I guess, unless you are a true stooge of the Obama administration, you are shocked and angered at the collection of Verizon network records, being conducted on the grand scale by Obama's Department of Justice under the thin skin of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order.
If you are angered, welcome to the club.
The National Journal is angered.
The New York Times is angered.
The Atlantic is angered.
Piers Morgan is angered.
Get the point?
Except stooges -- Lindsey "Light in the Loafers of Liberty" Graham and his ilk -- we all know that Obama's sweeping sweep sweeps too far.
Maybe, finally, the Republican led House of Representatives will exhibit the manly firmness of a resolute legislature by investigating the Administration via select committees ... it asks too much to hope that Boehner & Co. will craft articles of impeachment in response to the Administration's tyrannical excess.
But, and this is an important but, do not think the job is done by searching out Obama's toadies and seeking to affix all responsibility on them for the rape of the Fourth Amendment. To fully excise the tumor against liberty, we have to follow the cancer back to its birth in the fear generated by the September 11 terror attacks. In that long view, an honest appraisal indicts then-President Bush, that Congress and its paramours for making this all so easy with the Patriot Act and the sacrifices of liberties then in the name of providing security for which so many desperately craved.
When I
served as Senior Counsel with the ACLJ, I was thunderstruck when none
of the organization's senior attorneys -- seasoned counsel with decades
of constitutional law practice between them -- were NOT consulted before the organization loaned its name and support to the Patriot Act.
Thus began the rape and pillage of our rights to privacy, respect for constitutional rights and liberties, with the blessing of America's leading religious liberties nonprofit.
Today, if you are thunderstruck with the present administration's
excesses, you should not only hold it accountable, but should seek out
those that stood this monster up and welcomed it to the table. When you
do, you will ask my former employer whether the security it craved was
worth the liberty we lost.
