Hey, Brother, I’ve got a favor to ask…a few, actually:
Would you stop lying to us about attacks on our embassies? Would you start telling us exactly who you are killing with these drone strikes? Would you stop harassing nonprofit organizations whose names you don’t like? Would you stop seizing the telephone records of reporters? Come to think of it, would you stop scooping up records of all telephone calls made in the United States?
Holy shit! What the fuck? (Sorry, this is a situation, it seems to me, that calls for extreme language.)
In a May 23 post, I said, half facetiously that I was shocked and appalled at “the imploding presidency of Barack Obama.”
No longer is it half facetious; I’m completely shocked and thoroughly appalled.
Even though this all-inclusive phone-call sweep has been going on, incredibly, for seven years — before Obama became president — wouldn’t you think that a president who values civil liberties would look at that and say:
“Why are we doing this?”
I’m a lifelong Democrat, but this is a case in which I think it’s appropriate to ask, “What Ronnie do?” I’m talking about the late President Ronald Reagan, who, above all else, was a champion of civil liberties, of American being a nation where you should be able to live without government poking around in your private life.
I can’t help but think that if he were alive and Alzheimer’s free, he would look at the current government wasteland and say, “What the fuck?”
Yesterday, when I first heard about the general, phone-call-records sweep, I thought maybe my gut reaction of repulsion was an overreaction. I’d better wait, I thought, to see what my reliable political compass, The New York Times, had to say.
Thankfully, The Times affirmed my revulsion. The leading editorial in today’s Times is titled “President Obama’s Dragnet.” It is twice as long as the average editorial, and it is so strong that it appears to me it could signal an overall shift against the Obama administration.
Here’s how that editorial begins:
“Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
“Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.”
Should this nitwit know who we are calling?
If we can’t rely on the President, who can we rely on? Certainly not that clown James Clapper, the national’s chief intelligence officer, who three months ago told a congressional committee that the National Security Agency was not collecting data on Americans.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
And the rest of the story:
Washington Post broke a story last night on the National Security Agency’s massive sweep of email server data from most major providers, in a program called PRISM.Yes, email, photos, everything that any U.S. citizen has sent via the internet in the last few years, may have been captured in the electronic files of the NSA.
I saw that, Ray…Of small consolation is the fact (??) that, according to The Times, “a senior government official…said it targeted only foreigners abroad.” Of course, that could easily turn out to be a lie, too.
Don’t know why you’re so shocked Fitz. I expected nothing less from a President, raised on Chicago politics, seemingly hell bent on the destruction of our Republic.
Crazy as Glenn Beck may be, he had BHO pegged from day one. Same for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and so on and so on. They have been more right than wrong.
Mitt Romney might not have been Mr. Excitement but only a fool would not notice that he has far more character, honor and integrity than the Grifter in Chief.
Rome is burning and your brethren in the Fourth Estate are telling us it’s aromatherapy.
Actions have consequences. I’m just waiting on instructions from Roger Ailes on when to start watering the Tree of Liberty. This country will wake up after the political and media sinners get an Old Testament Jesus ass whupping.
Change will be invoked by pulling triggers, not voting levers.
And for anyone at the NSA, Justice Department, CIA or FBI reading this….Kiss My Ass, and bring your Chapstick cause it’s gonna be a long day.
Surely you jest, Fitz, when you make out Ronald Reagan to be some sort of civil liberties guy. Really, I’d hope someone as sharp as you wouldn’t buy into the mythologizing of Saint Ronnie. Off the top of my head, here are some of the anti-civil liberties stands that I remember him taking:
* Launched the war on drugs
* Supported anti-abortion legislation
* Instituted global gag order on family planning
* Opposed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964
* Opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965
* Opposed the Equal Rights Amendment
* Favored mandatory three-strikes sentencing laws
* Supported a constitutional amendment to allow school prayer
* Promoted government secrecy (e.g., agitated for a law that made it a crime for anyone, including journalists, to intentionally expose the U.S.’s foreign intelligence activities – the very thing that’s brought about the exposure of the NSA’s massive surveillance program, which you’re now decrying)
* Set up Ed Meese’s crazy-ass pornography commission
I’m not even touching here on his drastic cuts to programs to help the poor and disadvantaged – arguably the biggest civil liberties matter – or of his support for all manner of noxious tyrants – Saddaam Hussein, for example – and thugs like the Contras (whom he compared to our founding fathers) – who engaged in massive human rights violations in their own countries.
No Dan, surely you jest. Here’s how a “normal person” perceives it. Less drug use is a good thing. Less abortion is a good thing. Your comments on family planning, Civil Rights, Voting Rights and the ERA are “technically” correct but each requires deep examination of Reagan’s position and reasoning to fully understand them. In the purest form of those ideals he was not against them. Intentionally misleading on your part. Typical Hegelian ploy. Three strikes is a bad thing? School prayer is a bad thing? And it wasn’t going to be “mandatory”. In most cases it would have been represented by a moment of silence. Government secrecy has been going on since Washington held the office. It’s a necessary part of the game. Ed Meese needed something to do. Presidential history is littered with relationships with tyrants. BHO isn’t squeaky clean in this area.
Change your red doper diaper and go watch some reruns of Hardball so you can get a tingle up your leg.
+1
I figured that once I brought Ronnie into the picture, the shit would start to fly…l was thinking along pretty basic lines…like, Ronnie was a rancher, and all ranchers would be against the gubment scooping up our phone records. They probably wouldn’t care, however, about government usurping the phone records of reporters. I’d like to know what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has to say about this (couldn’t find anything in Google results). He seems like the kind of guy who could whip people into a frenzy over this…And frenzy is what I want!
Christie is dead to us on the far right. He has the potential to be a cross between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Hoffa but he’s not willing to answer the call.
Although we have to assume that BHO has Bill Clinton’s personal phone call and Internet use file. So much for the Hillary endorsement in 2016.
American’s concern over the NSA et al. gathering cell phone info etc of all Americans is understandable. The Government abuse of information, personfied by the current IRS scandal is abysmal. All government agencies are populated by a liberal thought process and the result of that same process is the Anarcho-Tyranny we see with respect to Immigration, Gun Control and the myriad other intitiatives which are effected by Government in the face of popular opposition.
The IRS abuse of power is easily translated in the minds of us all to a more general abuse of power from the myriad government agency acronyms that rule our lives. Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”?
That said, I am gonna gird myself for a storm of contempt and opprobrium from all.
I am ok with it. Keep track of every one of my cell phone calls. Read my emails. Spy on me with drones. Put cameras on every corner, every window and turn the entire country into a Reality TV Show where the “Fourth Wall” melts under the heat of little red lights on little black cameras. Crypto-facists unite!!
We are now as a nation, unable to control our city steets, our nation’s borders and maintain our Judeo/Christian ethos by way of a PC culture cellularly imbued in our national DNA by Hollywood, the 4th Estate and pussilanimous politicians blown by every wind and wet by every rain.
The rule of law as we knew it, decays in a nationl ethnomasochistic paroxysm, an “American Suicide” as Pat Buchanan calls it. A brainwashed, hive minded stupidity that replaces common sense and the social contract with the elevation of identity politics and “Balkanization”.
At this very moment, we all know, there are smart, sick fanatics out there working on weapons to destroy our cities and citizens. The coming dystopia that you all fear, is a small price to pay to keep a nuke, or the materials for a nuke coming in across our porous and by design, defensless borders, or as in Europe a de facto “Arab Spring” which destroys inherant culture under the cover of treasonous liberal feel good policies, meant to destroy the fabric of the native countries there.
America’s dissociative fugue has weakened our national identity, left us rudderless in a sea of multiculturalistic clap trap that if seen for what it really is, on camera, can’t be denied.
I’m ready for my close up Mr. Demille.
Mr. Margolies, you’ve confused civil rights with civil liberties. Not only are they not the same, they are often at odds. Then, to make matters worse, you throw in items that are completely unrelated to any logical definition of civil liberties, or civil rights. Just because you disagree with something does not grant it civil liberty status. And, I think if you check you’ll find that civil rights legislation often had more support among Republicans than Democrats.
I believe, without checking (breakfast is wating), that Nixon signed in most of the Civil Rights legislation as we know it.
For all the low information voters that would like an explanation of Chuck’s comment, click on or cut and paste this link….
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=d6qIoMjfECo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dd6qIoMjfECo.
What we’re seeing out of King Hussein’s regime is simply the continuing descent of what has come to be known as “liberalism” in America into barbarism and totalitarianism. There is a pattern throughout this administration of censorship, repression and hate-mongering that has set race relations back decades and divided us as a people more than at any time since the civil war. The rule of law has become a joke as Dear Leader trashes one element of the Bill of Rights after another.
I won’t get into the Reagan conversation other than to say I disagreed with everything he did as POTUS; however, he believed in what he said–he did have some inner compass (I won’t use the word moral) that told him what the government should and should not be doing and worked towards that goal. His errors were in hiring people like Ed Meese and others who went beyond the views Ronnie had of America.
Obama, OTOH, has no such compass. (I will add I voted Dem for POTUS from 1984 until 2008, the last two I picked Green Party). The Dem party groomed someone whose first goal was himself, second, himself and third, himself. I knew early this guy was a fraud in terms of being a Dem, a liberal or a progressive. I knew early he was going to get a pass from our “free press” and the increasingly influencial bloggers (many of whom were paid in ad $$). Yes, we can go over all the flip flopping on liberal issues he has had over the years and the “he needs to do that to get elected” meme crying from people like Barb Shelly.
When Obama leaves office the voices of liberalism and progressives will be pretty much extinguished. Because if you won’t speak up now, when will you?
Among other things I learned from that comment, Jennifer, is that you read The Star…On behalf of all current and former Star employees, I thank you. The most informed people, in my experience, are those who read at least one newspaper. As a former reporter and editor, I’m a firm believer that a good newspaper gives readers what they need, not necessarily what they want. That might sound pretentious and presumptuous, but if newspapers flail around, as many have done the last decade or so, trying to satisfy people’s “tastes,” they can never satisfy. The Star fell into the “trying to satisfy” trap between about 2000 and 2010, but upper management finally saw that was like chasing a fox without a hunting dog. They’re doing better, at least on local news, but they still give short shrift to national and international news. Too bad, but I’m afraid at this point McClatchy (and similar chains) no longer has enough advertising to buy sufficient newsprint to give its readers “all the news you need to know.”
Yes I do read the Star–although I’m officially banned from posting comments now. (I guess you can write the most vile things about anyone, but if you criticize one “public editor” you are gone–and all I did was question his cherry picking of facts). The Star has so little of interest to read these days anyway. And I can’t think of one topic the Star is out in front of locally. Nor can I find one columnist that doesn’t insult their audience. It’s not like the reader can’t find more information, news, enlightenment and education on the web than what gets thrown on their doorstep each morning–we are going to continue to do that. Just seems like the Star staff is determined by their own actions to keep driving readers away.
Fascinating, the one thing anyone who demands honesty out of this newspaper has in common is that they’ve discovered that Derek Donovan is a complete phony and that you will be blocked in a nanosecond if you try to convey that on the pages of Der Sturmer.
I have screen shots of him coming online in he middle of the night to berate people who criticised him, I have an mp3 of a voicemail he left me. And I have copies of his blog and emails when he demanded that I remove the mp3 from the Internet or face an an attack in his column by name. I didn’t and he did.
Tell me Fitz, what are the ethics of using your space in The Star to try and browbeat someone into not embarrassing you? Fannin was fully aware of what was going on and did nothing.
Donovan, Pepper and Abouhalkah are the biggest fascists The Star has.
Derek’s method is to give you a vague, quasi-supportive response if you question something, but if you’re not satisfied with the BS he twists something you’ve said and attacks you. Very unprofessional and completely unsuited for any position involving conflict. That’s why you see very few posts on his blog anymore, and certainly nothing critical of him. Heil Derek.
Oh, and Jenniferm, Shelly is little more than a hand maiden to corruption. The ideology comes in second to kissing the establishment’s backside. And, I can back that up also.