A quick post since today is going to be a very busy day. A few weeks back, I wrote a long post asking whether Obama’s networked movement was going to do more than just work to elect him president. Well, it looks like the battle to hold him accountable to his promises has already begun, over his support for the FISA bill, and especially over a provision giving the telecom companies retroactive immunity for breaking the law when they gave the Bush Administration access to Americans phone records without judicial authorization.
See for example Glenn Greenwald’s scalding attack on Obama in Salon. Note that Obama’s spokesman promised he would filibuster any bill containing retroactive immunity for the telcos, back in the fall. Now that Obama has announced his support for a far weaker compromise, MoveOn (which endorsed Obama earlier this year) has launched a campaign to get its members to call Obama on it. Duncan Black (Atrios) has anointed Obama has “Wanker of the Day.” A top recommended diary on DailyKos also takes Obama to task. More useful links here. It shall be interesting to see how and if Obama responds to the growing pressure.
June 22, 2008