On another hot-button issue, Mr. Obama said he did not think "mental distress" should qualify as a threat to "the health of the mother" in late-term abortions. Yet there's no question that he's a bigger ally of abortion rights than Mr. McCain, an avowed opponent.
But the issue that filled the e-mail bag on the Obama campaign's social networking Web site, MyBarackObama.com, was Mr. Obama's reversal of his promise to filibuster against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed by the House last month. The biggest objection by Mr. Obama and other critics is a provision that would allow federal judges to grant immunity from civil lawsuits to the large telecommunication companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency's now-defunct warrantless wiretapping program.
Mr. Obama invited critics to object on his Web site, and many eagerly - and angrily - wrote in. Yet, as Morton H. Halperin, executive director of the Open Society Policy Center, argued in a New York Times op-ed, "the alternative to Congress passing this bill is Congress enacting far worse legislation that the Senate had already passed by a filibuster-proof margin, and which a majority of House members were on record as supporting."
