Widespread Outrage Over Obama Administration Abuses Results in Strange Alliances
By Dale Glading | The Save Jersey Blog
The world is upside down, Save Jerseyans.
Why do I say that? Because this week, for the first time in recent memory, I agree with the American Civil Liberties Union.
That’s right; the ACLU and I are standing on the same side of an important issue.
So what cataclysmic event has occurred to bring such strange political bedfellows together? The Obama administration and its evil eavesdropping program, that’s what.
Now before anyone starts to blame this entire mess on George W. Bush, the differences couldn’t be more clear. President Bush, in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, ordered the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls being made by American citizens to international destinations linked to terrorism.
Shamefully, President Obama and his underlings have taken that pre-emptive action to unprecedented and unnecessary levels, ripping the United States Constitution to shreds along the way.
Reports surfaced this week claiming that the NSA has subpoenaed the phone records of every Verizon customer, all 145 million of them. Supposedly, these customers – whose Fourth Amendment rights have been so egregiously violated – are to be reassured by the administration’s condescending promise to discard any phone records that it deems unrelated to terrorist threats.
And lest customers of AT&T, T-Mobile and other long-distance carriers draw a collective sigh of relief, speculation is that the NSA has your phone records as well. That’s right; Big Brother is coming for you, too.
Hiding behind the PATRIOT Act won’t help either. In fact, it isn’t even an option.
According to Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Nothing in the PATRIOT Act says that millions of Americans can have their phone records turned over to the government.” That is why EFT and other watchdog groups are threatening legal action against the Obama administration.
You remember the Obama Administration, don’t you? The one that was supposed to be “the most transparent administration in history”.
Is it just me or is the current administration making Richard Nixon and his minions look like a bunch of Boy Scouts?
After lambasting George W. Bush while he was actually campaigning against John McCain, President Obama has instead taken the Bush anti-terrorism playbook and run with it. On May 26, 2011, President Obama signed the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act: roving wiretaps, searches of business records and the surveillance of “lone wolves” – individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups.
Taken alone, the matter of the NSA’s overreaching subpoena is bothersome enough. Coupled with the IRS scandal in which conservative groups were politically targeted and the Associated Press and Fox News scandals where reporters had their private phone records tapped and you have an out-of-control big government scenario that would make George Orwell shake his head.
Call it “Government Gone Wild.”
More investigations are needed and additional congressional hearings are required before we can draw any definitive conclusions. However, it is already strikingly clear that President Obama has either willingly or unwittingly fostered an unhealthy and oppressive political climate in Washington that is the antithesis of every campaign promise he ever made.
The jury may still be out as to whether or not the president, Attorney General Eric Holder and others committed criminal acts or even impeachable offenses. But no one can question the unmistakable fact that they have all violated the nation’s trust.
On that, the ACLU and I can agree.
Time for BB Obama to step aside himself when the NY Times, the ACLU and Maureen Dowd are saying you have no credibility and your administration has committed crimes against the people of this nation, then you know it's not a right wing witch hunt.
I prefer the comment of my favorite daily paper, The Wall Street Journal, and the editorial it ran on Thursday entitled "Thank You for Data-Mining".