I'm not sure what's worse: Barack Obama voting like Bill Clinton never existed in the FISA "compromise" bill, or his ceding ground to John McCain. I defer to Glenn Greenwald, who's mercilessly followed this story:

Will Democrats ever learn that the reason they are so easily depicted as "weak" isn't because they don't copy the Republican policies on national security enough, but rather, because they do so too much, and thus appear (accurately) to stand for nothing? Of course, many Democrats vote for these policies because they believe in them, not because they are "surrendering." Still, terms such as "bowing," "surrendering," "capitulating," and "losing" aren't exactly Verbs of Strength. They're verbs of extreme weakness --- yet, bizarrely, Democrats believe that if they "bow" and "surrender," then they will avoid appearing "weak." Somehow, at some point, someone somewhere convinced them that the best way to avoid appearing weak is to be as weak as possible.