I completely agree that Obama's speech last week, his lame huffpo piece, and statements since are completely inadequate. He seems to think he can offer platitudes to smooth this over with the base, and anyway the long term political damage from changing his position would be greater. I'm not so sure he can afford to dampen voter enthusiasm, but this appears to be as good as we're going to get from him, especially if he now thinks it was a mistake to vote for FISA.

That being said, the explanation that I heard from my republican friend was that Obama sees it as important to have a law on the books, however bad, since we are currently operating outside the law. The flaws can be fixed later. Some democrats that I know that are very active in the party (locally) have confirmed that view and also said that the issue will come up again during the general campaign, and Obama is looking to sweep a large majority into congress on his coattails. He sees this as the right political move given that goal. So it may be an oversimplification to call this a "move to the center". It is more probable that he's playing chess, and we're playing checkers.

Let me reiterate that I think FISA was terrible bill, and I denounce and reject Obama's judgement in voting for it. Just to be clear. Not because I've read it, but because big Russ said so.