The same thing about which John warned the Malkin fringe again and again, illustrated this time by Glenn.
When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it’s going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That’s its nature.
A rightwing “patriot” blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and killed 168 Americans. Another rightwing activist committed a series of bombings that killed two people and injured at least 150 others. A heavy FOX News consumer shot up a Unitarian church in Knoxville for reasons that he plainly described as politically eliminationist. Last week a white supremacist shot three police officers in cold blood after posting a string of online commentary that echoed hysterical rightwing radio rants almost word-for-word. The shooter admitted that he would have killed more if he could.
Here is a suggestion if Michelle still needs shoulder to cry on. Go find a cop. There’s no need to come to southwestern PA; I saw squad cars from Michigan, Massachusetts and Canada at Thursday’s funeral. Tell him or her how completely unfair it feels to have the government keeping an eye on paranoid gun fetishists. She can explain to her new friend how the government was never meant to use unrestrained police powers on her kind of American.
—
At least now I can stop wondering whether rightwing torture-and-wiretap freaks ever understood that putting ‘Islamic’ or ‘terrorist’ in the title of a law is not a great way to limit its scope to people they consider Islamic terrorists. If the meaningful part of a law has no penalty for using supposed ‘antiterrorist’ powers on anyone that a law enforcement agency damn well pleases then that is what it will do.
Republicans were not just trying to grease laws with titles that nobody would want to vote against. They really believed that a law’s title and its preamble, if the author even bothered, had some totemic power to protect conservative ultrapatriots from the vile treatment that they wanted to impose on others. Evil, yes, in the obvious pleasure they took in seeing mostly innocent prisoners tortured. But definitely also stupid.
Watching Malkin, the other Boleyn girl, squirm now after she smugly cheered the disappearance of Catherine of Aragon Jose Padilla only a few years ago does not exactly feel good. But it sure isn’t wrong.
***Update***
NonyNony
Depends on what you mean by "Republicans". While the right-wing blogging nutbags and many of the nutbags in the House might have thought that way, I’m fairly certain that most of the Republicans in the Senate didn’t. And I KNOW that Dick Cheney and the assholes in the DOJ knew exactly what they were doing when they were advocating for this stuff and writing their memos – a project near and dear to their hearts since Nixon resigned in disgrace. And the stupid "glibertarian" arm of the GOP just followed right behind them, cheering them on all the way.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
Old but somewhat related to this post.
And I suppose this comment wouldn’t be complete without an obligatory "No one could have predicted blah blah blah…"
** Atanarjuat **
It seems to me that every new generation has to learn the same lessons that the older generation somehow never passed on.
Either there’s a failure to communicate, or human beings, by their very nature, can only learn (and re-learn) the hard way.
Which is a damn shame, since so many people get hurt or killed in the process every time.
The sad irony is that by the time that Malkin & Co. figure out that protection of civil rights should never be a partisan issue, there will be a newer generation of "patriots" that will accuse them for being "soft on terror" and "hating America" for daring to dissent.
-A
Joshua Norton
And they act like they couldn’t have possibly seen this coming as a consequence of their applauding the subversion of the Constitution by their side.
You can’t say "no, just spy on their nutjobs, not ours". What goes around comes around. Karma is a bitch. And it kissed them right on the mouth.
guster
I think you kinda misunderstand the rightwing mindset. They’re against bad guys. They’re for good guys. The laws should target bad guys. It shouldn’t really matter what the laws specifically -say-. They should just target bad guys.
Obama is bad guy. That is why they are so frantic with fear.
Bush is a good guy. So maybe he made a few trivial mistakes. But he’s a good guy. Nobody’s perfect.
The left is bad. The right is good.
It’s really that simple. What they don’t understand is, how can -you- not get it. Eight words. It’s just not that hard.
guster
I think you kinda misunderstand the rightwing mindset. They’re against bad guys. They’re for good guys. The laws should target bad guys. It shouldn’t really matter what the laws specifically _say_. They should just target bad guys.
Obama is bad guy. That is why they are so frantic with fear.
Bush is a good guy. So maybe he made a few trivial mistakes. But he’s a good guy. Nobody’s perfect.
The left is bad. The right is good.
It’s really that simple. What they don’t understand is, how can _you_ not get it. Eight words. It’s just not that hard.
Zifnab
… double post
geg6
Tim F.:
Word, dude. Screw the Malkins and their wingnut friends who think words don’t have consequences. I saw thousands of cops here last week from all over North America who will tell you all about that. And who don’t have an ounce of sympathy for poor widdle Michelle Malkin’s whining. If it was up to the men of the long blue line I spoke to last week, every one of the nuts on the crazy righty sites would be locked up in Gitmo.
All I know is the teabaggers better not get uppity with any city police or staties tomorrow around here. They will not like the consequences they seem to think should not apply to them.
Joshua Norton
That group is getting larger by the day. The semi-sane GOoPers are claiming that now they’re Libertarians.
Zifnab
Listen. What’s the worst that can happen? Obama’s jackbooted thugs show up at your door, he gives you a stern talking to, puts you in the Club Gitmo Resort Community for an indeterminate length of time, and then sends you on your way because he’s such a big liberal wussy.
What’s Malkin have to worry about?
That One - Cain
Tim, welcome back to the front page. Missed your posts, and this was spot on.
They can’t whine now considering they wanted and created the beast. Their whole thought was that they were sure that they would create a permanent conservative majority that would never be toppled. Their so called hedgemony didn’t even last the last president’s term and now we are stuck with a whole bunch of unwanted, dangerous presidential powers.
cain
Dreggas
@** Atanarjuat **:
Thing is when I was in school we learned all these lessons, it was called History class, sad part is that so many A) forget History or B) never paid attention in the first place.
It’s one of the biggest reasons Republicans seem bent on destroying or at the least belittling education, if more people knew their history Republicans would have been less likely to get away with the shit they have.
r€nato
I can’t blame them for their stunning and all-too-predictable hypocrisy wrt the surveillance state.
They got away with the Clinton witch-hunt and impeachment (but not the conviction…), with the so-called liberal media giving a giant helping hand.
Then they got away with stealing the White House.
Then they got away with presidential high crimes and misdemeanors which make the Clinton impeachment look like a sick joke.
They got away with scorning Clinton for trying to kill Osama bin Laden, who pulled off the 9/11 attacks 8 months into Bush’s presidency.
Then they got away with blaming them on Clinton.
They got away with cynically using 9/11 to sell us an invasion of Iraq on false pretenses.
They got away with slandering their political opponents as disloyal and terrorist-coddlers.
They got away with outing a covert spy who was trying to prevent Iran from getting WMD.
They got away with manipulating the terror alert system to help elect Bush in 2004.
Why shouldn’t they think they can eat their cake and have it too? It worked pretty well right up until 2006, which was not all that long ago.
Martin
True. The only thing Obama knows how to do is reorganize their communities, after all.
Just Some Fuckhead
I don’t know how you can catalogue recent domestic terrorism without including William Ayers, Charles Giteau and John Brown.
Tim F.
@Zifnab:
Heh, you’re right. According to them Gitmo is a happy place.
That One - Cain
@geg6:
Which of course any issues will be blamed on Obama. Assholes.
cain
Leelee for Obama
Great post Tim. This is the interesting thing about the last eight years. I always asked people who thought that thesurveillance, torture, pre-emptive war loving Bush Administration was teh awesome how they would feel if a Democrat was President. They thought it would never happen again-I’m sure of it! They would look blankly at me and mumble something about Republicans being in power decades.
Atan is right…every generation on the right, in spite of their reactionary bent…needs to re-learn that power is transferred at inauguration …so be careful what power you give…it rarely gets returned.
cleek
they really are pretending like the last 8 years never happened. like nobody ever tried to explain things to them in terms of the "Hillary Rule".
they’re either realllly stupid, or they stupidly think we’re reaallly stupid. either way, they’re pretty stupid.
r€nato
If they’re not planning on setting off bombs or conspiring with terrorists, they’ve got nothing to worry about.
Amirite?
Zifnab
Here’s the twist. While Greenwald continues his protest for a return to Constitutionally mandated protections – habeus corpus, unlawful search and seizure, rights to speech and religion and assembly – the wingers are going to continue acting increasingly crazy and violent, making it that much harder to put the lid back on the jar.
After all, how can you justify scaling back warantless surveillance after another Oklahoma City or Olympic Park bombing?
So while Glen and Malkin might suddenly be in sync, decrying the police state, it’ll be Malkin encouraging her followers to go out and smash up mosques or citizen’s arrest "illegals" or refuse to pay taxes or whatever other foolishness she and her neo-revolutionaries can come up with.
Joshua Norton
Let’s all now recite the wingnut mantra for them:
If you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide.
How does it feeeeel?
cleek
come on. Malkin’s not decrying the muthafukkin police state. she’s decrying Obama. she’s mad that Obama is president and is doing everything she can to make other people feel the same.
don’t ever assume she’s acting as anything but a GOP cheerleader. because she’s not.
she’s a fraud and a phony and a two-bit shill.
Roq
The Right has been rigging the game for decades, because they knew deep down they couldn’t win it on the merits. All were against them. Left wing activists, George Soros and of course, the media the media the media. They’ve worked the refs relentlessly. Even when they were in power, they had to change the rules to advance their agenda. Apparently Bush couldn’t protect the country without breaking laws. The lawful surveillance of his predecessors just wasn’t enough. The Right’s political point of view was unfairly restricted by our Constitution.
For years they shrugged as we complained about our interest groups getting investigated. They laughed at our anxiety when the Constitution and the law of the land was repeatedly flouted. They pointed accusatory fingers when we chafed at the growing police state; what did we have to hide? They scoffed when we asserted that when the civil liberties of our Muslim countrymen, or even our detainees, were in danger, all of our liberties were threatened – they considered that sympathy for our enemies.
And now, they get a taste of what they built. If I may paraphrase Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire:
HAH HAH!
They get zero sympathy from me. I’m not going to lift a finger for their rights. I will not equivocate on the interconnectedness of our rights. And if that sounds like cutting off my nose to spite my face, I say: nope. They have to learn. What we’ve got here is a dysfunctional relationship between the Left and the Right. They get to restrict and abuse us only because we’ll, in turn, fight to regain all of our rights, theirs included, once we’re in power. And I’m sick and tired of advancing their freedom only to have them spit in my face. If they want to regain their liberty, they’re going to have to do it on their own.
They have to learn the value of the Constitution. Even if doing so the hard way makes recovery from that aspect of the Bush admin slower, that’s a price I’m willing to pay. Having a sane opposition party will be worth the wait.
Zifnab
@cleek:
Yes, but the end policy results of her whining are designed to decrease the amount of power afforded to the federal government. Those are the same end results Greenwald is working towards.
The difference is that Glen wants to break down federal authority because he is genuinely afraid it will be abused. Malkin wants to break down federal authority because she wants to break the law and not get caught.
Leelee for Obama
@Joshua Norton:
Let’s all now recite the wingnut mantra for them:
If you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide.
How does it feeeeel?
Full of Win!
MikeJ
Don’t forget ACORN. Community activists are lazy wimps who are incapable of doing anything except overthrowing the most powerful government in the world.
JK
It’s delicious to see the queens of crazy, Michelle Malkin and Pamela Geller, hoisted by their own petards. At the rate they’re ranting, they’re liable to drown in their own saliva.
ken adler
I said it on another site (maybe here) and I’ll say it again:
People on the left: Stay away from these Teabag rallies. Stay home, watch on TV. But do not go any where near these rallies. People with guns will be there.
NonyNony
@Joshua Norton:
Well, no. The sane and semi-sane GOPers are now either "Independents" or "Democrats" depending on where they live, what their personal ideology says, whether they can bring themselves to register Democrat, etc. The folks who are going around calling themselves "Libertarians" who aren’t demanding W’s head on a plate for his rampant escalation of the security state and his and the Republican Congress’s misappropriation of massive amounts of taxpayer money are just "glibertarians" – Republicans who’ve decided that the Republican name is toxic, but they still want to be crazy-ass wingnuts.
Glenn Reynolds is a prime example of this. Maybe someday in the distant past he actually was a libertarian, but now he’s not. He’s a glibertarian – he can use that libertarian rhetoric when he wants to make some kind of point but he can conveniently ignore it when following his rhetoric to its logical extreme would demand that charges be filed on members of the former Bush administration.
I know way too many people like this in real life. The honest libertarians I know are all either Indeps or Dems now because of the whole torture/illegal imprisonment/warrantless surveillance regime put in place by a Republican administration and a compliant Congress. (And actually, the honest libertarians I know are all re-thinking their views on economics as we speak and trying to figure out if they’re actually liberals these days – Alan Greenspan turning out to not know what the fuck he was talking about has caused a serious re-evaluation of their libertarian economic foundations).
matttbastard
LGF is seriously beginning to frighten me.
The recent ‘voice of reason’ routine has to be a clever ruse. Right?
Right?!?!?!
JPK
@Roq:
Sometimes I think this is the motivation behind Obama’s long-game strategy on dragging his feet dealing with so many of Bush’s most egregious abuses. Or maybe I should say, I hope that’s what’s going on….
cleek
i think you need to avoid using words like "policy" and "designed" with people like Malkin. they aren’t interested in policy. they are interested in keeping the GOP in power – no matter what that means in terms of policy or results. politics is a sport, elevated to the importance of a religion – your team’s success is a matter of life and death! but policy ? nah. if they cared, if they possessed the actual principles they claim to have now, they couldn’t have supported Bush and called us "traitors" for questioning him.
if a person calls you a traitor today for opposing what he will support tomorrow, he is a fraud. his motives are not based in policy.
JK
@Roq: Well said and very cool to see the reference to A Streetcar Named Desire put to such good use.
Max
Is this true? I’ve always had the distinct impression that Malkin is genuinely mentally ill.
Comrade Dread
I’ve been making the rounds on GOP blogs mocking the outrage at this by blithely quoting the same stupid mantras they used to quote to me. Along with a generous helping of I told you so.
It’s been quite cathartic and I highly recommend it.
joes527
@** Atanarjuat **:
Nah. They will never figure it out. Even now the thing that bugs them about the government security apparatus isn’t that it exists, but that it is being used to monitor folks that think like THEM.
The sad irony is that way too many folks will see stuff that would lead them to quote Thomas Jefferson when Bush was in office and think to themselves "But THIS is justified" because all the hats have been switched.
There is room here to bask in a little schadenfreude. It is always good to see something making these folks unhappy. But it is important to remember that no matter how much it seems to be restoring the karmic balance, the surveillance state is a bad thing.
Dennis-SGMM
It’s a sign of their delusional self-righteousness that few on the right ever even considered that the tools for surveillance, for suspending the Constitution and for granting the executive branch almost limitless power in some areas might somehow fall into the hands of a Democrat and be used against them. In the darkest days of the Bush power grab I figured that this was just how the righties would take it when the powers that they had cheered for in the hands of a Republican president were passed on to a Democratic one.
Wisdom
Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln will end up having only one thing in common. They will be the book-ends to strong Federalism, but both will have ended a form of slavery. One by intent, the other by fate.
Tim F.
Tall, skinny guys from Illinois known for their rhetorical ability, also US Presidents. You lose.
Dennis-SGMM
@Tim F.:
Lawyers, and members of the Illinois state legislature, also.
Those who forget history are doomed to post as "Wisdom."
joes527
@Dennis-SGMM: You forgot that they bothhad dogs
JL
Since when did hate and bigotry become a family value?
@matttbastard:
I skimmed through a few of the comments and the best excuse they could cite was the American Legion thought that the report was bad.
Tonal Crow
@Zifnab: Yeah, really. After all, according to many GOPers, Gitmo is a clean, pleasant, humane place where you get all the food (and Korans) you could want. Why wouldn’t they want to spend a few decades there?
Adam
@matttbastard:
It is distressing.
kay
This is more than a policy difference.
I just started out with the assumption that when they began picking people up and holding them without hearings, and then wiretapping, that they’d eventually get to "my group", whatever that might be. I don’t have one, really, but if I wanted to JOIN one….it’s more self-interest than "empathy".
I have no problem putting myself in the suspect category. I was already there, on a gut level, anyway.
Must be nice to be a right winger. You just assume you’re immune. That you’re the watcher, instead of the watched. Divine right of kings, or something. I have never in my entire life felt like that. Not for one minute. It must be enormously difficult for them.
Tonal Crow
@r€nato:
Yessiree. If they’ve got nothing to hide, they’ve got nothing to fear.
Dennis-SGMM
@joes527:
You point out one of the key differences between the right and the left: the left is always wary of the surveillance state, the right is only wary of it when they aren’t in power.
cleek
i obviously screwed this up:
if a person calls you a traitor today for opposing what he will oppose tomorrow, he is a fraud. his motives are not based in policy.
i blame the Val-Dieu Tripel.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Hey, that’s an Official Use Only report. Where’s the outrage of Conservatives at the leakage of sensitive government documents detailing threats to our national security?
Tonal Crow
Does this mean that Malkin, Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, et al, will now bloviate about how their
sheephangers-on should join the ACLU?Just askin’.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Tomorrow’s teabagging could be really interesting because Quinn & Rose are going to be there. Don’t know who they are? Consider yourself blessed. Next to Pittsburgh’s homegrown Quinn & Rose even Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh would appear polite, reasonable thoughtful people. I’ve listened to a lot of rightwing lunacy over the years (hell, I even did it professionally for 6 years) but I can only stomach about 5 minutes of Quinn & Rose. They’re frightening and AWFUL. After the shooting in Stanton Heights and it was revealed that the shooter was a rightwing looney, I immediately thought of them a a potential influence more than Beck or Limbaugh.
What is truly bizarre these days is that rightwingers over the past decade or so have become very pro-military, pro-police. Over the years they have tended to demonize anyone who protests because they didn’t agree with them. But now? Now the cops are "the state" and "big brother," now they’re the enemy. The big difference is that the rightwingers LOVE THEIR GUNS. Liberals? Not so much.
Dennis-SGMM
@Tonal Crow:
Naw. The Koch family, or Scaife or someone whose name we don’t even know will fund an astroturf, right-wing version of ACLU. Their organization will then go on to be what Freedom’s Watch was to Moveon.org or Conservapedia is to Wikipedia.
joes527
@Dennis-SGMM:
Is this because the right doesn’t have enough imagination so picture themselves out of power and the left doesn’t have enough imagination to picture themselves in power?
Dennis-SGMM
@joes527:
It could be because lefties read Kafka while righties read Ayn Rand.
Brachiator
@Tonal Crow:
Well, it’s either that or be associated with paranoids and racists (Recession fueling right-wing extremism, U.S. says):
Maybe Obama should impose a loyalty oath on conservative pundits. I mean, they do want to show that they are loyal Americans, don’t they? Robert Gibbs can even pass out lapel pins.
srv
Obama would go a long way to assuage fears if he "doubled" Gitmo.
But I’m not sure there would be enough room for all the teabaggers.
jenniebee
I’m a little obsessed with the French Revolution, and one of the things that has intrigued me from the start about it was the reliance the revolutionaries and mobs had on outward symbols, so it didn’t matter if you were actually a pretty good guy, if there was something symbolically wrong with you, you had a date with Mme. Guillotine. Conversely, if you were a rat bastard and busy defrauding the state but you wore a Phyrgian Bonnet, you were above suspicion. There was a total disconnect in their ideas that anybody could look like a revolutionary and not be one – as a matter of fact, when one or two people mentioned that anybody could put on a hat without really meaning anything by it, important speeches were made in the Legislative Assembly absolutely proving that it was impossible to wear revolutionary gear without being soaked through with the revolutionary spirit, and that anybody who tried to say otherwise was an enemy of the state. Ipso facto quid pro quo ad absurdum ibid.
I always thought that this was because the French just took fashion consciousness to a bizarre extreme. Now, it just looks of a piece with revolutionary thought.
Mnemosyne
@Dennis-SGMM:
Also, both moved to Illinois from other states as adults in their early 20s.
Leelee for Obama
If not before, it happened during Reconstruction. See also: Nathan Bedford Forrest, KuKluxKlan, et al
Ash Can
::boggles::
Seriously, are Malkin et al. just figuring this out now? Really?
Seriously?
Are they that stupid, or that delusional? Or both? I mean, I know that they’re whackjobs. But this is breathtaking.
Zifnab
@Ash Can: Dishonest. The word you’re looking for is "Dishonest".
Bill Teefy
@Just Some Fuckhead: Did Ayers ever actually do anything newsworthy other than get off because his dad was a rich conservative. As a terrierist he was pretty much all fail. And Chuck dropped a prez but I am not seeing terriers.
John Brown…now your talking terriers, but he had a lot of terrier company with all of the Missouri and Kansas crap and is this "recent" terrierism?
Maybe I am missing the deep snark.
Brachiator
@jenniebee:
And this is also why Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities" is such a fine read. For some revolutionaries, grievance supercedes any possibilty of decency or mercy. And the excesses of the French Revolution come back again and again in the actions of later extremists, from the Khmer Rouge (executing people who wear glasses) to the Taliban (beating men without beards and women who dare to go out in public).
omen
this is pretty cyclical. when times are bad, you can count on minorities being set up to be the scapegoat. but now, you have to be willfully blind and pretty obtuse to miss the role white elites on wall street have played in being responsible for wrecking the economy.
someguy
I’d feel sorry for the wingers if they didn’t have a predilection for killing cops and brown peepul, and blowing up abortion clinics and federal buildings whenever they don’t get their way.
Krista
It’s especially disturbing considering how many of us lefties kept asking them "Would you approve of giving President Hillary Clinton these very same powers?" They didn’t even have to imagine the scenario — we spelled it right out for them, and were met with uncomprehending stares. To me, that complete inability to grasp the possibility of any future outcome other than that which is desired…well, it has to be indicative of some sort of mental illness, really. But, I suppose it was to be expected — didn’t Condi herself say something about how they didn’t create ANY sort of Plan B for Iraq, because that would mean admitting the possibility of failure? These people are clinical, from the top echelons right down to the lowliest Cheeto-muncher.
Indie Tarheel
MNPundit
Other Boleyn? Natalie Dormer is HOT. Fuck yeah!
That’s about the level of seriousness Malkin’s post deserves.
amocz
What goes around comes around. Karma is a bitch. And it kissed them right on the mouth.
Coming Soon to a Theater of teh Terrorwar Near Them:
Karma Bones Wingnuts Up the A**!!
O! W! Whadda ya mean, you just forgot to make Us Patriots exempt from the USAPATRIOT Act? WTF? Hoocoodanode!
HeyerKnowledge
Hey, this is where all the socialists hang out.
Ed Drone
I always wanted the new president to, once in office, arrest and imprison the Congress — all of it — without trial or hearing (as is his right, under the Patriot Act and its various signing statements, etc.). Then he would release them (after maybe a few days) and order them to repeal the damned thing. And if they wouldn’t, announce that he’d arrest them again.
Too bad he didn’t do that.
Ed
HeyerKnowledge
Then congress would vote him out. How embarrasing.
angulimala
Perhaps a Phrygian Trucker Cap?
a Phrygian Nascar tattoo?
a Phrygian Gunrack on the car?
Dan P
no, No, NO. She have no problem with the power afforded to the government, their aim is just to use the issue as a weapon against obama, to get back in power and use it "properly".
percie
So, you’re already hired by Jailnet Neopoliticubano as the new publicist of the previously left-wing hated, now the huggable-to-the-left DHS ?
So, congrats for joining the LYING SPINNERS CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS and promote this nutjob. CNN blew its cover by maliciously using a wrong picture for your hated "wingnuts."
SO THE LEFT HATES NAZIS BUT LOVES CHE GUEVARRA, FIDEL CASTRO, HAMAS, ETC.!!!! So you should hate the lamedum FDR in DOING NOTHING against the rise of the Hitler!!!!!
I’m moderate. BUT I still love my "bible-thumping", "gun-totting" Conservatives. I will never join the Democrats in embracing the the illegal, pro-nanny state immigrants to replace those conservatives who helped build this nation.
bjacques
@60 (jennibee!):
Speaking of crooks in Phrygian caps…
Here’s a possible scenario had the Republican revolution and permanent majority been successful….
The text is in French, but it’s pretty much self-explanatory, especially if the date means anything to you and some of the faces look familiar.
FactCheck
What ignorant rantings. Your title is supremely ironic since liberals are the one who cant get the point despite the Supreme Court, Congress, and even Barack Obama agreeing with the Bush administration. (Yes, libtards, your dear leader voted for warantless wiretapping and now uses it)
There is an ENORMOUS difference — legal, constitutional and moral — between surveillance of terrorists overseas and people talking to overseas terrorists and wiretapping political opponents.
The courts ruled the latter unconstitutional long ago when Kennedy was wiretapping Martin Luther King, but have NEVER ruled wiretapping our enemies unconstitutional, Indeed, they have made it clear over the years that the president has the constitutional authority to do so even without a warrant, even when one party in the conversation in in the US.
The Supreme court has just affirmed that decision, the Democrat Congress re-affirmed it with legislation, which Obama voted for.
it is only the ignorant, mouth-breathing, spittle-spewing fuckwad libtard sociopaths that could "Never get it" no matter how many times it has been explained to them, precisely because you ARE mouth-breathing, spittle-spewing, fuckwad ignorant libtard sociopaths.
You have lost this argument at EVERY single level!
HerrBerr
Excellent post. A key thing you overlook, however, is that there are many on the radio-controlled far right who still see no inconsistency with domestic wiretapping – because, I fear, they don’t think that McVeigh and progeny did anything wrong.
DPirate
You guys are talking about the fringe as if it is supposed to be consistent and logical. Besides, the democrats helped all this stuff along like good little happy tools. You can give them points for pretense, but that’s about it.
The bitch about the post and the first-linked post is that while pointing out that defending constitutional rights shouldn’t be a partisan activity, they come off as partisan jabs.
Beside, unless you see yourself as the equivalent opposite of these fools, why give them play?
lou
John, don’t forget the neo-nazi millionaire who had dirty bomb materials in his garage. What’s especially scary is the cops wouldn’t have found them had his wife not killed him.
And Factcheck, re: ignorance. kettle, meet pot. I suggest you google a series of articles in the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun about the surveillance done on anti-capital punishment and other anti-war groups in Maryland. They were spying on Quakers, for cripes sakes. That’s only the stuff that has come to light. God knows what other states’ law enforcement groups did that never got uncovered.