" lining the pockets of the patent bar is likely to overcome any quality of argument as long as computer programmers have even less Washington influence than illegal alien terrorists."

1. The patent bar[1] itself has little to no influence in Washington. Nobody cares what they think. Congress cares about what the companies some of these folks work for think, but AIPLA, for example, has never had any real lobbying impact. They've complained about every rule change, every bill, every everything that has ever "hurt" their members. As far as i'm aware, there has never been any changes that have resulted from their comments.

2. The influence of computer programmers in Washington is mostly due to the fact that they spend time posting here instead of doing anything about anything. This is an entirely self inflicted wound, and the sooner programmers stop convincing themselves this isn't true, the better off they will be. Watching this happen without fail since 1997 is one of the reasons i became a lawyer.

I would wager a large amount of money if even 1% of the local user groups of programmers of various sorts that still exist, each appointed a representative, and had that person go to their local congressperson/senator, and said "I represent a concerned group of local small business people and programmers, and software patents are destroying our ability to make a living and causing us to lose jobs", that software patents would have been a solved problems years ago.

[1] I'm also not sure why you keep saying "the patent bar".

The patent bar itself is not of one mind, and there is no real, single organized patent bar that does anything, because the patent bar are those attorneys and agents licensed to practice before the PTO, and since being a lawyer is not a requirement, they come from a variety of walks of life, not just a bunch of attorneys. The actual patent bar (IE as run by the PTO) offers literally no opinions on anything, and certainly does not lobby, just like the bar of the 9th circuit court of appeals doesn't lobby.

There are a number of outside organized collections of patent attorneys, like AIPLA, but as mentioned, none are really "the patent bar". There is no single mind among these folks, either, Most of the inside and outside litigators I have met in the corporate realm rail against software patents. So even "the patent bar" is not consistent here, it's more like you have the criminal defense lawyers vs the prosecutors, rather than a single "criminal law bar".