Trust Me, Kos: That cliff is a lot longer than it looks.

I have never really been a fan of the work of Markos Moulitsas. I find him to be primarily interested in the promotion of party politics and not so much in intellectual enlightenment. Now, though, I am struggling to remain civil when reading his latest post on his blog. (By "civil," I mean "Holding back vivid thoughts of violence toward his nose.")

In the latest round of what has seemed to be a particular interest of his- slamming Ron Paul smears that are unprovable, irrelevant to today's important issues, or just flat out ignorant- he pretty much accuses Paul and his supporters of being silent on the issue.

For all the talk of "freedom" that the Paulbots claim to believe in, they sure as heck have been silent on the horrible FISA bill we're fighting to fix in the Senate right now. Same for Ron Paul. Why the silence? And the CATO people and the libertarian publications like Reason, where are they?

Here we are engaged in a huge civil liberties issue, and progressives are being forced to fight this thing alone. It's easy to talk about "liberty". It's much more impressive to actually do something about it.

By actually doing something about it, Markos, do you, by any chance, mean actually write a bill about it that had progressive queen Naomi Wolf (who is a TREMENDOUS fox) fawning over him? Furthermore, if one looks for Markos' own efforts in this battle, one would not find much: a search of his website for entry under his name discussing FISA will find just one post in which he indicates a substantive action he has taken on the issue in the past year. It is a post from the 16th of this month in which he (quite naturally) cites his own article in The Hill. In the vast majority of entries of his, he discussing FISA in only brief passing, uses it in a partisan rhetorical tirade in support of one of "his" candidates, mentions it as only a small part of attacking Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party, or viciously attacks Joe Klein of Time on the topic. See for yourself.

Of course, Ron Paul supporters haven't done much on the issue. There are only 112 hits when you search "FISA" on Daily Paul's website. They've just been posting Reid's and Pelosi's phone numbers on Ron Paul Forums in a thread entitled "Switchboard Shutdown: The FISA Flood Begins." There's only 172 hits on a Reason search for the world "FISA." Oh: and nevermind that the LP petitioned pro-FISA Democratic Senators.

For more perspective, FD and DW take on the issue at his spot. As much as I would like to conclude by commenting on my very specific and extremely violent feelings toward Markos, I will refrain, both because it counterproductive to achieving the goal of ending these wiretaps, if for no other reason than I will likely become subject to the unaccountable NSA that we are trying to stop.