Excellent work by Stoller, getting this statement from the Foster campaign:

[FOSTER] Nobody is above the law and telecom companies who engaged in illegal surveillance should be held accountable, not given retroactive immunity. I flatly oppose giving these companies an out for cooperating with Alberto Gonzalez on short-circuiting the FISA courts and the rule of law.”

Bill Foster, Democratic Candidate in IL-14 March 8th Special Election

So, when you make your calls to the Blue Dog traitors on FISA, be sure you stress that point.  Read more 

Slate magazine runs a podcast called Gabfest, featuring Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz. This week’s episode also aired on the POTUS election channel on XM Radio.

At about 22:14 into the program, the discussion turns to FISA and telecom immunity. And the “point” was repeatedly made that the topic is unbearably dull, even to listeners of a quasi-alternative political show.

I couldn’t always be sure which was John and which was David, so I’m supplying my best guesses.  Read more 

Searing.  Read more 

Typical toll tower on Rhine in Bingen

Finally—we’re nothing if not open-minded here at The Mighty Corrente Buiding—a solid reason to vote for Obama—a dogwhistle I can hear.

Via Ezra, this from XKCD:

Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama’s commitment to open systems — for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens’ groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it’s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.

Obama stands against bad governing not only in his support of specific practices like open data standards and basic network neutrality, but in his work against corruption from day one.

The Mighty Corrente Building, and the blogosphere in general, could not run and would not even exist without open standards, so Obama’s embrace of them is good news. For example:  Read more 

Nice Headline on the front page of the NY Times today:

Companies Seeking Immunity Donate to Senator

Now that wasn’t so hard. I know, I know. Nothing sexy here, nothing that keeps eyeballs glued to the screen and pays those advertisers. Still, it seems like it might be a story worth telling.

Maybe they googled “rockefeller and fisa”? Maybe then they googled “rockefeller and quid pro quo”? Who knows?  Read more