Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans

Besides Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, most Democrats abandoned their civil liberty positions during the age of Obama. With a new leak investigation looming, the Democrat leadership are now being forced to confront all the secrets they’ve tried to hide.

By Michael Hastings

For most bigwig Democrats in Washington, D.C., the last 48 hours has delivered news of the worst kind — a flood of new information that has washed away any lingering doubts about where President Obama and his party stand on civil liberties, full stop.

Glenn Greenwald’s exposure of the NSA’s massive domestic spy program has revealed the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists, whose true passion, it seems, was in trolling George W. Bush for eight years on matters of national security.

“Everyone should just calm down,” Senator Harry Reid said yesterday, inhaling slowly.

That’s right: don’t panic.

The very topic of Democratic two-facedness on civil liberties is one of the most important issues that Greenwald has covered. Many of those Dems — including the sitting President Barack Obama, Senator Carl Levin, and Sec. State John Kerry — have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years, the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008.

Recall what Senator Levin told CNN in 2005, demanding to “urgently hold an inquiry” into what was supposedly President Bush’s domestic wiretap program.

Levin continued, at length: “It means that there’s some growing concern on Capitol Hill about a program which seems to be so totally unauthorized and unexplained…The president wraps himself in the law, saying that it is totally legal, but he doesn’t give what the legal basis is for this. He avoided using the law, which we provided to the president, where even when there is an emergency and there’s a need for urgent action can first tap the wire and then go to a court.”

There are two notable exception to this rule are Senator Ron Wyden, from Oregon, and Sen. Mark Udall from Colorado, who had seemed to be fighting a largely lonely, frustrating battle against Obama’s national security state.

As Mark Udall told the Denver Post yesterday: “[I] did everything short of leaking classified information” to stop it.

His ally in Oregon, Ron Wyden, was one of the first to seize on the Guardian’s news break: “I will tell you from a policy standpoint, when a law-abiding citizen makes a call, they expect that who they call, when they call and where they call from will be kept private,” Wyden said to Politico, noting “there’s going to be a big debate about this.” The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, admitted he’d mislead Senator Wyden at a hearing earlier this year, revising his statement yesterday to state that the NSA didn’t do “voyerustic” surveillance.

The state of affairs, in other words, is so grave that two sitting Senators went as close as they could to violating their unconstitutional security oaths in order to warn the country of information that otherwise would not have been declassified until April of 2038, according to the Verizon court order obtained by Greenwald.

Now, we’re about to see if the Obama administration’s version of the national security state will begin to eat itself.

Unsurprisingly, the White House has dug in, calling their North Korea-esque tools “essential” to stop terrorism, and loathe to give up the political edge they’ve seized for Democrats on national security issues under Obama’s leadership. The AP spying scandal — which the administration attempted to downplay at the time, even appointing Eric Holder to lead his own investigation into himself —was one of the unexpected consequences of one of two leak investigations that Obama ordered during the 2012 campaign.

It’s unclear where a possible third leak investigation would lead. However, judging by the DOJ’s and FBI’s recent history, it would seem that any new leak case would involve obtaining the phone records of reporters at the Guardian, the Washington Post, employees at various agencies who would have had access to the leaked material, as well as politicians and staffers in Congress—records, we now can safely posit, they already have unchecked and full access to.

In short: any so-called credible DOJ/FBI leak investigation, by its very nature, would have to involve the Obama administration invasively using the very surveillance and data techniques it is attempting to hide in order to snoop on a few Democratic Senators and more media outlets, including one based overseas.
Outside of Washington, D.C., the frustration that Wyden and Udall have felt has been exponentially magnified. Transparency supporters, whistleblowers, and investigative reporters, especially those writers who have aggressively pursued the connections between the corporate defense industry and federal and local authorities involved in domestic surveillance, have been viciously attacked by the Obama administration and its allies in the FBI and DOJ.

Jacob Appplebaum, a transparency activist and computer savant, has been repeatedly harassed at American borders, having his laptop seized. Barrett Brown, another investigative journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, among others publications, exposed the connections between the private contracting firm HB Gary (a government contracting firm that, incidentally, proposed a plan to spy on and ruin the reputation of the Guardian’s Greenwald) and who is currently sitting in a Texas prison on trumped up FBI charges regarding his legitimate reportorial inquiry into the political collective known sometimes as Anonymous.

That’s not to mention former NSA official Thomas Drake (the Feds tried to destroys his life because he blew the whistle ); Fox News reporter James Rosen (named a “co-conspirator” by Holder’s DOJ); John Kirakou, formerly in the CIA, who raised concerns about the agency’s torture program, is also in prison for leaking “harmful” (read: embarrassing) classified info; and of course Wikileaks (under U.S. financial embargo); WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (locked up in Ecuador’s London embassy) and, of course, Bradley Manning, the young, idealistic, soldier who provided the public with perhaps the most critical trove of government documents ever released.

The attitude the Obama administration has toward Manning is revealing. What do they think of him? “Fuck Bradely Manning,” as one White House official put it to me last year during the campaign.

Screw Manning? Lol, screw us.

Perhaps more information will soon be forthcoming.

The Rank Hypocrisy of Barack Obama

‘This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining the Constitution and our freedom. 

That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. 

No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. 

No more tracking citizens who do nothing but protest a [policy]. 

No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.  

 It is not who we are. It is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA Court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers and that justice is not arbitrary. 

This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short cuts to protecting America.’ 

- Senator Barack Obama at the Woodrow Wilson Centre on Terrorism, 1 August 2007

The rank hypocrisy is strong with this one.

http://tinyurl.com/nqxereo

The Stunning Decline Of Barack Obama: 2013. Ten Key Reasons Why The Obama Presidency Is In Meltdown

The Obama Hockey Stick and the desperate attempt to 'Hide the Decline'

By Nile Gardiner

The last few weeks have been among the worst of Barack Obama’s time in office, recalling earlier periods of turmoil for the president in 2010 and 2011, when his ratings also plummeted. In 2013, the situation is significantly worse for the White House, with the Obama administration engulfed in a series of major scandals (IRS persecution of conservative groups, the Benghazi debacle, and the Justice Department seizure of journalists’ phone records) that are not only eroding trust in government but also in the office of the president itself. This is undoubtedly a period of steep decline for the Obama presidency, whose imperial-style big government approach is being increasingly questioned not only by American voters, but also by formerly subservient sections of the liberal-dominated mainstream media. In contrast to his first term, Barack Obama is finding himself less and less shielded by the press, and far more vulnerable to public criticism.

With good reason, Americans don’t feel optimistic about their country’s future with President Obama at the helm. According to the RealClear Politics polling average, less than one in three Americans believe the United States is heading in the right direction. A new Economist/YouGov poll has the president’s job approval rating at just 46 percent, with 49 percent of Americans disapproving. Strikingly, 35 percent of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the president’s job performance, 15 points higher than the number who “strongly approve.” A mere 31 percent of Americans surveyed by YouGov believe the United States is “generally headed in the right direction.”

In addition to damaging scandals, which have raised major questions over the integrity and judgment of the Obama administration, there remain deep-seated concerns over the US economy and the enormous national debt, widespread opposition to the president’s health care reforms, and significant fears over national security. Barack Obama’s second term could not have started more badly for the “hope and change” president, who, with three and a half years in office remaining, looks more and more like a lame duck. Here are ten key reasons why the Obama presidency is in trouble, with the outlook exceedingly grim for the White House

1.  The American public is losing trust in Obama 

A recent Quinnipiac survey found that less than half of Americans (49 percent) now view their president as “honest and trustworthy.” According to Quinnipiac, the series of recent scandals have begun to significantly dent the president’s standing with the American people, with his approval rating standing at just 45 percent. The IRS targeting of conservative groups has been particularly damaging, with 76 percent of voters supporting the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal, and a series of Congressional hearings putting the Obama administration on the spot. Another survey, by NBC News/The Wall Street Journal, reveals a great deal of public concern over the “overall honesty and integrity of the Obama administration,” with more than half of Americans agreeing that recent scandals have “raised doubts” about the government’s trustworthiness. 41 percent of Americans believe that President Obama himself is “totally” or “mainly” responsible for the government’s handling of Benghazi – just 19 percent believe he bears no responsibility. On the IRS issue, only 24 percent say the president is not responsible in any way, while a third of Americans think he is largely culpable. 

2. The Obama presidency is imperial in style and outlook 

Leading conservative talk radio host Mark Levin was absolutely right when he blasted Barack Obama on Fox News back in January as “an imperial president.” It would be hard to find a US president in recent times who has behaved in a more arrogant fashion than President Obama, and that includes Richard Nixon. The Obama White House is routinely disdainful of criticism, sneeringly dismissive of Congressional opposition, nasty and brutish towards dissenting voices in the media, and completely lacking in humility. Even veteran reporters such as Bob Woodward, one of two journalists who broke the Watergate scandal, have found themselves on the sharp end of the White House’s boot after publishing unflattering stories. Woodward was warned earlier this year by a senior White House official that he would “regret” his remarks about the president’s handling of the sequester issue. At the same time the Obama presidency exudes a shameless “let them eat cake” mentality, abundantly on display with the president’s lavish vacations and golfing expeditions while millions of American families have struggled to pay their mortgage and stay afloat against the backdrop in recent years of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. 

3. Most Americans are still worried about the economy 

Economic concerns are the top priority for Americans according to Gallup. In a recent poll, 86 percent of Americans agreed that “creating more jobs” and “helping the economy grow” are the top two priorities. “Making government work more efficiently” came third, at 81 percent. Despite a slight uptick in economic growth, and improving housing prices in some markets, the United States still has deep-seated economic problems. Most Americans are still nervous about the economy. According to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, just 46 percent of Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing in handling the economy. 64 percent of Americans are “somewhat dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the state of the US economy today. Only 32 percent believe the economy will get better in the next 12 months. 58 percent of Americans still think the country is in an economic recession.

Strong job creation and robust economic growth are being significantly hampered in the United States by declining economic freedom, including rising tax rates, the growing burden of government regulation, and a rising dependency culture. Unemployment still remains at 7.5 percent, with nearly 12 million Americans out of work. 47 million Americans are living on food stamps (the highest figure in American history), and a staggering 128 million Americans are now dependent upon government programmes. A full economic recovery still remains far away. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans have rebuilt less than half of the wealth lost to the recession. As The Washington Post reported: “The research from the St. Louis Fed shows that households had accumulated net worth totaling $66 trillion at the end of last year. After adjusting for inflation and population growth, the bank found that number amounted to only 45 percent of the wealth that Americans had during the peak of the boom in 2007.” 

4. America’s level of debt is frightening 

America’s economic problems are compounded by its huge debt problem. Barack Obama continues to lead the United States down the path of European Union-style decline, with incredible levels of public debt, currently standing at $16.85 trillion, a per person debt of $53,000. President Obama has done nothing to confront the vast entitlement programmes that are a yoke around the necks of future generations of American taxpayers, while taking an axe to defense spending, resulting in politically driven cuts that undermine America’s national security while doing nothing to reduce the country’s debt burden. As he made clear in his Inauguration address in January, President Obama remains committed to a big spending, big government vision, and one that will force the United States down the road to economic ruin unless it is reversed. 

5. Obamacare is hugely expensive and increasingly unpopular 

A key liability that will further expand America’s debt mountain is Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), the Obama administration’s hugely ambitious and expensive health care reform initiative that threatens to dramatically increase the cost of healthcare for ordinary Americans as well as businesses, when it goes into effect next year. Forbes Magazine reports that in California Obamacare is expected to increase individual health insurance premiums by 64 to 146 percent.  The latest Congressional Budget Office estimate puts a $1.85 trillion price tag on Obamacare in its first 10 years. A clear majority of Americans oppose Obamacare. The latest CNN/ORC International poll shows 54 percent opposing the law. A Reason/Rupe poll found that a mere 32 percent support it. An April poll by the Kaiser Foundation, and reported by Politico, revealed that “just 35 percent of Americans view Obamacare ‘very’ or somewhat’ favorably, down 8 points since Election Day.” Opposition in the business community is also high, especially among small businesses, the bedrock of the US economy.  Gallup finds that 48 percent of small business owners say the Affordable Care Act is bad for business – just nine percent say it will be good for business. As Obamacare rolls in, opposition to its implementation will only grow. If the Republicans retake the Senate in 2014, expect Congress to launch a major effort to repeal it. 

6. Independents are rapidly withdrawing support for Obama 

As Gallup polling has consistently shown, America is ideologically a conservative nation, with conservatives outnumbering liberals by a nearly two to one margin. Strikingly, as Gallup has found, more than 50 percent of Americans view Obama as more liberal than themselves, with just 27 percent of voters declaring that they share the same ideology as the president. Despite a clear advantage in terms of ideology, the Republicans have struggled to win over sufficient numbers of “moderates” (roughly a third of US voters) in the last two presidential elections, many of whom identify themselves as “Independents.” There are signs, however, that support for Obama among Independents is dramatically falling. According to the recent Quinnipiac survey, 57 percent of Independent voters give Obama a negative rating, up from 48 percent on May 1st. 56 percent of Independents do not believe the president is “honest and trustworthy.” By a 45 percent to 35 percent margin, Independents believe that Republicans in Congress are doing a better job than President Obama on handling the economy. 

7. The liberal media is less deferential to Obama in his second term 

The Washington Post, standard bearer of the liberal establishment in the US capital, has labeled the IRS scandal a “horror story” for the Obama administration. Even The New York Times, the de facto inflight newspaper of Air Force One, recently carried a headline on its front page declaring:  "Onset of Woes Casts Pall Over Obama's Policy Aspirations."  The liberal mainstream media closed ranks behind Barack Obama for most of his first term in office, and relentlessly pummeled his presidential election opponent Mitt Romney ahead of the November 2012 vote, in a shameless display of bias towards their favoured candidate. The big liberal newspapers and the major television networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, have been less willing to bat for Obama in his second term as public opinion has begun to turn against the White House. Clearly, there are some things even the most liberal columnists are finding hard to defend, such as the ruthless targeting of political opponents. Meanwhile, MSNBC, President Obama’s biggest flag-waver on cable news, has seen its ratings plummet in recent months, with Fox News further building its dominance of the ratings. 

8. The Benghazi scandal has been extremely damaging 

Much as the Obama administration tries to downplay the significance of the Benghazi scandal, it refuses to go away, with 46 percent of Americans believing “the administration deliberately misled the American people about the events surrounding the death of the American Ambassador to Libya” according to Quinnipiac. Like the IRS scandal, the Benghazi debacle has undermined trust and confidence in the Obama presidency. 58 percent of Americans in the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey agree that that the State Department’s handling of the Benghazi attack raises doubts “about the overall honesty and integrity of the Obama administration.”

In the aftermath of the barbaric killing of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans on September 11, 2012 at the hands of al-Qaeda linked Islamist militants, the Obama administration tried to pass off the brutal attack as a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video that hardly anyone has seen. Undoubtedly worried that the killings would upset the White House’s carefully crafted narrative in the lead up to the 2012 election that al-Qaeda was in retreat, administration officials sought to downplay the broader significance of the attack in the run up to the presidential vote, a strategy that succeeded in the short term, but has since imploded in the face of sustained Congressional scrutiny. Not only has Benghazi damaged the president, it also hurt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s image too. As former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan noted in The Wall Street Journal: “Will this story ever be completely told? Maybe not. But it’s not going to go away either. It’s a prime example of the stupidity of all-politics-all-the-time. You make some bad moves for political reasons. And then you suffer politically because you make bad moves.”

9. Obama’s national security strategy is weak and confusing

President Obama’s recent address to the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington has to go down as one of the most weak-kneed speeches by a US Commander-in-Chief in modern times. His call for a winding down of the global war against Islamist terror was naïve in the extreme, and sent completely the wrong signal to America’s enemies at a time when al-Qaeda is strengthening its presence in parts of the Middle East as well as North, West and East Africa. His declaration (once again) that the detention facility at Guantanamo should be shut down was hopelessly unrealistic in the face of concerted Congressional opposition as well as a humiliating exercise in pandering to international condemnation in Europe and the Muslim world. His Guantanamo policy is deeply out of touch as well with American public opinion. US polls have consistently shown strong support for keeping the camp in operation. This is hardly a strategy that will endear President Obama to an American public that feels less safe today than it did in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. 

10. Obama is “leading from behind” on the world stage 

American foreign policy has become even more weak and incoherent in President Obama’s second term. On the world stage the United States has not been this powerless and disengaged since the days of Jimmy Carter. “Leading from behind” is no longer just a mantra for the Obama administration – it has become its philosopher’s stone. Washington’s leadership on the Syria crisis is non-existent, with the White House content to farm out its foreign policy to Moscow and the United Nations. On Afghanistan, Obama’s position is one of retreat and a handover of power back to the Taliban. Iran is barely mentioned by the president, as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions march on. Meanwhile key allies such as Britain are treated with contempt and lectured to on European policy as though it were a schoolboy being reprimanded for speaking out of turn, while the Special Relationship and the transatlantic alliance continue to be eroded. At home and abroad, the Obama presidency is weakening America, while undercutting the strength and ability of the world's only superpower to lead internationally.

The All-Seeing State

The inevitable corruption of the permanent bureaucracy

By Mark Steyn

A few years ago, after one corruption scandal too many, the then Liberal government in Canada announced that, to prevent further outbreaks of malfeasance, it would be hiring 300 new federal auditors plus a bunch of ethics czars, and mandating “integrity provisions” in government contracts, including “prohibitions against paying, offering, demanding or accepting bribes.” There were already plenty of laws against bribery, but one small additional sign on the desk should do the trick: “Please do not attempt to bribe the Minister of the Crown as a refusal may offend. Also: He’s not allowed to bribe you, whatever he says.” A government that requires “integrity provisions” is by definition past the stage where they will do any good.

I thought of those Canadian Liberal “integrity provisions” passing a TV screen the other day and catching hack bureaucrats from the IRS Small Business/Self-Employed Division reassuring Congress that systems had now been put in place to prevent them succumbing to the urge to put on Spock ears and moob-hugging blue polyester for the purposes of starring in a Star Trek government training video. The Small Business/Self-Employed Division had boldly gone where no IRS man had gone before — to a conference in Anaheim, where they were put up in $3,500-a-night hotel rooms and entertained by a man who was paid $27,500 to fly in and paint on stage a portrait of Bono. Bono is the veteran Irish rocker knighted by the Queen for his tireless campaign on behalf of debt forgiveness, which doesn’t sound the IRS’s bag at all. But don’t worry, debt forgiveness-wise Bono has Africa in mind, not New Jersey. And, as Matthew Cowart tweeted me the other day, he did have a big hit with “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” which I believe is now the official anthem of the IRS Cincinnati office.

It took Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina to get to the heart of the matter: “With all due respect, this is not a training issue,” he said. “This cannot be solved with another webinar. . . . We can adopt all the recommendations you can possibly conceive of. I just say it strikes me — and maybe it’s just me — but it strikes me as a cultural, systemic, character, moral issue.”

He’s right. If you don’t instinctively know it’s wrong to stay in $3,500-a-night hotel rooms at public expense, a revised conference-accommodations-guidelines manual isn’t going to fix the real problem.

So we know the IRS is corrupt. What happens then when an ambitious government understands it can yoke that corruption to its political needs? What’s striking as the revelations multiply and metastasize is that at no point does any IRS official appear to have raised objections. If any of them understood that what they were doing was wrong, they kept it to themselves. When Nixon tried to sic the IRS on a few powerful political enemies, the IRS told him to take a hike. When Obama’s courtiers tried to sic the IRS on thousands of ordinary American citizens, the agency went along, and very enthusiastically. This is a scale of depravity hitherto unknown to the tax authorities of the United States, and for that reason alone they should be disarmed and disbanded — and rebuilt from scratch with far more circumscribed powers.

Here’s another congressional-subcommittee transcript highlight of the week. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois asks the attorney general if he’s spying on members of Congress and thereby giving the executive branch leverage over the legislative branch. Eric Holder answers:

“With all due respect, senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue.”

Senator Kirk responded that “the correct answer would be, ‘No, we stayed within our lane and I’m assuring you we did not spy on members of Congress.’” For some reason, the attorney general felt unable to say that. So I think we all know what the answer to the original question really is.

Holder had another great contribution to the epitaph of the Republic this week. He went on TV to explain that he didn’t really regard Fox News’s James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” but had to pretend he did to the judge in order to get the judge to cough up the warrant. So rest easy, America! Your chief law officer was telling the truth when he said he hadn’t lied to Congress because in fact he’d been lying when he said he told the truth to the judge.

If you lie to one of Holder’s minions, you go to jail: They tossed Martha Stewart in the slammer for being insufficiently truthful to a low-level employee of the attorney general’s. But the attorney general can apparently lie willy-nilly to judges and/or Congress.

This, incidentally, is at the heart of the revelation (in a non-U.S. newspaper, naturally) that hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records have been subpoenaed by the United States government. In 2011, Eric Holder’s assistant attorney general Todd Hinen testified to the House Judiciary Committee that “on average, we seek and obtain Section 215 orders less than 40 times per year.” Forty times per year doesn’t sound very high, does it? What is that — the cell phones of a few Massachusetts Chechens and some Yemeni pen-pals? No. The Verizon order will eventually be included as just another individual Section 215 order, even though it covers over a hundred million Americans. Ongoing universal monitoring of mass populations is being passed off to Congress and the public as a few dozen narrowly targeted surveillance operations. Mr. Hinen chose his words more carefully than his boss, but both men are in the business of deceiving the citizenry, their elected representatives, and maybe the judges, too.

Perhaps this is just the way it is in the panopticon state. Tocqueville foresaw this, as he did most things. Although absolute monarchy “clothed kings with a power almost without limits” in practice “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to bring “the details of social life and of individual existence” within the King’s oversight? Eric Holder and Lois Lerner now have that power. My comrade John Podhoretz, doughty warrior of the New York Post, says relax, there’s nothing to worry about. But how do I know he’s not just saying that because Eric Holder’s monitoring his OnStar account and knows that when he lost his car keys last Tuesday he was in the parking lot of Madam Whiplash’s Bondage Dungeon?

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and “shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like “tea party,” “patriot,” and “constitution.”

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.

No Cop / Bad Cop

Mark Steyn nails is...

I was chugging along buying Jack Dunphy’s argument on the NSA business, 'A Small Price To Pay,' until I got to this bit:

There are people living in the United States right now, many, many of them, who are no less committed to jihad than the Tsarnaev brothers or Nidal Hassan.

Well, how’d that happen? How did all these Tsarnaevs-in-waiting wind up living in the United States? They were let in by the Government, and many of them were let in in the years since 9/11, when we were supposedly on permanent “orange alert”. The same bureaucracy that takes the terror threat so seriously that it needs the phone and Internet records of hundreds of millions of law-abiding persons would never dream of doing a little more pre-screening in its immigration system – by, say, according a graduate of a Yemeni madrassah a little more scrutiny than a Slovene or Fijian. The President has unilaterally suspended the immigration laws of the United States, and his Attorney-General prosecutes those states such as Arizona who remain quaintly attached to them. The ID three of the 9/11 hijackers acquired in the 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia and used to board the plane that day is part of a vast ongoing subversion of American sovereignty with which many states and so-called “sanctuary cities” actively collude.

As for Major Hasan, who needs surveillance? He put “Soldier of Allah” on his business card and gave a PowerPoint presentation to his military colleagues on what he’d like to do to infidels – and nobody said a word, lest they got tied up in sensitivity-training hell for six months.

Jack will forgive me when I say this is less good cop/bad cop than no cop/bad cop. Because the formal, visible state has been neutered by political correctness, the dark, furtive shadow state has to expand massively to make, in secret, the judgment calls that can no longer be made in public. That’s not an arrangement that is likely to end well.

Yeppers!  I’m supposed to be fine with letting the Federal government collect data on me in the name of national security because it is racist, nativist, and xenophobic to expect the government to uphold immigration laws, for example.  No sale.

 http://tinyurl.com/kszeqg6