Sigh... Team Obama's Bamboozlement On FISA.

(bumped)

Good for Mike Stark and the gang (and since I'm part of it, myself) for getting the New York Times to notice the My.BarackObama.com group, now the largest on his site, which is protesting his recent position on FISA and telecom immunity. It's a solid piece, and a testament to the spirit and creativity of the netroots to get something like this accomplished. I just want to mention one thing from the end of the article.

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

“This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip,” Mr. Craig said. “Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire.”

FISA is not expiring. The Protect America Act expired in February, reverting intelligence gathering through foreign surveillance back to FISA, where it had been for 30 years. FISA's burden is not onerous, it's frequently a rubber stamp, and its existence as a secret court may violate the Fourth Amendment in its own right, but it's not "expiring." What's expiring are a few open wiretaps which surveil foreign targets but go through a US switcher. The proper compromise would have been to just fix those and treat them as foreign communications. Massively expanding wiretap capability and telecom immunity was completely unnecessary. Greg Craig is trying to bamboozle you.

UPDATE: Glennzilla is all over this, he even got Craig on the phone and forced him into a bunch of lies and misstatements. Meanwhile, Blue America has created this very cool whip count call tool.

Blue America is launching a call tool today to help you get in touch with Senators regarding the FISA bill. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone to talk with their Senators about the importance of standing up for the constitution, the rule of law — and standing against telecom immunity.

We have been working hard to put together some tools to make your voice heard — and there is more to come today.

This first tool allows you to directly contact Senators to tell them to stand up for the rule of law and vote in favor of the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment. (That’s S.A.5064 to H.R. 6304 which will come up for a vote on July 8th, 2008.) Not only will this tool help you phone your Senators — including connecting your call — but it also gives us the ability to track positions on FISA given your input on what you ascertain during your conversations.

It's worth trying.