Want To Fight Back On FISA? Meet Regina Thomas.

It's pretty clear to me that the fix is in on FISA, and it's likely to become law by the end of the week. That's genuinely shocking and depressing.

But we have long memories. And the road to a Congress and political class which pays a modicum of attention to civil liberties begins in a primary in the area surrounding Savannah, Georgia. John Barrow deserves to go down.

John Barrow's voting record in Congress "is the worst of all the Democrats," state Sen. Regina Thomas said Saturday.

Thomas, challenging fellow Savannah Democrat Barrow in the July 15 primary election, talked with reporters following a candidates forum.

"Did we send a Democrat to Congress four years ago, or did we send a Republican?" she said after the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials event. "When we send people to Congress, if people tell us they are a Democrat or a Republican, we expect them to act that way."

Barrow has, in just the last week, voted with George Bush on FISA and funding for endless war in Iraq. The Republicans, through the Club for Growth and other groups, force discipline on their caucus by providing more fear for them than their Democratic counterparts. Right now there is nothing complementary on the left - we run the occasional ankle-biter, and very rarely we win (see Rep. Donna Edwards). Since the FISA betrayal there has been a sustained effort to hold Bush Dogs accountable, with over $300,000 contributed to The Strange Bedfellows campaign. Regina Thomas will be the beneficiary of that energy for the next few weeks until her primary on July 15. To me she doesn't seem like a leader in the style of a Donna Edwards (I could be wrong, however, and she does appear to me to be a reliable vote), but it's important to send a message to Washington and those like John Barrow, who claim to be Democrats and then sell out the Democratic Party and our civil liberties.