Obama Administration Defends Wiretaps
Posted on April 6, 2009
I can’t wait to hear how, after all the whining about how evil Bush was invading our privacy, the left will defend Obama on this. The ACLU will be absolutely unable to. They’ll stab a democrat in the back every time if it even appears they might care about national security. Fun stuff!
The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration’s wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.
Disclosure of information sought by the customers, “which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security,” Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.
Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign’s “unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency.”
Will the ACLU suddenly become silent on this issue while trumpeting the issue of Gitmo, or will they call Obama out as a fascist that hates civil liberties? Change, baby, change!
Hmmm…looks like there is more. Same as the old boss?
In February Obama lawyers used the same “state secrets” tactic to block a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of five victims of extraordinary rendition — the CIA’s famed kidnap and torture program. “This case cannot be litigated,” Department of Justice lawyer Douglas Letter declared on February 9th, arguing that the case, Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, should be thrown out. “The judges shouldn’t play with fire in this national security situation.”
ACLU director Anthony Romero decried the move. “Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government.”
Now, warrantless spying can be added to the list.
”In our case we have no reason to believe that the warrantless wiretapping has ended,” said [EFF legal director Cindy] Cohn, “so at some point we have to call it Obama’s warrantless wiretapping.”
Hear the deafening silence from the civil liberty loving left? No, that’s crickets.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Barack Obama, Constitution, Guantanamo Bay, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, National Security, News, Stupidity, War On Terror
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10 Responses to “Obama Administration Defends Wiretaps”
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Here’s where it should start to sink in that I’m not a “lefty”… I’ll stand by everything I’ve said on this subject. Obama can go !@#$ himself just as hard as I advised Bush to.
There are precious few humans capable of resisting great power. That’s why it’s idiotic to consolidate so much power into a single office.
Hear, hear. Once the government has the power to do something, it’s not going to give it up, and those who campaigned for it will find themselves betrayed when the new crop of politicians roll into town and discover that they like the turbo button that the last ones os helpfully installed for them. I’m with Jeff. I yelled and screamed when Bush did this crap, and I’m doing it just as loudly now that Obama is merely rebranding and re-using Bush-era policies. This is why government power is so dangerous. You have no idea who will use the power when those who expanded it have long since retired or been booted out of office.
What I love is that Leftists who encounter the reality of a hard-left idealogue like Obama continuing the same practices as a squishy-right idealogue like Bush simply cannot fathom the possibility that their OWN perspective is the one that is foolish, short-sighted and dangerous to national security.
It’s all well and good to whine about this stuff from the sidelines. When your a** is on the line to secure the peace and security of the American people, you know what? You’re going to look at this differently too.
In fact, chances are (unless you are an idiot) you’ll reach the same conclusions that Bush and Obama (and Clinton for that matter) reached.
Of course it’s pointless to remind all you imbeciles on the Left that those of us with BRAINS predicted that Obama would keep on with most, if not all, of the very same Bush policies he attacked on the campaign to get your vote.
It’s simple common sense.
Good for a laugh:
January 8, 2008 1:16 PM PST
Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9845595-7.html
Does this include phone calls we make to each other about defending and protecting the bama brigade from over throwing our US CONSTITUTION.
Very subversive and arrogant of American citizens to defend it (The Constitution).
Tsk tsk on those nasty Americans. Wiretaps are in order in this orderless administration.
I’m confident the Obama administration will have to continue some policies left over from the Bush administration. Obama didn’t invent wiretapping. The U.S. has been using subversive tactics for many, many years. In fact, warrantless wiretapping was started by Bush administration as part of the Patriot Act, which right wing conservatives helped bring about because they were “afraid” after 911. Hopefully, wiretapping will put an end to these domestic attacks launched by these so-called “patriots” who think someone is going to stop them from clinging to their guns & religion.
The law is a pain in the a** sometimes, but it IS THE LAW. This is just as bad by the Obama Administration as it was by the Bush/Cheney (or was that Cheney/Bush) administration. If someone (including the President) doesn’t like a law they should petition Congress to change it. Unlike the saying about rules being made to be broken, laws are to be respected; the way they are created, (usually) respected, and (hopefully correctly) enforced is one of the fundamental things that makes this country great. Everyone should agree with these things, not just those on the left, or those on the right. These things are self-evident. This shouldn’t be a “political” issue, it should be an American Citizen issue.
You actually deleted my second post? Nice.
[You actually used profanity after all the years you've been posting here? Not nice!]
“They’ll stab a democrat in the back every time if it even appears they might care about national security.”
One more reason why I wonder how you guys think the ACLU is a leftist organization.
Is my mind fuzzy or what. Seems like Mr. Richard Nixon was impeached because of some wiretapping by the Republican spooks of the Democratic convention HQ at the Notorious Watergate Hotel in Washington DC. His crime (if my memory has not gone yet) was to cover up this amnesty. Now we are into wiretapping into whoever we deem worthy and calling it wonderful???? Come on America, let’s not lose our grip on reality just to prove that the liberals are the greatest thing since sliced bread and the Conservatives are Werewolves incognito. We are going way too far out on a limb here.