1. Granting undocumented workers a path to citizenship (“amnesty,” if you will);

and

2. Granting retroactive civil immunity to telecoms acting at the behest of the Executive branch?

I see both as examples where a law prohibited a certain conduct and the government either explicitly or implicitly encouraged ignoring that law.

And now that things have been done, the only question remains is whether it would be prudent to prosecute the broken law or not? Is my logic flawed on this matter?

Actually with all this terrorism fearmongering, I can’t help but think of “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” … especially considering the role of fear in enabling us to essentially do things the terrorists want to be done (e.g. removing Saddam Hussein from power).

I wish Obama would have voted no on this and merely used a recycled speech “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

Obama had nothing to gain by voting for this law except protectionism for corporations. It was not at risk for not passing, and he could have protected freedom by voting against it. He did not. This was his “Iraq war vote.” He trashed Hillary for voting for the initial funding of he war – while he goes and does this that trashes our freedoms. Did he do it to get support from conservative voters? Well…what would he have done as Senator of New York after 9/11? Not vote for the intial war funding? You can bet Obama does and stands for whatever the wind blowing tells him to. He’s an illusionist. He will sell out anything, including freedoms.

The evidence of this is what exactly?

I’ll cut to the chase: this is false. Depending on how the question is asked it changes a lot, but “highly popular” is just flat wrong. Which is what makes this whole thing so silly.

Change you can believe in . . . to the constitution and our civil liberties, anyway.

Believe. It’s an election year and Democrats (including Obama) are afraid that Republicans are going to call them defeatists and terrorist supporters. Dems have been killing this bill for a year. Now they cave when the party is at it’s strongest and the McCain campaign is floundering. These people lack the courage to back their convictions.

I think we can blame the Senators and the Americans who supported the wiretapping program. Support for warrantless wiretapping was never strong. There were never people protesting in the streets demanding that the Bush administration tap their phones and email accounts. I bet most of the people that polled in approval of warrantless wiretapping don’t understand the FISA court or the implications.