If you were "all that and a bag of chips", what kind of chips would you be?

Jesse Helms gave a speech at the United Nations back in 2000. It's worth a read because it articulates very well the conservative mindset about American Exceptionalism and really helps explain why the Bush administration went so wrong. But, we're kidding ourselves if we don't recognize that the Washington Establishment has basically adopted the meat if not the tenor of Jesse Helms' views.

"No UN institution- not the Security Council, not the Yugoslav tribunal, not a future ICC - is competent to judge the foreign policy and national security decisions of the United States. American courts routinely refuse cases where they are asked to sit in judgement of our government's national security decisions, stating that they are not competent to judge such decisions. If we do NOT submit our national security decisions to the judgement of a Court of the United States, WHY would Americans submit them to the judgement of an International Criminal Court, a continent away, comprised of mostly foreign judges elected by an international body made up of the membership of the UN General Assembly?

That's about the size of it. That's why extramarital fellatio is an impeachable offense and why the telcos get retroactive immunity. Now watch Helms spin a American-can-do-no-wrong history, while introducing a term that would come to haunt us later.

"As we watch the UN struggle with this question at the turn of the millennium, many Americans are left exceedingly puzzled. Intervening in cases of widespread oppression and massive human rights abuses is not a new concept for the United States. The American people have a long history of coming to the aid of those struggling for freedom. In the United States, during the 1980s, we called this policy the "Reagan Doctrine."

"In some cases, America has assisted freedom fighters around the world who were seeking to overthrow corrupt regimes. We have provided weaponry, training, and intelligence. In other cases, the United States has intervened directly. In still other cases, such as in Central and Eastern Europe, we supported peaceful opposition movements with moral, financial and covert forms of support. In each case, however, it was America's clear intention to help bring down Communist regimes that were oppressing their peoples, and thereby replace dictators with democratic governments. The dramatic expansion of freedom in the last decade of the 20th century is a direct result of these policies.

"In NONE of these cases, however, did the United States ask for, or receive, the approval of the United Nations to `legitimize' its actions. It is a fanciful notion that a free peoples need to seek approval of an international body - some of whose members are totalitarian dictatorships - to lend support to nations struggling to break the chains of tyranny and claim their inalienable, God-given rights. THE UNITED NATIONS HAS NO POWER TO GRANT OR DECLINE LEGITIMACY TO SUCH ACTIONS. THEY ARE INHERENTLY LEGITIMATE.

"What the United Nations can do is help. The Security Council can, where appropriate, be an instrument to facilitate action by `coalitions of the willing,' implement sanctions against regimes, and provide logistical support to states undertaking collective action.

Helms might sound a little radical here, but he isn't saying anything that isn't basically common wisdom in Washington DC. Even if not everyone believes this crap, they agree that its political suicide to question any of it. Jesse Helms may have died today, but his foreign policy is alive and strong.

[Pam has a more personal take].

Why are we talking about giving the government more power to invade our privacy?

The 192 million passport files maintained by the State Department contain individuals' passport applications, which include data such as Social Security numbers, physical descriptions, and names and places of birth of the applicants' parents. Otherwise, the files provide limited information; they do not contain records of overseas travel or visa stamps from previous passports.

To test the extent of the snooping, investigators assembled a list of 150 famous Americans and checked how many times their files were accessed over a 5 1/2 -year period. Investigators found that the records of 127, or 85 percent, had been searched a total of more than 4,100 times.

The report said that "although an 85 percent hit rate appears to be excessive, the Department currently lacks criteria to determine whether this is actually an inordinately high rate."

Before we go giving the NSA powers to do sweeping warrantless wiretaps, shouldn't we focus first on giving the State Department some criteria to determine whether an 85% privacy breech rate is an historically high rate or just par for the course?

Hey, Happy Independence Day everybody. Do you know what is patriotic? Sticking up for the Constitution of the United States of America is patriotic. So, let's review a little history, shall we? Let me cut and paste a little snippet from the SELECT COMMITTEE TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS WITH RESPECT TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES, better known as the Church Committee:

B. Summary of Interception Programs

The Committee's hearings disclosed three NSA interception programs: the "watch lists" containing names of American citizens; "Operation SHAMROCK," whereby NSA received copies of millions of telegrams leaving or transiting the United States, and the monitoring of certain telephone links between the United States and South America at the request of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. In addition, the Committee's investigation revealed that although NSA no longer includes the names of specific citizens in its selection criteria, it still intercepts international communications of Americans as part of its foreign intelligence collection activity. Information derived from such communications is disseminated by NSA to other intelligence agencies to satisfy foreign intelligence requirements.

1. Watch Lists Containing Names of Americans

From the early 1960s until 1973, NSA intercepted and disseminated international communications of selected American citizens and groups on the basis of lists of names supplied by other Government agencies. In 1967, as part of a general concern within the intelligence community over civil disturbances and peace demonstrations, NSA responded to Defense Department requests by expanding its watch list program. Watch lists came to include the names of individuals, groups, and organizations involved in domestic antiwar and civil rights activities in an attempt to discover if there was "foreign influence" on them. 14

In 1969, NSA formalized the watch list program under the codename MINARET. The program applied not only to alleged foreign influence on domestic dissent, but also to American groups and individuals whose activities "may result in civil disturbances or otherwise subvert the national security of the U.S." 15 At the same time, NSA instructed its personnel to "restrict the knowledge" that NSA was collecting such information and to keep its name off the disseminated "product." 16

Prior to 1973, NSA generally relied on the agencies requesting information to determine the propriety and legality of their actions in submitting names to NSA. 17 NSA's new director, General Lew Allen, Jr., indicated some concern about Project MINARET in August 1973, and suspended the dissemination of messages under the program. In September 1973, Allen wrote the agencies involved in the watch lists, requesting a recertification of their requirements, particularly as to the appropriateness of their requests.

In October 1973, Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen and Attorney General Elliot Richardson concluded that the watch lists were of "questionable legality" and so advised NSA. 18 In response, NSA took the position that although specific names had been targeted, the communications of particular Americans included on the watch lists had been collected "as an incidental and unintended act in the conduct of the interception of foreign communications." Allen concluded:

[NSA's] current practice conforms with your guidance that "relevant information acquired [by NSA] in the routine pursuit of the collection of foreign intelligence information may continue to be furnished to appropriate government agencies. 19

So, what kinds of people wound up on these Watch Lists?

C. Types of Names on Watch Lists

The names of Americans submitted to NSA for the watch lists ranged from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their Government. Names of organizations were also included; some were communist front groups, others were nonviolent and peaceful in nature.

The use of names, particularly those of groups and organizations, to select international communications results in NSA unnecessarily reviewing many messages. There is a multiplier effect: if an organization is targeted, all its member's communications may be intercepted; if an individual is on the watch list, all communications to, from, or mentioning that individual may be intercepted. These communications may also contain the names of other "innocent" parties. For example, a communication mentioning the wife of a U.S. Senator was intercepted by NSA, as were communications discussing a peace concert, a correspondent's report from Southeast Asia to his magazine in New York, and a pro-Vietnam war activist's invitations to speakers for a rally. According to testimony before the Committee, the material that resulted from the watch lists was not very valuable; most communications were of a private and personal nature, or involved rallies and demonstrations that were public knowledge. 56

Your father told you there was a Fourth Amendment when he growing up? He was wrong.

III. A SPECIAL NSA COLLECTION PROGRAM: SHAMROCK

SHAMROCK is the codename for a special program in which NSA received copies of most international telegrams leaving the United States between August 1945 and May 1975. Two of the participating international telegraph companies -- RCA Global and ITT World Communications -- provided virtually all their international message traffic to NSA. The third, Western Union International, only provided copies of certain foreign traffic from 1945 until 1972. SHAMROCK was probably the largest governmental interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken. Although the total number of telegrams read during its course is not available, NSA estimates that in the last two or three years of SHAMROCK's existence, about 150,000 telegrams per month were reviewed by NSA analysts. 115

Initially, NSA received copies of international telegrams in the form of microfilm or paper tapes. These were sorted manually to obtain foreign messages. When RCA Global and ITT World Communications switched to magnetic tapes in the 1960s, NSA made copies of these tapes and subjected them to an electronic sorting process. This means that the international telegrams of American citizens on the "watch lists" could be selected out and disseminated.

And this is just NSA-related stuff. The CIA opened all Soviet or Eastern bloc destined mail for two-full decades.

The 1978 FISA law was crafted in response to these revelations and was intended to put a stop to these abuses. Peace and Civil Rights activists were targeted for warrantless surveillance even under Democratic administrations. Why should we feel any degree of confidence that our rights were not routinely violated under the Bush administration or that they will be respected even under an Obama administration? Why?

I can see that Barack Obama is not going to vote against final passage of the FISA bill. He probably isn't even going to show up to debate the bill and its amendments. I expect he will work with Harry Reid to make sure his schedule is open to actually show up for the votes, but I don't expect anything more from him. He has chosen not to make this battle a central part of his campaign. I don't blame Obama for this bill and I don't question his desire to focus on other subjects in his campaign. But I'm still disappointed in his lack of leadership on this key issue. His response to our protests was mixed. Parts of it were frankly insulting. Parts of it were very encouraging. But, taken as a whole, his response was inadequate.

Surely Obama knows that the public's trust in the Executive Branch is broken, and promises to do better (while taken for granted) are not enough to satisfy concerns about 4th amendment violations.

Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once I’m sworn in as President -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

I think Obama needs to do more than have his Attorney General review the surveillance programs. Here's something that I would still have problems with, but that I would accept.

After the FISA law passes, as it inevitably will, Obama should call a joint press conference. He should have in attendance the Democratic Congressional leadership (Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid, and Durbin), and the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services, Intelligence, and Judiciary Committees (Skelton and Levin, Reyes and Rockefeller, and Conyers and Leahy). Together they should announce a plan to conduct a joint investigation of electronic surveillance from time that FISA passed in 1978 up until the present. They should announce that the goal of the investigation is to document how the law has worked, any abuses that have taken place, how technological advances have been and can be addressed, and to make recommendations for a new comprehensive Intelligence Surveillance Act. Obama should promise the full cooperation and participation of not just the Attorney General, but the leaders of the Intelligence Community, including the Pentagon. Then they should promise to deliver three copies of the report by September 2009. A classified version will be disseminated to the Gang of Eight [which includes the Republican Minority Leaders (Boehner and McConnell) and Ranking Members of Intelligence (Bond and Hoekstra)], plus anyone with clearance to see it. A slightly classified version will be made to all members of Congress. And a declassified version will be posted for free on the Internet for all Americans to review.

Obama shouldn't pre-judge the results of this review, nor should he promise any particular course of action. But if he will just acknowledge how deeply the American people need to know the truth about what happened and how badly our trust has been broken, and promise us that he will make reviewing these matters a top priority, I think we can live with this FISA capitulation. If he tries to glide by on glib and misleading talking points and a hollow Attorney General review, he's going to lose trust and enthusiasm from his base and lose a chance to win over a lot of libertarian-minded people.

Obama has responded to the 18,000 members of his site that asked him to vote against the FISA bill. I'll do an analytical piece when I get the chance, but right now I am going to just underline the bullshit and boldface the encouraging stuff.

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any President or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.

The Inspectors General report also provides a real mechanism for accountability and should not be discounted. It will allow a close look at past misconduct without hurdles that would exist in federal court because of classification issues. The recent investigation uncovering the illegal politicization of Justice Department hiring sets a strong example of the accountability that can come from a tough and thorough IG report.

The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once I’m sworn in as President -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions. No tool has been more important in focusing peoples' attention on the abuses of executive power in this Administration than the active and sustained engagement of American citizens. That holds true -- not just on wiretapping, but on a range of issues where Washington has let the American people down.

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I'm not exempt from that. I'm certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country. That is why we have built the largest grassroots campaign in the history of presidential politics, and that is the kind of White House that I intend to run as President of the United States -- a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples' business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That's ok. But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

So I appreciate the feedback through my.barackobama.com, and I look forward to continuing the conversation in the months and years to come. Together, we have a lot of work to do.

Give me an effing break:

A Philadelphia news radio station has rejected a Democratic ad that features an impersonator of President Bush thanking GOP congressional candidates for supporting the “Big Oil” agenda.

Philadelphia KYW-AM Vice President and General Manager David Yadgaroff said his station decided not to run the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) ad because it was worried its listeners would be misled.

“As an all-news station, we were concerned that our listeners would have been misled by usage of an impersonator in the creative delivery,” Yadgaroff said in an e-mail sent to The Hill.

The ad was part of a $100,000 DCCC ad campaign in 13 different congressional districts held by Republicans. In the ad, a Bush impersonator calls the local GOP congressman, thanking him for “continuing to support the Big Oil agenda” as a member of the “Grand Oil Party.”

KYW broadcasts in Rep. Jim Gerlach’s (R-Pa.) district. The Philadelphia station is the only one known to have decided against running the ad.

Gerlach's my congressperson. Glad to see he won't have to sweat the DCCC's ad-buy. Not.

I only glanced at the headline, because I was up to my ears in work. But what I read was enough to give me a sick feeling; the kind you get when you begin to wonder whether you've made a disastrous choice, or cast your lot with exactly the wrong person. (It's a feeling at least some Bush voters, circa 2004, should be familiar with.) The headline? "Obama to Expand Bush's Faith Based Programs."

Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for expanding President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — supported some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama unveiled his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services.

"The challenges we face today ... are simply too big for government to solve alone," Obama said.

Obama's announcement is part of a series of events leading up to Friday's Fourth of July holiday that are focused on American values.

Expand them? And here I'd been hoping — but not praying — that maybe getting the next Democrat in the White House would ashcan the whole idea.

No such luck.

Douglas Feith explains to us that George W. Bush didn't make a choice to invade Iraq. In fact, George W. Bush only responded to the necessity of invading Iraq. It wasn't something that Bush could choose to do or not to do.

Then Feith goes about explaining to us all the mistaken and idiotic reasons why Bush chose to invade Iraq. He even provides a July 2001 memo from Rumsfeld. It's funny how things get declassified when its convenient. Here's Rummy's memo:

"The U.S. can roll up its tents and end the no-fly zones before someone is killed or captured. . . . We can publicly acknowledge that sanctions don't work over extended periods and stop the pretense of having a policy that is keeping Saddam 'in the box,' when we know he has crawled a good distance out of the box and is currently doing the things that will ultimately be harmful to his neighbors in the region and to U.S. interests – namely developing WMD and the means to deliver them and increasing his strength at home and in the region month-by-month. Within a few years the U.S. will undoubtedly have to confront a Saddam armed with nuclear weapons.

"A second option would be to go to our moderate Arab friends, have a reappraisal, and see whether they are willing to engage in a more robust policy. . . .

"A third possibility perhaps is to take a crack at initiating contact with Saddam Hussein. He has his own interests. It may be that, for whatever reason, at his stage in life he might prefer to not have the hostility of the United States and the West and might be willing to make some accommodation."

Feith also reveals a bit more about pre-9/11 thinking within the administration.

In the months before the 9/11 attack, Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated diluting the multinational economic sanctions, in the hope that a weaker set of sanctions could win stronger and more sustained international support.

Actually, Colin Powell didn't just advocate this. He made his first foreign travel a trip to the Middle East to try to rally support for a 'Smart Sanctions' regime. His trip was deemed a failure. However, Feith deliberately misleads when he describes 'Smart Sanctions' as a 'dilution'. You can read a contemporaneous (with Rummy's memo) discussion of the 'Smart Sanctions' effort here.

Central Intelligence Agency officials floated the possibility of a coup, though the 1990s showed that Saddam was far better at undoing coup plots than the CIA was at engineering them.

It seems never to occur to our highest officials that the CIA's constant coup-plotting provides many world leaders with a motive to strike back at our country and our leaders that they might not otherwise have.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz asked if the U.S. might create an autonomous area in southern Iraq similar to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, with the goal of making Saddam little more than the "mayor of Baghdad."

In retrospect, we can see that Wolfowitz was advocating the creation of a kind of de facto Iranistan in southern Iraq. It never seems to have occurred to Wolfowitz that Iraqis kind of liked their country whole or that the Sunnis would frown on having all their southern oil fields taken away and given to Iran-leaning Shi'ites. More meddling without forethought.

U.S. officials also discussed whether a popular uprising in Iraq should be encouraged, and how we could best work with free Iraqi groups that opposed the Saddam regime.

Popular uprisings are related to coups. All of this invites blowback. Here we have a government that is spending the summer of 2001 trying to decide just how to carve up Iraq and under what pretenses, and we're surprised when some intemperate Arabs attack the Pentagon.

Feith pushes a false narrative on us, but it's a familiar one. We had no reliable intelligence in 2001 that suggested that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons programs. His armed forces were weak, disloyal, ill-paid, ill-equipped, and totally unable to project force towards any of his neighbors. Insofar as the Intelligence Community worked on the issue of Iraq, they were mainly concerned with an international disinformation campaign to heighten the threat from Saddam in order to maintain support for a crumbling sanctions regime. Belief in Iraq's WMD's was nothing more than a convenient case of believing our own hype. How many times did the Bush administration point to misinformation put out by the Clinton administration to bolster their case for war (and to justify their decision after the fact)?

But there is a key difference between the lies of the Clinton administration and the lies of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) of Douglas Feith. Clinton administration lies were intended to keep Saddam Hussein from rearming and/or slaughtering internal dissidents. Bush administration lies were intended to justify actions that have now cost over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives, created over 2 million refugees, and cost a trillion dollars.

That was a choice that George W. Bush made. He chose to lie in the service of a policy that created all this tragedy and waste. And to think that Feith would quote Rumsfeld's concern about the loss of a single pilot as justification for the necessity of doing this! No wonder General Tommy Franks said of Feith, "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day."

Mike Stark didn't just wring his hands about FISA, he decided to use Obama's own tools from Obama's own website to lobby the Senator. Stark realized that, per Obama's own advice, we are the change that is needed, and it's our job to create change. In just one week, the Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right community has become the largest group on Obama's website. Now they have a press release:

Dear Senator Obama,

On October 24, 2007, your campaign spokesman said, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

On June 20, 2008 you said, of retroactive immunity, "I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

As the largest grass-roots group on your campaign website, my.BarackObama.com, and in the spirit of your open/responsive government campaign pledges, we wish to share our ideas for how we may work together to further the goal of eliminating retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation scheduled for debate in the Senate next week. Although this is only one of the problems we see with legislation allows the government to wiretap the communications of its citizenry without a warrant, it's the area we think we can help you the most.

First, Senator Obama, we ask that you make the same tools that we used to call undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire available for us to call our fellow citizens in West Virginia, Nebraska, Delaware, Florida and other states that have Senators committed to voting against the amendment that would strip telecom immunity. You have the tools and we have the people power. Together, we are confident we can bring Change; we can make the government listen to the people instead of the telecom lobbyists.

Second, Senator Obama, we ask that you attend the Senate debate and schedule floor time to speak about the violence done to the rule of law when Congress retroactively immunizes the illegal conduct of a special interest. We know you understand that justice should not be sold to the highest special interest bidder; we also know that you can persuade other Senators that are not so clear on the issue. Of course, if you do this, our committed members will surely capture the video of your inspiring oratory, load it to YouTube and spread your words to our friends and family far and wide. We trust in your ability to bring a new way of doing business to Washington and look forward to helping you make that Change a reality.

Senator Obama, the my.BarackObama.com caption reads, "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I'm asking you to believe in yours." We're ready to put these words into practice.

Thank you.

The 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of "Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right"

The 15,000 member strong community is making a reasonable request. If Obama is truly committed to stripping immunity from the FISA bill he will provide the phonebanking tool on his website to activists interested in contacting constituents in key member's states. It's Obama's move.

Want some knowledge?

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Sir Winston Churchill

You can quibble about the definition of 'democracy' but the key is the vote. Without the vote you have guaranteed tyranny. You can expand the franchise or contract the franchise and your results may vary, but the government must absolutely be accountable to the people.

"If you don't vote, you've got no right to complain." - Anonymous

Provided your race, class, gender, or citizenship doesn't preclude you from voting, you have a responsibility to vote. If you don't, then you are abdicating your role as a citizen and demonstrating your lack of belief in the system of government.

So, the first principle is the sanctity of the vote and your responsibility to exercise your vote. The second principle is that you accept the legitimacy of the vote (meaning not that you accept rigged elections, but that the legitimate winner has the right to govern). This means that you can fight for clean and accurate tallies of the vote, but you cannot complain about the rules. If you think the rules can and should be improved it is your responsibility to fight for those changes in the next election or the election after that. But, in the meantime, the rules are to be respected and a winner understands, abides by, and masters the rules. If you want proportional representation, fight for a constitutional amendment, but while you're waiting to win that battle you can't abdicate your obligation to vote because you don't like winner-take-all elections. In the meantime, understand, abide by, and master the rules. Obama understood this, while Clinton did not. Don't let the wrong people govern this county because you were hung up on the rules or refused to master them.

The third principle is that your vote is your own and you have every right to exercise it however you want. You have the right to cast a protest vote, to leave a ballot line blank, to write-in a candidate, or to utilize strategic voting where appropriate. But always, always do so with the most information possible and with a thorough mastery of the rules. It's bad enough to allow your vote to be wasted, but it's worse to cast a counterproductive vote.

Every country has a slightly different set of rules. But applying these three principles will work in every country that allows a free and fair vote. In the United States of America, we have rules that are laid out in the Constitution that dictate how federal elections work. Individual states have a little bit of leeway in applying those rules, but not much. Know your state's rules.

In America, we have winner-take-all federal elections, which means that a third-party vote only counts if the third-party candidate actually wins. In some instances, third-parties can gain certain advantages in a future election by reaching, say, a 5% threshold in the current election. If you are voting to help a third-party gain future advantages, make sure you understand all the information available, including the latest polls, so you don't waste your vote.

Always keep in mind that in a winner-take-all system, the stronger a left-leaning third party does in the current election, the more likely that the Republican will win the election, and that the stronger a right-leaning third-party does, the more likely the Democrat will win the election. Is that what you want? Make sure you are certain. Look at the polls in your state or district to make sure your vote makes strategic sense. Is your vote a potentially deciding vote? Act accordingly.

Let me use a real world example to make my point. In the 2006 Pennsylvania senate race, I opposed the nomination of Bob Casey Jr. for the Democratic ticket. I worked to defeat him, but it was a hopeless cause. As the general election between Sen. Rick Santorum and Bob Casey Jr. approached, I looked at the polls and the polls told me that Bob Casey Jr. was going to win in a walk. I knew that I would not be casting a deciding vote, so I had to make a decision about what kind of message I wanted to send with my vote. I could have voted for the green candidate to express my displeasure with Bob Casey. I could have left the ballot blank for the same reason. I could have voted for Santorum to make Casey's victory less resounding. But I chose to vote for Casey to make Santorum's defeat as large as it was humanly possible for me to make it. Any decision was rational because I knew Casey had the thing won. I sent the message I wanted to send. My girlfriend sent a different message and I never questioned her decision for a second. If the polls had been deadlocked, I would have a made decision based not on what message I wanted to send, but on who I wanted between Casey and Santorum. In that case, I still would have voted for Casey because I thought Santorum was such a horrible person to have representing me. Yet, in either case, my decision was based on the most information I could gather and a full understanding of the rules. I was going to make my vote count for what I wanted it to count for.

Yet, it is now my responsibility to work to assure that the 2010 senate election against Arlen Specter doesn't involve the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) clearing the field of all pro-choice candidates without the benefit of a Democratic voter's primary. I didn't like the way the Casey's coronation went down in 2006 and I have no right to complain unless I am willing to try to change the rules of the game in 2010.

If you understand what I'm saying here, you'll understand why I am committed to working to improve this country through the use of elections, within one of the two major parties, without bitching about the rules in the middle of an election cycle, and why I am so impatient with people that blithely drop out, threaten not to vote, threaten to vote non-strategically for a third-party, threaten to move to another country, or otherwise show more petulance and dissatisfaction with the rules than appreciation for the people that put their nose to the grindstone and try to push that seeming Sisyphusian rock back up that hill.

Who's naive? The person that has mastered the rules or the person that ignores the rules and tells you that you are wasting your time in even trying to play by them? And what, by the way, would the purists and the holier-than-thou jokers yell from the peanut gallery if all the fighters stopped fighting and ceded the field to the right? That is assuming they'd be able to comment at all, after the thought police got a hold of them.

How many of you think that things are so bad that the safest thing to do is to let them get a whole lot worse really quickly so that things come to a head and we don't delude ourselves that we can get by with small changes?

And how many of you think things are so bad that the safest thing to do is have the Democrats win the White House and sweeping victories in both Houses of Congress so that we can emphatically reject the Bush administration and get headed as soon as possible in a better direction?

Obama is spending the Fourth of July in Butte, Montana. Where are you spending it?

During the primary, Barack Obama came under some criticism for being inconsistent in his position on single-payer health care. But, he explained his mix of idealism and pragmatism in early 2007:

In a profile of the Senator in the New Yorker this past spring he offered that, "a single-payer system-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'"

Another way of putting this is that Barack Obama would prefer a single-payer system but that it is politically impossible to get it done at the moment and he isn't going to let people go without health insurance just because health coverage is a theoretically better solution. Now, you can be cynical and say he's just making excuses, but this is a consistent theme with Obama and I believe it comes from his experiences working with the needy in the inner city. I think those experiences inform a lot of his pragmatic approaches and that what might seem centrist is actually coming from a progressive place. Here he is announcing his faith-based plan:

You know, faith based groups like East Side Community Ministry carry a particular meaning for me. Because in a way, they're what led me into public service. It was a Catholic group called The Campaign for Human Development that helped fund the work I did many years ago in Chicago to help lift up neighborhoods that were devastated by the closure of a local steel plant...

...There are millions of Americans who share a similar view of their faith, who feel they have an obligation to help others. And they're making a difference in communities all across this country – through initiatives like Ready4Work, which is helping ensure that ex-offenders don't return to a life of crime; or Catholic Charities, which is feeding the hungry and making sure we don't have homeless veterans sleeping on the streets of Chicago; or the good work that's being done by a coalition of religious groups to rebuild New Orleans.

You see, while these groups are often made up of folks who've come together around a common faith, they're usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all. And they're particularly well-placed to offer help. As I've said many times, I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

Anyone that has done political work in the inner city is familiar with the essential work that faith-based groups do for the homeless, people with AIDs, the elderly and infirm, and with troubled youth and released felons. And, anyone who's been down in those trenches knows that as much as we might want the local, state, and federal governments to do more, they aren't doing it right now. There is no ready substitute for the work of faith-based groups. That's why you'll see a lot more sympathy for federal funding of faith-based groups in the urban progressive community than you will see in the academic progressive community which tends to worry about proselytizing and the irrationality of religion.

We see these same urban progressive instincts informing today's call for a National Service Program:

"We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges."

He added, "When you choose to serve — whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood — you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream."

Obama highlighted his time as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side and his stint heading Project Vote, a group that helped register 150,000 new African-American voters in the Illinois city, according to his campaign.

"I wasn't just helping other people. Through service, I found a community that embraced me; citizenship that was meaningful; the direction I'd been seeking. Through service, I discovered how my own improbable story fit into the larger story of America," he said.

Another area where urban progressives often flirt with centrist/conservative opinion is on the issue of school vouchers. It's another example of where frustrated progressives become so despairing of the problems of the present that they are willing to entertain anything that might help. Obama opposes vouchers, but not rigidly, as we learned this spring.

"I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn," Mr. Obama, who has previously said he opposes vouchers, said in a meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "We're losing several generations of kids, and something has to be done."

Education analysts said Mr. Obama's statement is the closest they have ever seen a Democratic presidential candidate come to embracing the idea of vouchers.

Obama has laid out an extensive public education plan that does not include vouchers. But his willingness to keep an open-mind is part and parcel of his determination to go beyond orthodoxy when necessary to address urgent problems.

There is a consistency to his approach. Even Obama's Father's Day Speech should be seen in this same light. He knows that absent fathers are undermining the health of the black community and he's not going to be silent about it because it might offend some people or reinforce some negative stereotypes.

Obama's approach creates a kind of wedge between urban and academic progressives, and some of these fissures are along the same lines that conservatives have previously identified and sought to exploit. Yet, Obama is not firmly in the urban progressive mode. His willingness to entertain class-based affirmative action, for example, is inconsistent with urban progressivism. Insofar as it is progressive at all, it has been academic progressives that have advocated broadening affirmative action in order to save it. And it is another fault line (this time, between progressives and moderate Dems) that conservatives have probed with much electoral success.

Obama doesn't fit neatly into any a priori categories. He brings an urban progressive sensibility to problems, but he is intensely practical. He's also, by necessity, built a coalition that pulls from both urban/academic progressives on one side and from Plains/Mountain state centrists on the other. There is a certain amount of overlap, which is natural for a politician from the Upper Midwest, where progressive idealism has always mixed with more bread and butter issues. See, for example, Minnesota's Farm-Labor Party.

Added confusion comes from Obama's attempts to compensate for and anticipate some of his weaknesses. Acting tough on child rapists and defending gun ownership are really defensive measures meant to blunt or preempt Republican attacks. Reversing himself on FISA is an overcompensation that he will live to regret (in his legacy, if nothing else). And these moves can make him look like more of a centrist than he is. Of course, that's the intention.

It's really in foreign policy where progressives have the most to fear. We know Barack Obama has good judgment and instincts, but he has no progressive bench to pull from to staff-up his national security organization. He's relied heavily on staff that opposed the invasion of Iraq, and that's good. But he is still going to wind up with a national security staff that falls short of his goal of changing the mindset that got into the war with Iraq. We can only hope that Obama's good judgment and instincts hold, and that he builds up a progressive staff during his presidency that better reflects his values.