For months now, their meme has been "SCANDAL" -- First, it was the loss of guns in a program that tried to trace illegal gun-running into Mexico; it mostly happened before Eric Holder became Attorney General, but Darrel Issa's witch hunt committee tried to hold him in contempt of Congress for not giving them all the documents they asked for.
Then they tried -- actually Issa is still trying -- to make something sinister out of the awkward attempt to script an explanation of the Benghazi attack for the immediate consumption of the news media's voracious maw. There's really no there, there, folks. Nothing to see here; please keep moving. But the Republicans won't move on.
Then it was the much-ado-about-not-much IRS going after Tea Party groups; and then the various other attempts by the Department of Justice to keep America safe. Now isn't that the usual preoccupation of the conservative wing? Strong defense and keeping American safe? Well, no, not when Obama and Holder can be blamed for over-reaching.
Of course, both liberals and civil libertarians are up in arms about the level of surveillance and tapping of phones on ordinary citizens and especially going after the emails of journalists. But that's what was authorized in the Bush/Cheney Patriot Act, widely supported by Republicans.
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) put this in perspective today. She's chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and as such is kept informed about our intelligence on a confidential basis by the administration. She said today that this latest flap over the collection of phone data of all Verizon phone users is nothing new. It was merely a renewal of what's been authorized by the special FISA court -- as prescribed by laws that Congress passed as a protection against excessive, unwarranted government surveillance -- and it has to be renewed every three months, for seven years now.
Sen. Feinstein said: "I read intelligence carefully, and I know that people are trying to get to us. . . This is to ferret this out before it happens. It's called protecting America."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, (R-GA) ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, added that this is nothing particularly new, that every senator had been advised of this before, and that there had been no previous objection.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this:
For over a decade, we've debated how best to protect America from terrorism while preserving the most basic constitutional rights. Today's revelation is disturbing, but it should not be surprising. I have tried to reform this provision of the Patriot Act for years, introducing legislation and offering amendments to ensure that secret demands for sensitive personal information on Americans. is limited only to those individuals suspected of being involved in plots against our country. As I said when I offered my amendment in 2009, 'someday the cloak will be lifted and future generations will ask whether our actions today meet the test of a democratic society -- transparency, accountability and fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution.' Today that cloak has been lifted and this important debate must begin again."
I was then, and am now, somewhat uncomfortable with the power to look into our lives without our knowledge. I don't think the Obama administration would abuse the privilege; but you can bet the farm that Richard Nixon would have. And Dick Cheney, to be sure.
But remember: the actions of the DOJ that are being called scandalous have been conducted in accordance with the law passed by Congress and signed by the president, including getting the required warrants from the special FISA court set up for this purpose.
If we don't like that, then we need to change the Patriot Act that authorizes it -- not blame Obama for using the tools given to him by Congress to uphold his duty to keep us safe.
The real scandal here, in my opinion, is that the Republicans are spending all their time and energy trying to bring down the president instead of working with him to do what's good for the country and the people.
A possible second scandal here is that somebody "leaked" this to a foreign newspaper (albeit a highly regraded one, the Guardian of London) -- and then used the news item to create an uproar. Who could that have been, do you suppose? Was it political? Or was it a whistleblower in the intelligence network that felt it was going too far? Stay tuned.
Ralph
Comment: The controversy over surveillance, both of journalists and of everybody on Verizon, has its liberal voices on both sides. The New York Times editorial board says the Obama administration has now lost all credibility. Their beef starts with the uproar over secretly tapping into reporters emails, but they're also responding to the cell phone data mining.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Sen. Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that the phone data mining has thwarted some terrorists but it's classified so she can't give details.
Some good reporting going on about this.
ReplyDeleteNow we learn that the Verizon (plus 7 or 8 others, like Microsoft, Google, Apple) are supplying the data, which the NSA simply stores without looking at it. Then if there is reason to suspect someone or some group, they have to go through getting authorization to search -- either from the AG or the FISA court.
That makes it sound like less of a stretch of the Patriot Act than it did before.