glenzilla v. olbermann

We don’t have cable, so I only get to read about these things afterwards, but Olbermann has truly come to this duel with Glenn Greenwald unarmed:

…Olbermann — just as he has done on his show repeatedly ever since Obama announced his support for the [FISA] bill — also suggested that Obama is harboring a Secret Benevolent Plan that he isn’t telling anyone about whereby he is supporting the FISA bill so that he can prosecute the telecoms criminally once he’s in office:

“But anybody who got as hot about this as I did would prefer to see a President Obama prosecuting the telecoms criminally, instead of seeing a Senator Obama engender more “soft on terror” crap by casting a token vote in favor of civil litigation that isn’t going to pass since so many other Democrats caved anyway. . . . If it isn’t the Senator’s game plan, he’ll catch hell from me about it later.”

…So it’s far from certain that Obama — even if he did have a Secret Plan criminally to prosecute telecoms once in office — would even be able to do so. If Bush pardons everyone connected to his illegal spying program, as many have speculated he might, then Obama’s Secret Plan — even if it existed — would be instantaneously extinguished. That’s why these telecom lawsuits are the only real avenue left to ensure accountability and obtain a legal ruling on what was done.

But beyond all that, to give Obama a pass on his support for such a heinous bill … based on this imagined secret plan for the Good that Obama is harboring is to illustrate exactly the sort of blind faith in political leaders that is so dangerous. That’s been the Right’s mentality to excuse every last thing Bush does…

Down that mental road lies uncritical devotion to a Leader for even the most unjustifiable political acts. Depicting a bill with telecom amnesty when Bush supports it as “textbook Fascism,” only to then depict Obama’s support for such a bill as “refusing to cower to the Left,” is simply inexcusable.

I’ve had to cut out whole swaths, but the entirety is enough to make you want Glenn Greenwald as Obama’s AG.

Next time, Keith, stick to what you’re great at – calling out the liars and thugs. That’s where your needed. And you’ll make no one happier than Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity if you keep up this internecine feud.

Oh, and will someone please IM this to Obama:

What is most disturbing here is that people (including Olbermann) who for so long have vehemently criticized Democratic leaders for capitulating to Bush and trampling on the Constitution out of fear of looking “Weak” are now invoking that very excuse to justify what Obama is doing here… To excuse Obama’s conduct on that basis is to perpetuate Democratic complicity. Obama had — and will continue to have — a critical opportunity to reject and debunk that rancid framework, and it is his embrace of that framework here (“I’m going to give Bush what he wants and trample on the Constitution in order to avoid being ‘weak’”) that makes what Obama has done here so harmful and worthy of criticism.