Although I’d like to note that NPR gets it wrong in the title (H/T: Protein Wisdom):

Angry Bloggers On Left And Right Unite Over FISA
by Martin Kaste

Bloggers across the political spectrum have been raising money in recent weeks in an effort to punish certain members of Congress for supporting a government surveillance bill backed by the White House.

Earlier this month, Congress passed a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. Opponents say it gives the president too much power to tap private communications without court oversight. That argument was made none too subtly by a TV ad that ran in the home district of Chris Carney, a Pennsylvania Democrat who supported the new FISA law.

It’d be “angry bloggers on the Left, and hard-shell Libertarians, unite over FISA.” But that’s a nitpick… and one not nearly as exciting as watching them try to do an own-goal on Carney. And before we go any further: Chris Hackett is the GOP nominee for PA-10, and would be happy to help these fine, fine folks get Carney out of office. You can help him by contributing here.

This seems to be all part of an alliance between bloggers like Jane Hamsher (who, as we all know, is the woman primarily responsible for making sure that Joe Lieberman got re-elected), Glenn Greenwald (who is apparently pretty freaking peeved at the way his signature cause got effortlessly curbstomped by the VRWC), and the Ron Paul folks (enough said): they’ve decided to fight back by creating Strangebedfellows…

{pause}

Yes, I imagine so.

…which is apparently supposed to increase liberal influence in Congress via the time-honored tradition of the auto de fe. They’re going to collect tons of money, then spend it attacking pro-FISA Democrats in the general elections. No, really: that’s what they’re going to do. The people that I’ve seen listed for targeting so far: Rep. Carney, House Leader Steny Hoyer (Collins Bailey is the GOP candidate for MD-5) and Rep. John Barrow (still up in the air for GA-12) – and, believe you me, they want these guys gone, and never mind that Carney is a first-term Congressmen, and that both he and Barrow are both in districts that went for Bush in 2004. That’s not important. What’s important is that they be punished. That everyone be punished. That it all burn, burn, BURN!!!!!!

I suppose that I should be nicer; while it was always delusional of the anti-FISA people to think that they were somehow in the mainstream, the Democrats did encourage them in that delusion. In fact, they actively connived at it, up until the point where it made more sense for Establishment Democrats to switch gears and betray the very people that they had been indulging. And, of course, there’s the little problem that their current avatar of hope and change turned out to be the biggest, most cynical, and most shameless betrayer of all: they cannot go after him for this – at least, not in any way that matters. Their own ideology forces them to smile and simper as he knouts them. And worst of all: we know all of this, and they know that we know, and they know that we knew all along that this was precisely what was going to happen. So it’s not too surprising that they’re projecting all of that hurt and anguish over their own impotence on spoiler attacks; it’s elementary bad psychology, after all, which is surprisingly useful when dealing with the blogosphere. So, I should be nicer about it.

But I’m not. Instead, I’m just eagerly waiting for the full list of apostates – and I bet that so is the NRCC, which needs all the help that it can get right now. No, wait, think about it before you refuse to donate!

I mean, really: consider the implications. Do you really want to end up like those poor sorry sad-sacks over on the Other Side?

Moe Lane