Warning: pure rant.
Progressive Democrats have suffered a body-blow defeat with the party's complicity in the gutting of FISA. This further evisceration of the Bill of Rights would have been bad enough if it happened a year ago in August 2006 when the republicans controlled Congress. We lived through many such defeats. They were awful, but we were a powerless minority, so the notion of "keeping one's powder dry" was plausible. But this time around it is different and the defeat is far more telling. ::