NSA

An independent government committee has determined that the NSA program targeting American citizens is (surprise!) illegal. Well, most of the committee did — the two Bush appointees dissented.

Their report concluded that the collection of bulk phone records has provided only minimal protections at a huge cost to our freedoms.

Obama’s recent speech on this topic was about as weak as it could be. He spoke of the need to have spies and intelligence gathering (which no one disagrees with) and tried to convince us all that therefore, this was not too great or unusual. Admittedly, he also said the program should be cut back, but he wouldn’t go so far as to question the need for it in the first place.

The Bush people disagreed that the program was illegal (let us not forget that the program started under Bush, with his “Patriot” act) but did agree that it should be stopped nonetheless.

But seriously, the blame falls on all of government — Congress approved the Patriot Act, after all, and for Congress to now claim that they are shocked that the NSA is doing things they gave them permission to do is ridiculous. Obama is also responsible. He voted against the Patriot Act extension as a Senator but expanded it once he became President. (Ironically, he has spoken of the need to cut it back once he’s out of office, with the pretentious idea that he can handle this but some other President couldn’t.)

Let’s hope this leads to the Supreme Court finding the Patriot Act unconstitutional.

I don’t know what is worse: A President who spies on his allies, or a President who doesn’t know we’re spying on our allies.

Apparently, Obama was not aware until just recently that the NSA spied on foreign leaders who were our allies.

Members of Congress who are on Foreign Relations committees who normally have access to this kind of information also were unaware.

Shouldn’t the Commander-in-Chief know these things? Will we see some heads roll over at the NSA? Should we have agencies that are unanswerable to anyone?

We must again thank Edward Snowden. Had it not been for his unearthing of these secrets, we would never know. Sometimes whistleblowers are indeed the good guys. Obama needs to stop going after Snowden and instead go after General Alexander, head of the NSA.