"The Obama administration has betrayed progressive principles on one issue after another: Where's the outrage?"

David Sirota writes:

I'm always amused by popular references to the allegedly all-powerful American "left." The term suggests that progressives today possess the same kind of robust, ideologically driven political apparatus as the right — a machine putting principles before party affiliation.

This notion is hilarious because it is so absurd.

Yes, there are certainly well-funded groups in Washington that call themselves "progressive," that get media billing as "the left," and that purport to advocate liberal causes regardless of party.

But in the Obama era, the "the left's" destructive, party-over-principles motivation has become impossible to hide, especially recently.

Behold, for instance, major environmental groups' attitude toward the Gulf oil spill.

We know that before the disaster, President Obama recklessly pushed to expand offshore drilling. We also know that his Interior Department gave British Petroleum's rig a "categorical exclusion" from environmental scrutiny and, according to the New York Times, "gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without first getting required [environmental] permits."

Undoubtedly, had this been the behavior of a Republican administration, "the left's" big environmental organizations would be scheduling D.C. protests and calling for firings, if not criminal charges. Yet, somehow, there are no protests.

That silence is similarly deafening when it comes to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

We know that as Harvard Law School dean, Kagan "hired 29 tenured or tenure-track faculty members [and] did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian — not one, not even a token," reports Duke University's Guy-Uriel Charles.

Again, if this were a Republican nominee's record, "the left's" pro-choice and civil rights groups would be frantically mounting opposition — or at least raising concerns. But this is a Democratic nominee, so they've fallen in line. READ MORE