Olbermann on Obama's FISA second chance

Keith Olbermann took a few well-deserved kidney punches to Barack Obama the other night about the FISA bill. [For more on FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), click Here.]

Olbermann is exactly right, too - no matter which way Obama votes on the FISA bill, Repubes will criticize him as "soft on terror" anyway, so he's in a no-win position in that regard. So, here's hoping that Obama does the right thing on FISA, and that's to vote against the telecom immunity provisions, period. Okay, it's pretty cool (actually, hilarious) that Republicans largely wrote the bill (at Bush's urging) and that they didn't give any criminal immunity to the telecom companies, only civil immunity. But, that doesn't do much, in my opinion, because Congressional Democrats have shown absolutely no willingness to do much to Bush administration officials who knowingly break the law while giving the finger to the Constitution.

However, Olbermann is off base about a would-be Obama administration subpoenaing documents, records, etc. from former Bush administration officials about FISA and other matters. Hmmm - something tells me that whether Obama wins or loses (but especially if he wins in November), there's going to be an Enron-like confetti party at the Bush Justice Department. Wait, scratch that - every Bush governmental department.

And don't think they can't get away with it, either. After all, how many millions of e-mails got "lost" when Congress demanded them when investigating the Valerie Plame incident (among others)? What's more, what did Congress do about it? Nothing. Worse yet, there have been more than a few reports that the Bush administration had the hard drives crushed that contained any incriminating e-mails, thwarting hopes that they will ever be recovered. (Just for fun, imagine if President Clinton or anyone associated with his administration would done the same thing about something infinitely less important, the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Clinton would have been burned at the stake on the National Mall.)

So my point is, Obama should vote No on the FISA bill, no matter what. Even if he votes yea (a horrible mistake), does any logical person think that Republicans aren't going to try to scare American voters to death with apocalyptic visions of an Obama presidency?

Bet on it.

Over the weekend, when I get a minute, I'm going to write Obama to urge him to vote the right way on FISA, and I will share my letter when it's done.