It's time to put the "Obama Caved On FISA" talk to an end.

Obama may have promised to support a filibuster of an earlier FISA bill that contained retroactive immunity for telecoms. But we all know that it takes 40 votes to sustain a filibuster. Obama may be the de-facto leader of the party, but ours a fractured party. And with so many conservative red-state-Dems in our party's caucus, plus others like Feinstein who are apparently too beholden to the powerful telecom companies in their states to vote the right way on this, a filibuster on this FISA bill was simply not a realistic possibility. The Dems could barely muster 40 votes for even the most watered down of all the immunity amendments. Obama and Senator Clinton both voted the right way on all three of them, and we should all be proud of them for that.

The FISA bill is obviously imperfect, but I do not believe that a serious Presidential candidate can afford to vote "no" on legislation that is intended to help prevent terrorist attacks. If Obama were to oppose the bill as a whole, he would be handing McCain--who didn't even bother to show up and vote today--a huge opening to scare voters and paint Obama as weak on terrorism.

The "Obama turning rightward" media coverage has gone on long enough as it is. We don't need to fan the flames of that storyline anymore.

Respectfully, I ask Mike Stark to change the name of his MyBO group. I am all for having a MyBO group that expresses the feelings of Obama's progressive supporters. But I hope that it will not remain a group whose only purpose is to criticize Obama for voting the way that I believe he absolutely had to on the overall FISA bill.

Cross-posted at My.BarackObama.Com

I'm a little late to the party posting about Dodd's YouTube Spotlight, but I wanted to chime in with my own thoughts, specifically the call for citizens to capture their interactions with Senators on video.  When I saw the spotlight one word came to mind: Lieberman.  Last year video bloggers caught Senator Lieberman showing his true self on tape time, after time, after time.  His victory aside, I think those moments forever changed the public's perception of Lieberman to the point where he can't run for office again.

The Dodd campaign is looking for those same sort of defining moments.  How will Senators (especially his fellow candidates) interact with their constituents and a video camera?  Will they even meet face to face with someone with a camera in hand?  I can't wait to see what ends up on YouTube and if, like Macaca, these interactions change forever the public persona of our elected Senators.

And I look forward to the positive moments even more.  Who will see the video camera as an opportunity to reach out?  Who will take the time to explain their support or opposition via Youtube?  Who will open up the debate rather than attempt to shut it down?  My post-Lieberman experience with elected officials indicates that most don't see bloggers as the enemy.  My guess is that many Senators will have a positive reaction to Dodd's experiment

Wouldn't it be great to have all 100 Senators on video?

Poll Below the fold

There's more...