Okay, so Barack is not a "LightWorker"

It's not my phrase, actually. I read the term "LightWorker" in a Mark Morford column on SFGate, and it seemed kinda twee, really, but that's life on the West Coast. A "LightWorker," I take it, is some sort of avatar of enlightened beings who visits us and leads us away from darkness and despair, dispatched by The Force when It sees we're in over our heads. I don't know if a LightWorker is actually armed with a LightSaber, for example, but one can hope, if only for ease of identification. When I read Morford's column, I thought maybe the canonization of Barry had ventured into dangerous, unsustainable territory. Lest we forget, Obama is the official nominee of the Democratic Party, that stained, compromised and completely co-opted political organization which also features Nancy Pelosi at the top of the org chart.

Obama has put matters to rest on the LightWorker front; we can now regard him as a canny political player who shows increasing signs of knowing, at least, what it takes to get elected in this sound-bitten society. Barack has backed off an earlier promise to filibuster the House-approved FISA rewrite in favor of "trying to amend" that part of the 4th Amendment Abolishment Bill which grants the big telecoms immunity for past illegal conduct. Otherwise, Barry is on board with the rest of the "compromise" legislation which essentially grants the Executive Branch unfettered access to all e-mail and telephone communication of Americans while...well, while using the Internet or the phone. The "restrictions" and "court review" built into the new FISA process are essentially meaningless. It's way too much to call them "warrants," that good ol' fashioned Fourth Amendment word. If the President, the Attorney General or a fourteen year old hacker in Beijing thinks he needs to read your e-mail to see if you're planning to blow something up, that's good enough. Be forewarned: the concept of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in your heretofore private communications is about to be repealed.

Thomas Jefferson had this to say in 1799: "Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence . . . . Let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitutions." Wise Tom was telling us that we should never forgo a freedom on the promise of a well-intentioned man or woman who tells us they have our best interests at heart and won't abuse the license. Keep your freedom and demand that the elected official do his best with the latitude he has left. And, as a specific, historical example, no one has ever demonstrated that the attacks of 9/11 resulted from the exercise of civil liberties by the American people. Indeed, the rough outlines of the plot were exposed while respecting these rights. It was a question of Executive Branch competence, not of restraints upon its freedom of action.

Some commentators, such as Glenn Greenwald linked over on your right, have been very, very hard on Obama for this lapse in "principle." I can't go quite as far as he does. Barack Obama is trying to get elected President in a country which elected George W. Bush President for a second term less than four years ago. Think about that for a moment. A vote against the FISA bill approved by the Democratic leadership will expose Barry to charges of "radicalism" and worse by the always-scrupulous John Sidney McCain. And then from the vast trailer parks of Florida to the lean-to shacks of Appalachia to the tent cities of Ontario, California, will issue the cry, "Barack can't keep us safe because he really is a Muslim!"

So what the hell's he supposed to do? Listen to civil libertarian eggheads like Glenn Greenwald and yours truly? Or get elected and use his new, unConstitutional powers responsibly, that is, until with a new majority on the Supreme Court made possible by his LightWorker appointments, the Court strikes down the FISA bill he supported on grounds it violates the Fourth Amendment? That's about as good as it gets in this, our 232nd year.