Patriot Act

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Government says Government is illegal

An independent government committee has determined that the NSA program targeting American citizens is (surprise!) illegal.  obama-shepard-fairey-nsa-prism-1Well, 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.

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Patriot Act Hypocrites

When it comes to the Patriot Act, there are just too many hypocrites to deal with.

The Patriot Act allows the NSA to listen to phone conversations and emails for certain key words, at which time they can get a subpoena to get all the records (a subpoena which has never been denied by the court — great oversight, huh?). It certainly appears to be a complete violation of the 4th Amendment to me and many Constitutional scholars, but until the Supreme Court says so, it’s the law and allowed.

For some reason, this is now a big issue, even though it’s been going on for about ten years. This has brought out a gaggle of hypocrites.

First, you have the ones on the right, who defended George W. Bush when he did this but call Obama’s use of the same law a gross violation of their rights. (These pundits and politicians, centered mostly at Fox News, are part of the same gang that said criticizing GWB during wartime was “treason” but doing the same to Obama during wartime is their patriotic duty.)

The clip below is a great example, showing Fox’s Sean Hannity’s position flipping 180 degrees based on whether this was done by a President Fox supported or one they oppose.

But this is not limited to the right. There are hypocrites on the left as well (though not as many) who opposed this under Bush but approve it under Obama.

The biggest hypocrite on the left is Obama himself. He’s ignored his campaign promises in this regard.

His view is apparently that he is against the abuse that can come from the Patriot Act — but doesn’t see that he is abusing it. In other words, he thinks “In the hands of a bad President, this would be a huge violation of our rights, but I’m not a bad President, and I have used it for good.” I think he is feeling some guilt over this and has recently began to talk about getting rid of it (again) because he is worried about who might hold that office after him.

So he doesn’t see himself as a hypocrite; he sees his position as changed based on the circumstances. How very convenient for him.

The good news is that there are those on both the right and the left who have been consistent in their views on this issue, and they should be congratulated and acknowledged.

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Why is this news now?

Seriously … civil libertarians have been telling us for ten years that the Patriot Act allowed NSA to monitor phone calls of Americans. Many of us have spoken out against this intrusion, but were yelled down as being “terrorist sympathizers” and so on.

Now suddenly the program is being brought up as a terrible overreaching of the government.

Well, duh. Yeah, it is. It’s been that way since the Bush administration.

Then I started realizing who the biggest complainers were — the Republicans are attacking Obama with a vengeance over this. You remember the Republicans, don’t you? They’re the ones who wrote and passed the Patriot Act, and renewed it consistently.

Admittedly, some Democrats supported it, and still do, and some Republicans are not attacking Obama and are also defending the Patriot Act’s provisions. But, as Harry Reid said, “This is nothing particularly new.”

It’s only new to John Boehner who now apparently hates it (because he thinks he can make Obama look bad) despite having voted for it many times.