonsense. FISA always gave the government the power to start listening and then get a warrant — a grace period that has been extended since Sept. 11.

More fundamental, Mr. Bush’s powers do not supersede laws passed by Congress or the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

They conclude:

There are clear differences between the candidates. Senator John McCain, who is sounding more like Mr. Bush every day, believes the president has the power to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.

Senator Barack Obama opposes immunity and voted against the temporary expansion of FISA. We hope he will show strong leadership this time. He might even take time off from the campaign to vote against the disturbing deal brewing in the back rooms of Congress.

Agreed.