Is Keith Olbermann flip-flopping on FISA?

The segment in question

Perhaps you've been turning on your internal mute button every time you've heard mention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and I could hardly blame you. For one thing, it seems like exactly the kind of arcane legislation you elected a senator to worry about. For another, the people fulminating loudest about it seem to be on the hard right and hard left.

But if you watch "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," you know FISA is a big deal. Until recently, Olbermann has been a one-man klaxon calling attention to any attempts by White House or the Congress to grant the phone companies immunity for allowing what has basically been a long stretch of illegal spying on their customers by our own government.

So I was surprised to learn from Salon's Glenn Greenwald that Olbermann and his like-minded guests have switched course, and now are generally supporting Sen. Barack Obama's support of a "reform" FISA bill that, according to Greenwald and others, is anything but. Olbermann has since replied and Greenwald has replied to the reply, which actually might be the best place to start.

If you'd rather not plow into all that on a Friday afternoon, may I suggest at least checking out this story I wrote in 2007 about a Kansas City couple that was spied on by their own government and whose case was subsequently featured on an episode of "Frontline" reported by the great Hedrick Smith.

Comments

[Andy]

I was a lot more annoyed by Olbermann practically bending himself into a pretzel to explain why Obama never REEEALLY said that he was going to accept public financing when he clearly did.

Personally, I'm not that concerned about the issue... I don't really care for campaign finance reform in general, and Obama probably made the right call. But it was clearly a flip-flop, and for KO to say that it wasn't was as close as he's ever come to flat-out lying on the air.

[Vicki]

Why is there a question mark on this article? Keith absolutely reversed course on this. There is no questioning that. His attempts at explaining himself on Kos are embarassing at best and self-serving at its worst. And to top it all off, note that he seems to be using Russert's death in the post at Kos (the days blur together, for obvious reasons, etc.) Bull****! You got caught doing a 180 and now you're trying to explain it away and make up phony excuses. ENOUGH!