well, it ia about us and not him, if I remember correctly.

I hope this group grows rapidly. This is a real test of his new politics. Will this stay up on the site? I think so. This could be a wonderful model for the post election period. The core reason I have been attracted to Obama's candidacy is his background as an organizer. Organizers must listen to and engage their constituents. Social networking groups allow for this process on a huge scale. Let's see what happens.

Welcome to Change.

I don't Americans really like having their privacy violated at all, but the syndrome works like this:

"I haven't done anything wrong. Therefore, I have nothing to fear."

That is what you always face - people who are convinced that they will never be accused of anything wrongly and so if someone else is accused of something, they must be guilty. Anyone who isn't guilty has nothing to worry about.

This is the most prevalent attitude about laws in this country. It's very hard to break through - trust me - that's what criminal defense lawyers deal with at trial.

I don't think Americans blah blah blah.

[sob] what will it take to get an edit feature?

Neat, but aren't both these groups horribly misnamed? We don't want Obama to vote against FISA, we want him to vote to save FISA-- we want him to vote against the FISA amendments bill which would defang FISA by setting the precedent that the president can write permission slips to violate it and the congress will retroactively rubberstamp it.

If a group forms to pressure President Obama to get real on ME foreign policy, I'll gladly join it.

So far, most of his positions suck and are frankly, completely ignorant of realities other than those as presented by special interest groups and aligned thinktanks in DC.

The war over which policy advisors are allowed to talk to Obama is proof positive of the importance of keeping American presidents "in line" when it comes to dealing with the region. Voices from without the entrenched echo chambers are not to be heard. Period.

Please, please, PLEASE join this group. Even if you never visit the Obama campaign website again, we need to boost the numbers on this. The heroic efforts of Sen. Feingold and others in the Senate have given us one last chance to hammer this issue home to the Obama campaign.

I haven't done anything either, nor anyone in my family. Yet my brother is on a no fly list (a Judge), American Express freaked out when I had a credit sitting on my card and due to new laws they immediately lowered my 20k limit to $100, in case I was laundering money. I kid you not. I have been a member since 1981.

So secret police tactics, which is what all these things are about, are ruining lives or disrupting lives every day. A lot of people, like anything in life, don't care until it happens to them.

Oh, and don't forget the college professor that got an email that sent him to a false child porn site set up by the FBI, which in turn arrested him at home the next morning and charged him with violating child porn laws. Entrapment at it's best. (You can check this out, I think he lived in Colorado.) Now he is also a registered sex offender. But he said, "I never thought something like this could happen in America", well, it does. That is why you can never let the Patriot Act continue, it has to expire, and why you cannot shrug at FISA. Criminal charges should be pursued against the Administration, et al.

Umm, beyond the policy debate about what the FISA vote means (strategic? opportunistic? defensive? all of the above?) isn't it reassuring in a small "d" democratic sense that when Obama supporters get miffed at him we can use the social networking tools on his cite -- indeed, his rhetorical identity as our candidate -- to call him to account. Perhaps this is always the case with a popular candidate, but it hardly ever the case for ordinary folk might actually be able to affect the candidate in material terms. I mean, whatever your position on the public financing issue, Obama has effectively put his success in our hands. I know that he's raising more money from big doners now and roughly half of what he gets actually comes from "fat cats," but that also means half of it doesn't.

I disagree with the position Obama's taken on FISA, but thanks to Dodd and Feingold, the vote has been delayed and we may still see some interesting political maneuvering that will sooth progressive objections and get some less odious version of the legislation passed. Perhaps this reprieve is not accidental and is instead the result of coordinated effort in the Democratic party (shocking!). Then again, maybe that's wishful thinking.

Regardless, it's pretty sweet that Obama supporters are making their objections known (loudly and in detail) directly to the candidate and from within a community of support for him -- support which is not only electoral, but also financial. I can't see how he could fail to take notice. If the base you organized organizes to hold you accountable then that's something a pol's got to pay attention to. And for those who are foaming at the mouth that we might have to correct our guy from time to time all I can think to say is, isn't that the way democracy is supposed to work? Otherwise we could just put our trust in a benevolent monarch.

My point is, we don't have to agree with Obama on everything. And nor do we have to keep quiet when we don't agree with a position he takes to preserve the unity of the party. Let's not be silly. The 2008 Democratic Party is the most compelling character in politics since I don't know when. So long as not too many people become histrionic a little internal debate is not only healthy, but pretty exciting. I mean despite all the insults flung by the campaign and across the blogosphere, how many people thoroughly enjoyed the primary season? This is not because we were playing games, but instead because we all gave a shit and fought for what we believed. That's pretty heady stuff.

The wonderful thing about Obama, democratically speaking, isn't really his charisma or his likability, it's not even the cultural phenomenon he has become. Instead, it's the participatory spirit and accompanying apparatus he's built. I think it's great that folks are using it to let him know which way the wind is blowing among his own base. And here's the beauty part, if we're to believe anything Obama's ever written, if we are to take seriously the organizational revolution that he has engendered, then I think we can bet Obama thinks it's pretty great too.

I created one myself. I actually created it last Friday (when I posted an "Open Letter" here to Senator Obama, which I had hoped might reference the group), but got a message that it wouldn't be made public until after an administrator reviewed it. Nobody had done so by Monday, but I now see that it has 30 members even though I've done nothing to promote it yet.

The group is called Obama Supporters Against Retroactive Immunity. I pointedly avoided mentioning FISA by name, because I actually mostly favor the 3-decades old law itself. The problem is the administration's attempts to bypass its warrant requirements. Immunity, and the justification for it (i.e. it's okay so long as the President says so) are what I find most objectionable about the recent bill, although there are other questions as to how much easier it would make data mining searches of very large amounts of communications.

I hope that all these many Emily Litella's later on will not hurt his campaign.

sarcasm tags

The problem with the FISA fanatics is that they can't really explain their position very well. I've asked questions and they just get angry but can't answer them. It makes me think they are blindly following whatever Kos tells them.

Feingold is fighting to remove immunity from the bill. Is that it? It's just immunity? That's it? That's what all this energy is spent on -- You just want to punish AT&T and the rest (but not punish them by cancelling your own phone service)?

Bush will continue to do whatever he wants, law or no law. He's already breaking the law, with no consequences. This is just updating an existing FISA law with the understanding that Bush will start to abide by it. And if Obama wins, he can declassify all of Bush's secret wiretapping and end the program. But if the fanatics have their wish, he won't win, and McCain can permanently cover up everyhing and continue the spying, habeus corpus suspension, etc.

Sigh. People need to get ahold of their self-righteousness and realize we have an election to win.

And no, nothing is more important than that right now. We need a Democrat in office more now than at any time in my 32+ years.

I even heard someone say "Obama has a 12 point lead, so he can afford to lose a few point by voting against FISA". Can you believe this? Obviously doesn't remember any of the lesson of the past 10-20-30 years.-observer2

some of those were actually too small and lacked maturity to even know what you are talking about.

On your last comment, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt is not change in politics its doing whatever to get elected. It doesn't sit well with me b/c I'm not sure what I'd be voting for. Bush Lite,a liberal? His senate record shows that he often didn't vote or take a principled stance and take the heat. This is troubling and frustrating. He certainly wouldn't qualify for profiles in courage award.

Like Forrest Gump said, voting for Obama is like eating a box of chocolate, you never know what you're going to get.