OK, maybe we can't do much to stop a bad bill from passing, but there are a few things we can do as a grassroots movement, both inside and outside of the political process.  Don't blame Obama; as a junior Senator there's little he can do other than vote against a bad bill.  We can encourage Obama, Feingold, and Dodd to filibuster, but they can't block the bill for the rest of the session.

First, call your Senator and tell him that you will actively oppose the reelection of anyone who votes in favor of a bill which includes telecomm immunity, or which prevents full investigation and prosecution of previous FISA violations.  

Second, if your Representative has been a bad boy, call him and give him this message: anyone who has voted to whitewash illegal behavior on the part of the government or corporations should not be in public office, and that you'll work to make sure that people who don't care about the Constitution are removed from office.  The original FISA wording was clear, and the law was broken - knowingly and willfully.  If your Representative voted against the FISA bill, be sure to call and make your support known.

Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Gitmo, was denied the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, apparently because he acted as a whistle blower in what was clearly unlawful political manipulation of the legal process by Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, and by former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes - the man who now oversees the military commissions...the same man who said:

We can't have acquittals.

I hadn't seen this diaried yet, so my apologies if it has been (also for the extensive article quotes).  Nothing will be new here for those of you concerned about this issue, but I want to direct you to read The Washington Monthly, which has a great series of editorials out right now from the likes of Wesley Clark, Jimmy Carter, Chuck Hagel, Larry Wilkerson, et al.  Also a pdf of the entire series.

In part this is a discussion about what torture really is:

On paper, the list of practices declared legal by the Department of Justice for use on detainees in Guantanamo Bay and other locations has a somewhat bloodless quality—sleep deprivation, stress positions, forced standing, sensory deprivation, nudity, extremes of heat or cold. But such bland terms mask great suffering.

It's not just waterboarding - it's virtually all types of abuse and "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Today the United Nations was found to be sequestering vast amounts of nerve gas and other WMD, presumably for a planned invasion of the United States.  The right-wing had long suspected that Saddam Hussein had spirited his imaginary WMD out of Iraq, just prior to the US invasion in 2003; now such concerns have been validated.  Black helicopters were also found to be staged on the roof of the UN building.

An excellent article on April 10th at Salon.com by Gary Kamiya about media self-censorship from 9/11 to the war in Iraq, where he discusses in depth the various personal and institutional reasons for self-censorship.  He also references some of the sources - books in particular - which were accurate and insightful in their analysis prior to the war (hmmmm...so that explains my sagging bookshelf - and alas - I have none of the books he cites).

In the more conservative of the two local daily papers (count them - two! ...and owned by the same parent company) in Madison, WI, there was a recent column by Bill Wineke which advocates a pardon for Scooter Libby on the basis that he's a nice guy, and that other people were involved in leaking Plame's identity too.

Wineke does not seem to be a right-winger, is usually a pretty good columnist, and tends to look at issues from a moral or ethical standpoint...which is why I was surprised by his attitude.  Quoting from the column:

Now, President Bush ought to pardon Libby and let him get on with his life.

Libby may have been the only official stupid enough to lie consistently to a grand jury, but he was surely taking the fall for a White House that kept denying in all pious righteousness that it was involved in destroying the career of a trusted government official.