The crowd roars as Obama takes the stage in a local town hall somewhere in middle America, where people know their neighbors, and the word "value" still means something other than a goddamn dollar sign. He is in rare form: eloquent, poised, truly transcendent. He addresses the roaring crowd.

Obama: Thank you. Thank you. [Making eye contact individually with all the lovely, Real people.] Thank you.

My fellow Americans, I stand before you today resolute in my beliefs, strong in my convictions, firm in the hands of my advisers. But there is one issue I'd like to talk about specifically today.

Before I became the frontrunner for the nomination of the Democratic Party, I had some strong words for those who supported the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, bill. The bill in question would retroactively grant immunity to telecommunications companies who spied on Americans without obtaining search warrants for years after 9/11, because the president asked them to do so. If this accusation were proven in court, it would be a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $10,000. I promised at the time that I would filibuster any, ANY, bill containing telecom immunity.

Gotcha.

See, the thing is, I want to be president. And if you want to be the president, you can't appear to be some crazy liberal. So now I'm supporting this bill. Do I want to punish the telecoms in question? Yes. Will I show actual leadership and stick to my promises? Not in this case. Sorry. I'm just not going to do that.

What are you gonna do? Vote for McCain? Don't you want me to be president? You don't even understand what I'm talking about, do you? FISA, the Protect America Act, the Fourth Amendment. This is complicated stuff. You know what? I don't understand it. Most Senators don't, either, because they haven't read the bill. In fact, only the telecoms, the White House, and a few members of the Senate Intelligence Committee actually know what kind of warrant-less spying on Americans went on.

Whatever it was, it was enough to make John Ashcroft--a man who loved the idea of Guantanamo Bay, and no defender of civil liberties by a long shot--threaten to resign his post as Attorney General. Once this bill passes, the telecoms will be off scot-free. It pisses me off a little. But hey, to make Change We Can Believe In you gotta get your hands in some shit.

And shit it is. Senator Feingold, whose positions I adopted while campaigning in his home state of Wisconsin, recently said this [via Greenwald]

With this bill, however, for the first time since FISA was adopted 30 years ago, the government would be authorized to collect all communications into and out of the United States without warrants. That means Americans emailing relatives abroad or calling business associates overseas could be monitored with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing by anyone.

Yeah. I said I supported that. Hey, we all want me to be president. Thank you, and may God bless what is left of this grand experiment.

As the crowd quietly disperses, one can hear scattered mumblings of "Goddammit."