in this post I put my philosophy training to work

So the American Senate recently passed the FISA bill, which would grant Bush the legal right to privacy violations — violations that he has already committed, and which used to be felonies (circa one week ago). Translation: Bush hates freedom, Democrats are weak, tomorrow’s another day.

An unusual wrinkle arises when we consider Obama’s role in all this. The fundamental question is, how are Democratic voters supposed to endorse a candidate whose liberal chops have yet to be proven? He speaks the rhetoric of moderation, of reconciliation. Well that’s very nice, but endorsing niceness does not quite meet any adult standards for public policy. Substance matters too. If Obama wants to fight the charge that he’s an inexperienced newbie by playing the wisdom card, then he’ll have to show some wisdom every so often, i.e., by making passionate and rational arguments on actual policy. 

HatchInBrooklyn disagrees:

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 progressives should all be proud of them for that.

Oh, why don’t you shut up and obey the commands of justice already. Beneath the Dear Leader faction of the Republican party (which by all indications is now in the wane), Red state Dems have a libertarian element. Speak to that.