Racism, Racism, Nothing But Racism

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." — James Madison, National Gazette Essay, 1792

Investigators were trying to determine Sunday what may have motivated a 30-year-old man [Shannon Miles, black] accused of ambushing a uniformed suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy [Darren Goforth, white] filling his patrol car with gas in what authorities believe was a targeted killing.

Well, I can help them with that. Let’s start with the obvious. Shannon Miles (a black man) is a crazy guy, just as Dylann Roof (the white man from the Charleston church shootings) is a crazy guy and Vester Lee Flanagan (the black man who killed his white co-workers at a Virginia TV station the other day) was a crazy guy. The latter two claimed they wanted to start a race war. No word yet on Miles, but if we believe in what our grandmothers told us — that actions speak louder than words — he’s already more than half way there.

Also obvious, Barack Obama and Eric Holder (and now Loretta Lynch) are to blame for encouraging an atmosphere of racial divisiveness and, yes, hatred in our society. Anyone honest can see — and the polls have reported — a serious increase in racial tension and violence (Baltimore, Ferguson, etc.) since the beginning of the Obama administration. The racist-to-the-core “Black Lives Matter” movement is quite simply their evil spawn.

Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin (a regular on Fox News) calls the “Black Lives Matter” movement the “Black Lies Matter.” In an interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro a few nights ago on Justice with Judge Jeanine Clarke said that Obama and Holder laid the groundwork for “this war on police” by supporting ‘activists’ who have disparaged law enforcement based upon a set of lies.”

He continued by saying “I am too pissed off tonight to be diplomatic with what’s going on and I’m not going to stick my head in the sand about it. I said last December war had been declared on the American police officer led by some high profile people, one coming out of the White House, and one coming out of the United State Department of Justice. And it’s open season right now. No doubt about it…

…I’m tired of people calling these black activists. They’re not black activists. This is black slime and it needs to be eradicated from American society. I need every law abiding person in America to stand up and start pushing back against this slime. (It should be noted that Sheriff Clarke is black and elected as a Democrat)

 

On August 31^st Sheriff Clarke said during an interview on Fax and Friends. Clarke pointed out that the headline of that tragic story should be “Black Man Shoots White Defenseless Police Officer,” since Black Lives Matter activists always point out when it’s a white officer shooting a black man.

“President Obama has breathed life into this ugly movement,” Clarke stated. “It is time now for good, law-abiding Americans to rise up like they did in Houston around that Chevron station, an outpouring. But it can’t just be symbolic we now have to counter this slime, this filth coming out of these cop haters.”

Clarke asserted that the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing more than an attempt to weaken the institution of policing.

“If there’s anything that needs to be straightened out in this country, it is the subculture that has risen out of the under-class in the American ghetto,” Clarke said. “Fix the ghetto, and you will see a lesser need for assertive police officers or policing in these areas, and then you’ll see less confrontation. Stop trying to fix the police. Fix the ghetto.”

Illinois grandmother Peggy Hubbard blasted the Black Lives Matter movement last week in an emotional Facebook video, which has gone viral.

Hubbard said that Black Lives Matter activists are focusing on police brutality instead of incidents like the tragic death of Jamyla Bolden, a 9-year-old Ferguson, Missouri, girl who was fatally struck by a stray bullet in her mother’s bedroom while doing her homework.

“You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered. Her future mattered. Her promises mattered,” Hubbard said. “Police brutality? How about black brutality?”

On the Hannity show Hubbard said “that anti-police activists don’t want to face reality.”

“We want to glorify the criminals, the bad guys. We want to glorify them and give credence to their life. What contributions did they make?” Hubbard asked.

“It’s not a black issue. This is not a white issue. It’s a human issue. It’s an accountability issue. It’s a responsibility issue. That is what it is,” Hubbard said. “They made this about race. This was never about race. This was about right and wrong.”

Milwaukee Country Sheriff David Clarke joined the program and said that 75 percent of the problems in the black community are self-inflicted.

He pointed to things like father-absent homes, drug and alcohol abuse, poor schools and failure to stay in the workforce.

“The other 25 percent are inflicted by the Democratic Party with their modern liberalism, which is conduct without borders,” Clarke said. “They reward underachievement, they make excuses for criminal behavior like black-on-black crime, and they blame everybody else for the problems that go on within our community.”

When we talk about growing violence in America’s larger cities we frequently focus on New York and Baltimore (and for good reason). But the nation’s capital has been experiencing its own problems along those lines lately. A rather chilling recounting of some of these “local stories” provides the backdrop for a recent column in the Washington Post by Colbert I. King.

Due to the lack of coverage by the mainstream media on the goings on in the nation’s capital I’ll confess that some of the stories of violence and mayhem King is talking about were completely unknown to me, leading King to compare Washington to “the wild west.” One example is the case where the Metro had decided to wave the white flag and stop running bus lines after dark to a particular section of Elvans Road SE because somebody had been shooting at the bus. (After public outcry, the Metro retreated from their decision and sent the buses back anyway.) This was followed by more people being gunned down in the streets and in their homes this month.

King notes that a greater police presence might not make much of a difference because the criminals really don’t seem to care. In one of the most shocking bits of evidence presented, three people were shot one night on Missouri Avenue NW. Sadly, that might not have been a notable enough event these days to raise an eyebrow if it weren’t for one thing… it happened within eyesight of the 4th District police headquarters.

So what’s the solution if you can’t just throw more cops at the problem? Mr. King offers some tough medicine which certain high profile activists these days aren’t going to want to hear. Read this portion carefully.

“Not to get all existential, but the problem is much deeper than synthetic drugs, high-capacity gun magazines, turf wars, rejiggering police deployment or keeping an eye on repeat violent offenders.

We have on our hands — in our neighborhoods, on our streets and maybe living next door — walking disasters: individuals who believe that their lives matter, but not yours or mine. Neither do our laws and institutions.

The Wild West’s outlaws felt that way, too. But it didn’t turn out so well for them. Won’t for ours, either, in the long run.

The challenge, as always: to keep our potential outlaws from going down that path. That’s not up to the police. Look at the faces of the killers and their victims. It’s on us — parents, preachers, politicians, community pontificators — all who profess that black lives matter, to prove it.”

For some reason it’s always tough for anyone taking part in the public discussion to try to bring up the staggering amount of violence which takes place in our cities. (See my blog: Fact vs. Fiction) Because the phenomenon occurs largely in the most economically depressed areas, this largely falls within the black community. Rather than focusing strictly on violence which happens between the races, conversations such as this need to keep in mind that the FBI’s homicide data for 2013 (the latest year available) shows that 2,491 black Americans were murdered. Of those, only 189 were committed by whites while 2,245 (90%) were done in by black suspects. (It should be noted that the same report will show that the vast majority of white homicide victims (83%) were killed by other whites and 14% by blacks.) The vast majority of this can be chalked up to gang activity in the cities. There’s a big problem with violence inside the community, but these conversations are generally cut short any time a white politician or journalist tries to bring it up.

Note that of these 5,723 homicides (not 30,000 as the left-wing media reports) between 64.7% (West region) and 72.1% (Midwest region) were committed with firearms. This 2013 FBI report is loaded with statistics and one could spend hours perusing it. This should be the job of the mainstream media and their talking heads, but it seems that they don’t have time for the facts!

When an analysis from an African-American writer like King treads into these waters, specifically name checking the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s sure to raise a fuss. But it’s also a reality that needs to be dealt with. Reforms in some police procedures, better training and body cameras are all positive steps, no doubt. But if you really want to cut down on the number of deadly encounters between black citizens and the police, it’s never going to happen until a way is found to drive down the crime rates significantly and we start giving the cops a reason not to be policing those high crime communities so heavily. That’s not race war talk, folks. It’s just math.

Kurt Schlichter writes in Townhall.com:

“In the wake of yet another killing spree by an Obama voter, there were the predictable calls to “do something” about guns. It was no shock that the liberals’ preferred solution to the problem of Democrat mainstream media personalities murdering people because of their racial and sexual grievances was to disarm everyone who isn’t a Democrat mainstream media personality who murders people because of his racial and sexual grievances. But what was shocking was how quickly the anti-civil rights left moved on to pursue other tyrannies.

Liberals initiated their “guns are bad” mental macro before the killer had even botched his suicide – the serial bungling of enterprises like the VA becomes more understandable when you see how a liberal can’t even blow his brains out right. Liberal media types immediately started blaming the NRA members who did not do it instead of their fellow media liberal who did. An unconfirmed rumor has it the first reporter who actually finds a mass shooter who is a member of the NRA will get a new Prius from Michael Bloomberg.”

…

“Yet within 24 hours of the hideous murders, the liberals stopped talking about gun control. Obama was back dodging the Senate’s treaty approval power to give the Iranians the bomb. Hillary, whose campaign strategy is to try to out-nationalist and out-socialist Bernie Sanders, was busy comparing GOP candidates to national socialists – though this time, she did not mean it as a compliment. Even Mia Farrow had fallen silent again, taking a break from lecturing her fellow citizens and returning to her usual pastime of making good romantic choices.

Clearly, had the killer not checked the box for every key demographic the Democrats depend on – black, gay, media, liberal, loser – we would be hearing a lot more about it. But there is another reason the liberals moved on besides the inconvenient fact that, as usual, it was one of theirs doing the killing. The left has lost on gun control.”

Let me just say first of all that anyone who thinks I am being callous with the above headline hasn’t spent most of their day the last week watching cable news, like I have. Obviously, the deaths of Alison Parker and Adam Ward were a tragedy and I don’t want to minimize the loss and suffering of their family and friends. But the media’s treatment of this story has long since passed honest respect for the untimely passing of two young people and wandered into obvious sermonizing on the evils of guns. What’s happening now isn’t news coverage; it’s ghoulish capitalizing on a tragedy for ratings and politics.

The reason for the obsession with these two particular crimes is obvious, and has nothing to do with the crimes themselves – it has to do with what the crimes are useful for. The victims are telegenic people and their families and friends all appear to be media savvy. They were killed by a gun and therefore this story provides a perfect vehicle for the activists in the media to push their narrative on gun control.

Consider that Adam Ward’s father has been given almost pro forma coverage throughout this entire ordeal, and that his remembrances of his son have been completely ignored. Meanwhile virtually the entire country can now identify Alison Parker’s dad. Both have similar stories to tell. Why is one on camera perpetually while the other might as well not exist in this story? Because Alison Parker’s dad dutifully stumps for gun control every time the lens is on him and Adam Ward’s dad stated the obvious in his one interview on the subject: stricter gun control laws wouldn’t have kept guns out of the hands of his son’s killer, since the Vester Lee Flanagan successfully passed a mandatory background check before purchasing his gun in the first place.

The media does not give a damn about Alison Parker and Adam Ward, nor the grief of their families. They are using both them and everyone around them because of the spectacle value and because it helps promote a political agenda they believe in. This transparent emotional manipulation at the expense of the legitimate grief of a family that has suffered loss is absolutely sickening to me.

Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman says that Deputy Sheriff Darren Goforth was targeted because of his uniform. Hickman is referring to the wild, violent, hateful rhetoric coming from black activists who have called for the murder of police in recent weeks.

According to Reuters

“Hickman linked the shooting to anti-police rhetoric following protests against deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers. Goforth was white, the suspect is black.

He said the department assumed Goforth was a target because he wore a uniform, and bluntly addressed protests against police violence and mass incarceration of blacks.

"We've heard black lives matter; all lives matter. Well cops' lives matter too," Hickman said. "At any point where the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen(s), this rhetoric has gotten out of control," said Hickman.

The fatal shooting comes eight months after two New York police officers were ambushed by a gunman who had said he wanted to avenge the deaths of black men in confrontations with police.

Hundreds of people attended a vigil on Saturday night.

"I wanted to demonstrate that all lives matter, regardless of color," Carol Hayes, an African American woman, told a local NBC News affiliate.”

There is no comparison between charges of conservative "hate speech" leading to shootings and the ultra-violent, nauseating calls for the outright murder of police by black activists:

“Two teenage girls told Breitbart Texas they saw the shooter fire one shot into the back of the head of the deputy who was simply getting gas for his vehicle. After the deputy fell, they heard three or four other shots. According to the first witness, those shots were fired into the deputy’s back.

The execution of the deputy came just days after black radicals went on an internet radio show hosted from Texas and called for the lynching of white people and the killing of cops to “turn the tide” against blacks being killed by cops. Breitbart Texas reported on Friday morning the details of the radio show and the comments that were made.

One black man spoke up saying they needed to kill “cops that are killing us. The other black male on the show said, “That will be the best method right there.”

On August 29, 2015 Chuck Ross wrote in the Daily Caller:

“Black Lives Matter protesters marching on the Minnesota state fair on Saturday spewed violent anti-cop rhetoric just hours after a Harris County, Tex. sheriff’s deputy was ambushed and executed at a Houston-area gas station.

“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” activists with the St. Paul, Minn. branch of Black Lives Matter chanted while marching behind a group of police officers down a highway just south of the state fair grounds.”

The White House hasn't deemed it proper to comment on the killing of Deputy Goforth - what's the life of one more policemen more or less seems to be the attitude. Of course, if they acknowledge the deputy's death, they have to answer questions about what role their encouragement of this violent rhetoric had on the execution.

The silence on the left about Deputy Goforth's execution speaks to a towering hypocrisy that reveals their concern about violent rhetoric only applies to their political enemies.

Barack Obama won’t be saying, “If I had a psycho son, he’d look like Vester Lee.” But he might as well. Because Vester Lee Flanagan II, the bigoted maniac who murdered the WDBJ reporter and cameraman on live TV, was a philosophical offspring of the Left.

It’s well known now that Flanagan was a professional victim, nurturing grudges against all and sundry based on his “status” as a homosexual black man. He had an axe to grind with white women because they supposedly made racial statements to him, and against black men because they supposedly directed anti-homosexual remarks his way. And it didn’t seem as if he liked anyone very much.

Of course, most of the bigotry he perceived from others was in his head, a function of his own prejudice, inculcated via decades of liberal indoctrination. When you dislike others, you view them through tinted lenses and ascribe negative motivations to everything they do. Where a fair-minded individual might interpret a comment as innocuous, simply a misunderstanding or an example of the issuer merely having a bad day, you see malice. “Of course it was racial! That’s the way white people are.” And, “That had to be ‘homophobic’ in this society, which macro and micro-aggresses against everything that I am!” (of course, certain things are supposed to be stigmatized). These notions, again, were put in Flanagan’s mixed-up head by liberals and liberals alone. They disgorge hateful, pure and utter nonsense such as micro-aggression theory, “white privilege,” critical-race theory and 1000 other things designed to divide with lies. It is evil.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “Goods look a lot better when they come wrapped as gifts.” Everything is a gift, but the Left teaches just the opposite: to have a sense of entitlement, to believe you’re owed, to ever and always view our very large glass as half empty. Some have asked, quite naively, how it is that despite Flanagan’s pathetic performance as a reporter, he was hired by more than one media outlet and given chance after chance to right the ship. Well, golly gee, Cletus, it’s a mystery.

Flanagan was clearly an affirmative-action hire, enjoying the daily-double victim status of being black and homosexual. And that was part of the problem: too much was given to him on a silver platter — because of liberalism.

There have been many articles in recent years about how college graduates today enter the workforce with unrealistic expectations about their economic self-worth and starting salary. We hear about how so many of them can’t tolerate criticism and rejection; act as if their own feelings are inordinately important and should command respect; and how they lack a sense of propriety, a grasp of their place in a workplace’s hierarchy. As a consequence, they may barge into an office to vent their feelings, even if it’s neither the time nor the place.

This is all the result of liberal parenting, of the psychobabble disgorged by the likes of Dr. Benjamin Spock. It’s no wonder many young people today have little sense of just hierarchies — their permissive liberal parents didn’t establish a just hierarchy in the home. Instead, they acted as if their family was a dysfunctional democracy and junior a special-interest group that political correctness dictated must be coddled and catered to. Junior seldom heard the word “No!” uttered in exclamatory fashion; junior seldom had to delay gratification; junior got participation trophies just for showing up. He was treated as a little prince around whom the world revolved. He was marinated in “self-esteem” pap in schools, telling him how great and special he was. The result? Junior and many of his peers (not that he imagined he had any peers) grew up to be narcissists.

For the past 100 years our society has been under attack by the progressive liberals. This attack has escalated in the last 20 years and has skyrocketed since 2008. Liberals have managed to get God out of schools so there are no more absolutes of good and evil. The Ten Commandments are considered outdated and in many cases banned from the public square. These commandments have been the basis for are laws for the past 239 years. The rule of law is being replaced by the rule of the majority.

Everything is gray and moral equivalencies rule the day. University deans and professors threaten students with failing grades if they do not pledge allegiance to their agendas. Even speech is being regulated with the banning of certain words such as “alien” and “illegal” when referring to immigrants who unlawfully entered the country. Other words like “him” and “her” are even being banned from many university classrooms as the progressive liberals constantly attempt to alter the narrative to conform to their agenda.

Every good progressive liberal will tell you that given enough money and power they can make our Constitutional Republic into the Utopia of Sir Thomas Moore and not our Founders belief in the self-government of John Locke. Since Cain killed Able with a stone evil has existed in this world. This evil has manifested itself through history in many ways. It has shown itself from attacks by individuals on other individuals to the democide of governments.

[Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel (1932-2014) as "the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder." Most of this democide was carried out under the banner of liberalism in the aim of creating their version of Utopia, i.e., Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, and today’s radical Islam.]

Today’s progressive liberals just cannot face the fact that evil exists. To do so would force them to realize that there must be good and if there is good there must be a God. They just can’t wrap their minds around this concept. Instead they look for moral equivalents to justify their beliefs.

When a deputy sheriff, TV reporters, theater audiences, grade school students and teachers, or church goers are murdered by evil or insane people the progressive liberal cannot look to the person behind the gun, knife, or ax. Liberals will blame guns. This is partially because, unlike with Dylann Roof, they can’t blame Confederate flags or 19th-century statues. But it’s also because they’re incapable of putting the blame where it really belongs: the man in the mirror.

Guns don’t kill people. Liberalism does.

Two Good Things In One Day

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." — James Madison

It’s not often that two good things happen of the same day but today we had just such a happening.

The first thing was a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of the Town of Greece, New York v. Galloway et al. The Supreme Court ruled that a town in upstate New York did not violate the Constitution by starting its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month” who was almost always Christian. (See Washington Post Report)

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court’s more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian nor likely to make members of other faiths feel unwelcome.

“Ceremonial prayer,” he wrote, “is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town’s practices could not be reconciled “with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government.” What else would you expect from the four progressive, non-tolerant liberals sitting on the Court?

Town officials in Greece, N.Y., near Rochester, said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer. In practice, however, almost all of the chaplains were Christian. Some of their prayers were explicitly sectarian, with references, for instance, to “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.”

Two town residents sued, saying the prayers ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion. They said the prayers offended them and, in Justice Kennedy’s words, “made them feel excluded and disrespected.” That’s it folks two residents out of a town of 94,000. I guess 93,998 have to bow two the wishes of 2 malcontents that are offended.

But Justice Kennedy said the relevant constitutional question was not whether they were offended. “Adults often encounter speech they find disagreeable,” he wrote.

Justice Kennedy said traditions starting with the first Congress supported the constitutionality of ceremonial prayers at the start of legislative sessions. He added that it would be perilous for courts to decide when those prayers crossed a constitutional line and became impermissibly sectarian.

“To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian,” he wrote, “would force the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, a rule that would involve government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town’s current practice of neither editing or approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined all of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas most of it.

Justice Kennedy did suggest that some prayers may be unacceptable if offered consistently over time, including ones that “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation or preach conversion.”

Town officials had tried, he said, to recruit members of various faiths to offer prayers.

In dissent, Justice Kagan said they had not tried hard enough. “So month in and month out for over a decade,” she wrote, “prayers steeped in only one faith, addressed toward members of the public, commenced meetings to discuss local affairs and distribute government benefits.” How hard were they supposed to try? Perhaps they should have scoured the state and nation for volunteers. Ridiculous!

In 1983, in Marsh v. Chambers, the Supreme Court upheld the Nebraska Legislature’s practice of opening its legislative sessions with an invocation from a paid Presbyterian minister, saying that such ceremonies were “deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.”

Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case from Greece was different. The prayers at the town board meetings were often explicitly sectarian, they said, and residents were forced to listen to them in order to participate in local government.

“No one can fairly read the prayers from Greece’s town meetings as anything other than explicitly Christian – constantly and exclusively so,” she wrote in her dissent in the case, Town of Greece v. Galloway, No. 12-696.

Moreover, she said, the clergy “put some residents to the unenviable choice of either pretending to pray like the majority or declining to join its communal activity, at the very moment of petitioning their elected leaders.”

These 4 liberal progressive justices will go to any length to disrespect the intent of our Founders when it comes to religion and the First Amendment.

As I drive east along SR 91 in Orange County there is a cross high upon a hill surrounded by a chain link fence that is clearly visible from the freeway. There is an even larger cross visible from the northbound I-215 in Riverside County near Murrieta. Both crosses are on private property, but very visible to and motorist driving east or north past the respective Christian symbols. I am waiting for the day when some bone-headed person brings an atheist group to town to bring a suit for the removal of these crosses on the grounds that they are “offensive” to them and cause such a distraction that they could cause a traffic mishap. To paraphrase Justice Kennedy’s comment on offensive speech; there are things I see and hear that I don’t like, but I just ignore the moron who said it and go one with my life. I used to live in the neighborhood where a mosque was located and I drove by every day. In fact I drove by it so often I no longer saw it. All I have to say to those who supported the two malcontents in the Town of Greece is “get a life.”

The second good thing that happened is Speaker of the House John Boehner finally after 601 days of spinning, obfuscating, lying, cover-up, political posturing, and Congressional hearings appointed a select committee to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012 when terrorist carried out a planned attack on our consulate and left the ambassador and three others dead. No more “what does it matter” Mrs. Clinton, now, hopefully we will get to the truth.

To head this committee Boehner selected a very good congressman. His name is Trey Gowdy from South Carolina. He’s got fifteen years of prosecutorial experience at both the federal and state levels. (Fun fact: I was watching an old episode of “Forensic Files” on HLN a week or two ago and who popped up onscreen but a young, dark-haired Trey Gowdy, discussing a murder case he’d won in South Carolina.) He’s also been out in front of the caucus in accusing the White House of Benghazi cover-ups: He’s the man who claimed last summer that they’d been giving CIA agents linked to the incident new identities to hide them from House investigators, and he told Greta Van Susteren just a few days ago that he has evidence that the White House is deliberately withholding documents related to the attack.

Boehner’s statement in appointing Gowdy.

“With four of our countrymen killed at the hands of terrorists, the American people want answers, accountability, and justice. Trey Gowdy is as dogged, focused, and serious-minded as they come. His background as a federal prosecutor and his zeal for the truth make him the ideal person to lead this panel. I know he shares my commitment to get to the bottom of this tragedy and will not tolerate any stonewalling from the Obama administration. I plan to ensure he and his committee has the strongest authority possible to root out all the facts. This is a big job, but Rep. Gowdy has the confidence of this conference, and I know his professionalism and grit will earn him the respect of the American people.”

Gowdy may not be a Sam Ervin of Watergate fame but he is damn close. According to Hot Air:

“Smart politics twice over. Part of the reason Boehner agreed to the select committee was to unify the party ahead of the midterms; after Ben Rhodes’s e-mail became public, refusing to form a committee would have been another flashpoint between the party establishment and the grassroots to go along with amnesty and increasingly tepid opposition to ObamaCare. It stands to reason that if you’re going to do something to placate your base, you might as well choose a conservative in good standing for chairman too. If he’d appointed a centrist and the committee came up with nothing, righties would have accused him of a whitewash. They can’t do that with Gowdy in charge, and if Gowdy comes up with nothing too, then Boehner can distance himself from it by saying it was largely a tea-party production all along.

The other reason it’s smart politics is that not only is Gowdy a respected prosecutor, he’s consistently one of the most dynamic members at House hearings. (You’ve watched enough clips of him on this site to know that.) Boehner doesn’t know what he’s going to get by way of evidence but he will insist on some political payoff from this ahead of the midterms, and Gowdy’s just the guy to deliver that. You want clips of John Kerry or Hillary Clinton sweating under a tough cross-examination to dominate the day’s news cycle on cable? He’ll do that for you better than virtually anyone else.

One question, though. Will Democrats participate in the committee? Here’s Adam Schiff telling Chris Wallace yesterday on FNS that he thinks the party should boycott. I hate to admit it but that’s sound strategy. They’re taking a risk in doing it: If the GOP turns up compelling evidence of Obama’s or Hillary’s negligence on the night of the attack, the fact that Democrats refused to take part in the investigation will make them look complicit in the cover-up and whitewash. If the GOP doesn’t turn up something compelling, though, the boycott will make it easier for Democrats to argue that it was a kangaroo court all along that the public should either pay no attention to or actively punish Republicans for organizing. In fact, Dems can cite their boycott as a reason for the public to downplay or ignore any evidence that Gowdy does uncover. E.g., “We knew Republicans would be grossly unfair to the administration and blow their findings out of all proportion. That’s why we didn’t participate.” It’s a way to delegitimize the effort, which is the whole ballgame for them right now.”

Be that as it may the Democrats better buckle up during the coming weeks. It’s going to get rough and explosive just like Watergate did. There are too many skeletons that have been stashed away in their closet and it’s up to Gowdy and his staffers to drag them out. It’s also a good time for Gowdy and some of his staffers and investigators to make a name for themselves. Over the past 20 months people have been shuffled around, demoted and promoted. Documents have been uncovered and no doubt some folks are fearful of their political fate. Washington is no bastion of loyalty when things get tough. Ask John Dean of Jeb McGruder.

Recognizing a serious threat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted the expansion of the House GOP probe of Benghazi as an “election-year stunt.”

Close, but no cigar. The real stunt came during the election of 2012, and it was carried out by Democrats.

That’s when the White House went into full fudge mode to protect President Obama from responsibility over the terrorist attack that killed four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya.

The desperate effort included lying about the attack, a fact that is now undeniable thanks to the release of a secret email written days later.

In it, an Obama aide said (Ben Rhodes) a goal of having U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice do five TV interviews was to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

But there was no protest about a video before the Benghazi attack, and CIA analysts said they knew instantly it was a planned terror operation. The date — the 11th anniversary of 9/11 — was one of many telltale signs.

The slaughter came only two months before Election Day in a campaign where Obama insisted that Al Qaeda was on the run. He couldn’t say “never mind,” with Mitt Romney breathing down his neck.

So his campaign and the White House tried to obscure what the president knew and when he knew it, and the question now is whether they committed a crime. The email was released in response to a private group’s lawsuit, after being withheld from congressional subpoenas asking for all Benghazi documents.

In promising a select committee would pursue the case, House Speaker John Boehner used the “O” word, accusing the White House of illegally “obstructing” Congress.

That carries echoes of Watergate and Monicagate, so Hilary and the Democrats buckle up it’s a rough road ahead.

To me this was very good news as I called for such committee in my blog of May 10, 2013.

The mainstream media declared the Benghazi story insignificant long ago. To the extent it is covered, the focus is usually on the horrific and unnecessary deaths of four Americans. The Obama administration dismisses it as a lot of fuss about a few silly talking points. Remember Hilary’s “what does it matter” comment.

But everybody is missing the big-picture story of the Benghazi affair and its cover-up. It’s about the White House using the intelligence community for its own political purposes, and lying to the American public in order to win an election. It’s about abuse of power, and that is a big deal. It always has been about the abuse of power and the cover-up. It always is. Those who abuse that power use their minions in the media to assist in the cover up and then wait while the public just forgets about. Too the relatives of those four dead Americans do not have the luxury of forgetfulness.

That’s why the administration cannot be allowed to investigate itself. That’s why it is time for Congress to appoint a special committee to get to the bottom of the story. Benghazi is no longer just a political issue. It’s not just a partisan witch hunt. It goes to the heart of what our system of government is all about.

If it turns out that Benghazi and the cover-up were just a series of junior level mistakes that’s the end of it. But if it turns out the administration was using the military and intelligence communities for political purposes prior to the attack, during the attack and in a subsequent cover-up, it must be held accountable. Because once the precedent is set, future administrations will feel no reluctance to do the same.

America has the most powerful military and intelligence services in the world, probably in the history of the world. They have an infrastructure that endures separately and beyond any administration or politician.

At the same time, the military-intelligence complex takes its orders from the American people, through their elected/appointed representatives in the White House and Cabinet.

It’s a sacred trust at the heart of our Constitution, as set out in civilian control of the military. But it comes at a price — that our civilian leaders do not abuse that power and bend the military and intelligence communities to do their political dirty work.

The president doesn’t order the military to seize political opponents. He doesn’t order his intelligence community to lie about national security for political purposes. He uses the military or intelligence communities to protect the United States and our citizens, not to help him win elections.

That’s the heart of the Benghazi scandal and cover-up. The White House twisted intelligence to suit its political needs.

It is now incumbent on Rep. Gowdy and his select committee to act and act like a hungry dog digging for his bone. There have been countless hearings into Benghazi by numerous congressional committees, but none have had subpoena power to demand the paper trail, or to force government workers to testify about what they knew and when they knew it.

The questions I see at the heart of the Benghazi scandal and cover-up are specifically:

Did the White House fail to provide adequate security at the Benghazi consulate because it didn’t want to acknowledge that a terrorist threat remained, even though Bin Laden was dead?

Did the White House order the intelligence community to change its analysis so the president could claim his policy was a success, rather than a failure, just a few weeks before an election?

And, finally, what was the relationship between an overzealous White House staff and the president himself? What did the president know, and when did he know it?

This is no longer just a political issue. It’s not just a partisan witch hunt. It goes to the heart of what our system of government is all about. That’s why it’s time for Congress to act and to get to the bottom of this, once and for all.

That’s why Benghazi matters.

I am sure in the coming weeks I will have more to say on this issue.

Security or Liberty, Never the Twain Shall Meet

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." — Benjamin Franklin, Reply to the Governor of Pennsylvania, November 11, 1755

Yesterday, we were struggling to digest the revelation that every Verizon user's cell phone activity was being monitored by the federal government. Within twenty-four hours, we learned that it was happening at AT&T and Sprint, too. And it was happening to credit card receipts. And social media communications, online video conferences, email, documents stored in the Internet cloud.

Sources within the intelligence community have leaked documents that introduced America to a vast surveillance state, which has been growing for years, nourished by powers granted in the Patriot Act - whose author, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who says all this was "never the intent" of his legislation. He described what he's seeing today as "excessive and un-American."

On the other hand, we have bipartisan assurances from Congress that all of this is necessary, and it has prevented terror attacks - although it makes the threats they didn't detect, like the Boston Marathon bombers, seem even more curious.

While most of these programs had their origins under the Bush Administration, their scope has expanded enormously under President Obama, who sold himself as deeply skeptical of the War on Terror strategies he ended up adopting and intensifying. He's also spent a good deal of time over the last year assuring Americans that he broke the back of global terrorism. But even as he was declaring victory, his Administration was harvesting data on just about every phone call and Internet communication. And he's given us good reason to doubt that he and his subordinates can be trusted with sensitive information about American citizens.

Now that the beans have been spilled, there will be a vigorous debate about whether all of this is necessary. The public is generally supportive of national security measures, but are they comfortable with a world in which everyone is monitored, instead of directing surveillance against threats that have been carefully identified and subjected to extensive review? Are we ready to abandon privacy by default?

As Benjamin Franklin stated in his letter:

“In fine, we have the most sensible Concern for the poor distressed Inhabitants of the Frontiers. We have taken every Step in our Power, consistent with the just Rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania, for their Relief, and we have Reason to believe, that in the Midst of their Distresses they themselves do not wish us to go farther. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Such as were inclined to defend themselves, but unable to purchase Arms and Ammunition, have, as we are informed, been supplied with both, as far as Arms could be procured, out of Monies given by the last Assembly for the King’s Use; and the large Supply of Money offered by this Bill, might enable the Governor to do every Thing else that should be judged necessary for their farther Security, if he shall think fit to accept it. Whether he could, as he supposes, “if his Hands had been properly strengthened, have put the Province into such a Posture of Defence [sic], as might have prevented the present Mischiefs,” seems to us uncertain; since late Experience in our neighbouring [sic] Colony of Virginia (which had every Advantage for that Purpose that could be desired) shows clearly, that it is next to impossible to guard effectually an extended Frontier, settled by scattered single Families at two or three Miles Distance, so as to secure them from the insidious [sic] Attacks of small Parties of skulking Murderers: But this much is certain, that by refusing our Bills from Time to Time, by which great Sums were seasonably offered, he has rejected all the Strength that Money could afford him; and if his Hands are still weak or unable, he ought only to blame himself, or those who have tied them.”

*Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755. — The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).

*This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

While Franklin was referring to the willingness of some of citizens of Pennsylvania to accept the security offered by the King of England and his armies his quotation is as valid today as it was in 1755 —21 years prior to his contributions to Jefferson in authoring the Declaration of Independence.

Today it appears by the latest reports concerning the NSA and the FBI data mining our phone records and Internet browsing through its PRISIM program that we are trading or rights to privacy for some sense of security from unknown terrorist. The question is who are the alleged terrorists? Are the members of al Qaeda or some other radical Islamic group? Are they the Minutemen who monitor the border with video cameras? Are the groups in Montana or Idaho that do not want government interference of any sort in their lives? Are the Tea Party members who want a smaller and more fiscally responsible federal government? Or are they pro-life groups picketing Planned Parenthood clinics?

President Obama stated today in the Silicon Valley prior to his meetings with the Chinese that “we require a modest encroachment of our liberties to protect us against terrorists. I would remind the so-called law school scholar of the words of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

A search and seizure by a law enforcement officer without a search warrant and without probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is present. Such a search or seizure is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment (applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment), and evidence obtained from the unlawful search may not be introduced in court.

In order to invoke protection under the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures, an individual must first have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regards to the location that was subject to the search or to the item that was seized.

A search warrant is a type of warrant that authorizes law enforcement officers to search a specified place for evidence. Without a search warrant, police officers may not search a place without its owner’s consent.

Only judges may issue search warrants. To obtain a warrant, law enforcement officers must show that there is probable cause to believe a search is justified. Officers must support this showing with sworn statements (affidavits), and must describe in particularity the place they will search and the items they will seize. Judges must consider the totality of the circumstances when deciding whether or not to issue the warrant. When issuing a search warrant, the judge may restrict the when and how the police may conduct the search.

The Fourth Amendment does not require officers seeking a warrant to show that the people or places to be searched committed any crime. Rather, they merely need to show probable cause that the sought-after evidence is there. For example, in Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978), the Supreme Court allowed police to search a student newspaper, where the newspaper was not implicated in any criminal activity but police suspected it had photographic evidence of the identities of demonstrators who assaulted police officers. However, some jurisdictions responded by passing laws restricting or forbidding these kinds of searches

Even the FISA Court must have a semblance of “probable cause” to issue a warrant. In this case a warrant for the phone records, e-mail records, Internet browsing and YouTube records of 313 million people does not sound like probable cause to me — but I’m no lawyer.

With news of the Obama administration seizing the phone records of every Verizon user in the country, it’s a good time to review the president’s previous comments and votes on the Patriot Act.

On December 15, 2005, for instance, Obama gave a speech on the Senate Floor regarding the Patriot Act:

“…And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document – through library books they’ve read and phone calls they’ve made – this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong. Giving law enforcement the tools they need to investigate suspicious activity is one thing – and it’s the right thing – but doing it without any real oversight seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals America stands for.”

You can read the full speech by clicking here

In March of 2006, Obama voted yes on the USA PATRIOT Act Additional Reauthorizing Amendments Act of 2006 titled, “A bill to clarify that individuals who receive FISA orders can challenge nondisclosure requirements, that individuals who receive national security letters are not required to disclose the name of their attorney, that libraries are not wire or electronic communication service providers unless they provide specific services, and for other purposes.”

On August 3, 2007, Obama voted no on the Protect America Act of 2007, titled, “A bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to provide additional procedures for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence information and for other purposes.”

In February of 2008, the Senate voted on the H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Obama cast a no-vote.

On July 10, 2008, Bush signed H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Obama said:

“The most important lessons learned after 9-11 was that America’s Intelligence professionals lacked some of the tools they needed to monitor the communications of terrorists abroad. It’s essential that our Intelligence community knows who our enemies are talking to, what they’re saying, and what they’re planning. This law will insure that those companies whose assistance is necessary to protect the country will themselves be protected from lawsuits from past or future cooperation with the government.”

On March 31, 2008, while campaigning for his first term, Obama spoke about the Patriot Act in Lancaster, PA:

“Most of the problems that we have had in civil liberties were not done through the Patriot Act, they were done through executive order by George W. Bush. That’s what happened with Guantanamo, that’s what happened with the warrantless wire-taps, that’s what’s happened with the suspension of habeas corpus, that’s what’s happened in terms of the rounding up of Americans of Muslim extraction- those weren’t done through the Patriot Act. Those were all done separately.

There were some provisions in the Patriot Act that actually did address changes that needed to take place. Prior to the Patriot Act, you could not wiretap a phone that wasn’t land-based. Now think about it, nobody uses a land-based phone anymore. Certainly people who might be engaging in terrorism aren’t going to be using an old dial-up phone.”

But now Obama has changed his tune.

Today according to the New York Times President Obama offered a robust defense of the government surveillance programs revealed this week, and sought to reassure the public that his administration has not become a Big Brother with eyes and ears throughout the world of online communications.

Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Mr. Obama said, delivering a 14-minute answer to two questions about the surveillance programs at an event that was initially supposed to be devoted to the health care law. “That’s not what this program is about.”

The president’s remarks, during a four-day trip to the West Coast, were his first since the revelations this week of programs to collect information about phone calls and Internet traffic. Obama said the programs help prevent terrorist attacks and they are kept in check by rigorous judicial and Congressional oversight.

He acknowledged that the public may be uncomfortable with the broad reach of the formerly secret programs, but he said he believed the government had struck the right balance between the need to fight terrorism and the need to protect privacy.

“You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Obama said, repeatedly stressing that the lawmakers from both parties and federal judges were aware of the efforts. “You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

Obama remained silent on Thursday as national security leaks revealed the secret programs for collecting the information, but today he appeared eager to explain them at length. He dismissed what he called “some of the hype” from news reports and emphasized the limits on the programs.

“If the intelligence community actually wants to listen to a telephone call, they have to go back to a federal judge,” Obama said. He said the collection of information from Internet companies like Google and Apple does not apply to American citizens or people living in the United States.

He repeatedly stressed that the surveillance programs were subject to Congressional oversight. In fact, he suggested that the programs — which he conceded were classified as top secret — were not truly secret because many members of Congress were aware of them.

“What you’ve got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress,” the president said. “Bipartisan majorities have approved them. Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved. And federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout.”

Mr. Obama suggested that Congressional debate behind closed doors should offer the public some confidence that the surveillance is not being abused. He said that those members of Congress — and the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court — were watching the process.

“If in fact there were abuses taking place, then presumably, those members of Congress could raise those issues.” They are empowered to do so.” Obama said.

“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here,” he said.

The president also said he welcomed a more public debate over the future of such surveillance programs and what should be the appropriate balance between civil liberties and the need to maintain national security. But he said there “are some trade-offs involved” in that debate.

“My assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks,” Mr. Obama said.

Asked about government leaks that revealed the existence of the programs, the president defended the system of classifications that keeps information secret. And he suggested that such leaks make it harder for the government to protect Americans.

“If, in fact, this information ends up just being dumped out willy-nilly without regard to risks to the program, risks to the people involved, in some cases on other leaks, risks to personnel in very dangerous situations, then it’s very hard for us to be as effective in protecting the American people,” Obama said.

But the disclosure of the programs, which involve some of the nation’s biggest technology and communications firms — including Google, Apple and Verizon — seemed likely to prompt a vigorous discussion among policy makers and Internet consumers about the expectations for privacy and security in an increasingly connected and online world.

Earlier today, lawmakers in Washington, many of whom have been privately briefed on the secret surveillance efforts for years, sought to balance their public expressions of concern about the impact on privacy with the need to combat national security threats. Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who often votes with Democrats, said this morning that there needed to be a discussion about that balance.

“People ought to have at least a general idea of what’s going on,” Mr. King said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “It’s unfortunate that it has to come out in the form of leaks. The question is where’s the appropriate balance?”

He added: “It makes me nervous that all those phone records are in the possession of the National Security Agency.”

Under the classified program revealed Thursday, the federal government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation’s largest Internet companies in search of national security threats. The revelation came just hours after government officials acknowledged a separate seven-year effort to sweep up records of telephone calls inside the United States.

Dennis C. Blair, who served as Mr. Obama’s first director of national intelligence, said Friday that there was little debate at the beginning of the Obama administration about whether to continue the National Security Agency’s telephone and Internet surveillance programs that began under President Bush.

“In 2006 and 2007, everything was put under a legal basis. That looked pretty good to us, so we continued it,” Mr. Blair said in an interview with The New York Times. He said that the agency’s relationships with Internet companies have been especially valuable, given the volume of global communications that are now done strictly in cyberspace.

The disclosure of the extent of United States surveillance caused outrage on Friday among civil liberties and privacy groups in Europe, where data protection has become a hot-button issue. The possibility that the online communications of European citizens could have been caught up in the NSA’s data sweep, because of their use of American Internet services, caused particular anxiety.

Official reaction from European capitals was more subdued — perhaps partly, analysts said, because many governments would like similar powers to monitor Internet communications.

In Turkey, where antigovernment protests have been raging for more than a week, partly because of complaints about a lack of civil liberties and heavy-handed government, the revelations also touched a nerve.

“If the U.S. complains about foreign governments spying and then it turns out it is doing the same thing — well, what are you complaining about?” said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.

An array of civil liberties advocates and libertarian conservatives said the disclosures provided the most detailed confirmation yet of what has been long suspected about what the critics call an alarming and ever-widening surveillance state.

The Internet surveillance program collects data from online providers including e-mail, chat services, videos, photos, stored data, file transfers, video conferencing and logins, according to classified documents obtained and posted by The Washington Post and then The Guardian on Thursday afternoon.

In confirming its existence, officials said that the program, called Prism, is authorized under a foreign intelligence law that was recently renewed by Congress, and maintained that it minimizes the collection and retention of information “incidentally acquired” about Americans and permanent residents. Several of the Internet companies said they did not allow the government open-ended access to their servers but complied with specific lawful requests for information.

“It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States,” Mr. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement, describing the law underlying the program. “Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”

The dual revelations, in rapid succession, also suggested that someone with access to high-level intelligence secrets had decided to unveil them in the midst of furor over leak investigations. Both were reported by The Guardian, while The Post, relying upon the same presentation, almost simultaneously reported the Internet company tapping. The Post said a disenchanted intelligence official provided it with the documents to expose government overreach.

The Guardian and The Post posted several slides from the 41-page presentation about the Internet program, listing the companies involved — which included Yahoo, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube — and the dates they joined the program, as well as listing the types of information collected under the program.

In my view all of this gobbledygook and double speak from the Obama Administration and Congress is purely Orwellian. This administration’s policies and actions regarding the IRS, Justice Department, and now the NSA’s data mining makes Orwell’s Big Brother look like little sister.

We are being told that the NSA is only collecting metadata and no phone records are being scrutinized in detail. Hogwash, metadata is data about the data. It is the key that use used to open the door to records you want to look at. As example the metadata will show the available records for John Doe are his e-mails, phone records, Internet browsing actives, books he has browed on Amazon, and if the ordered a magic pancake pan. All the investigator need do is click on one of those categories and bingo he or she is into the details. My Nikon D700 keeps metadata on all of my digital photos including a host of photographic information.

Obama is telling us they (NSA and FBI) are not listening to your phone calls. With Obama’s record of veracity this may or may not be true. In other words they are telling us they are collecting the data, just not querying it. How would you feel if the government said they would put a video camera in your house and film you every day and then store those recordings in a giant facility in Utah? They would tell you not to worry as no one would look at the video. If you believe that I have a bridge I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn for a very low price with installment payments.

They tell us that to look at those recordings they need a warrant from a FISA Court (or some other judge). We know how that works. It took Eric Holder shopping three judges to get the warrant to look into Fox News’s James Rosen’s e-mails. Also remember that Rosen or Fox News knew nothing about it for over a year. All the Justice Department has to do is word the warrant in such a way (as Holder did) to include words like “criminal conspiracy”, “threat to national security”, or “prosecution for certain criminal acts.” Now in the Rosen case Holder states the DOJ had no intention of prosecuting Rosen. In essence they lied to the judge to get the warrant. So we are supposed to trust he government.

Suppose you forward those crazy unproven e-mails to you friends or you browse Google or Bing for information about radical Islam. What if you browse right-wing or libertarian web sites of look on Amazon for certain types of books like Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, or Brad Thor thrillers? What if you browse prono sites or foreign newspapers online? How about blogging or posting on Facebook even moderate criticisms of Obama and his minions? What if you browse the Internet for information on firearms and ammunition? All of these things will be a part of the metadata.

Richard Reid was not apprehended due to good intelligence. He was caught trying to light his shoe on fire on an airliner.

The underwear bomber was caught trying to light his crotch on fire as the airliner he was one approached the Detroit airport. His father had warned U.S. officials of his son’s radical Islamic beliefs and his connection with known terrorist.

The Boston Marathon bomber was not caught because of good intelligence even though the FBI had records on him. One was caught due to a car hijacking and the other because a homeowner went out to smoke a cigarette and spotted blood on his boat.

Fort Hood did not happen due to the lack of intelligence. The Army knew Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a risk due to his expressed radical Islamic views and association with Anwar al-Awlaki, a known terrorist. He had been reading Inspire Magazine, the publication of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).Hasan had been under investigation by the Army CID. The problem was not the lack of definitive intelligence — it was the lack of political will by the Army.

Ever since 9/11 we have been losing our Constitutional liberties and rights drip by drip and the media has been negligent if not downright reluctant to expose these infringements. In some cases such as gun control and illegal immigration they have been willing accomplices in the process.

We are slowly allowing the Republic to be turned into an administrative state run by statists and masterminds from Washington, D.C. We are turning the Republic into Ameritopia. As James Madison wrote in his 1792 essay on property:

“He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”

It seems that President Obama just can’t catch a break. He has most certainly had a difficult start to his second term. The debt ceiling and sequestration battle with House Republicans, attempts to broker a peace deal in Syria and the destruction of his gun control legislation have indeed been major setbacks.

But while these issues have been blows to the administration, they were at least somewhat beyond his control. The latest rash of scandals is very much homegrown in the Obama White House and they could, therefore, have been prevented.

We have all watched as one scandal after another has come to light. The administration has been overreaching in all areas: with the IRS, with journalists at the AP and James Rosen at Fox News and now it appears that their most egregious overreaching has been with the American citizenry.

We heard from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that we should all just calm down about the NSA’s request for Verizon to hand over all records of telephone calls within its system – both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. Apparently the fact that this isn’t a new practice means that it shouldn’t bother us.

Reid’s feelings on the matter are certainly shared by other members of Congress like Senator Saxby Chambliss and Lindsey Graham. But there are other influential members of Congress who see things the way the American public does. Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner expressed his concern about the data collection.

He wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, “as the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely disturbed by what appears to be an overboard interpretation of the Act.” In a press release he continued, “seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”

Leaked documents reveal that the NSA did not stop with the Verizon phone records.

They have been directly tapping the servers of nine leading US Internet companies, extracting video and audio chats, photographs, emails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets.

These Bush-era practices, practices that have expanded during Obama’s tenure. They have been vehemently defended and their exposure criticized for the impact on our national security. For instance, Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, condemned the leaks of the classified documents.

Indeed, this disclosure does have the potential to reveal too much to our enemies about our practices, but it more importantly calls into question the practices of our own administration. And it has now become clear that those practices are not in step with promises the President made to Americans.

Just a few months ago, President Obama declared “this is the most transparent administration in history” during a Google Plus “Fireside” hangout. To be sure, transparency was one of the President’s biggest campaign promises and a featured element of his first four years in office.

But these recent scandals call into question the authenticity of Obama’s statement.

From Benghazi to the IRS to the latest news on the NSA it is quite clear that Obama’s administration is failing to keep their word on this issue.

The result has been that Obama’s agenda is essentially dead in the water. His days, and his administration’s days, are now spent playing defense — in press conferences, in hearings and elsewhere.

What’s more, the appointments of Ambassador Susan Rice as his new national security advisor and Samantha Power to replace Susan Rice as U.N. Ambassador indicate that the administration is doubling down, not reaching out.

At a time when the president should be doing all he can to reach across the aisle and to quell American’s fears and come clean he is not the man he said he was, he is just plodding along business as usual.

We don’t have time for business as usual anymore. There is far too much going on at home and abroad for the president to continue to ignore the crises his administration is facing.

If Obama cannot come clean and begin to take action to correct this course Congress must or Franklin’s caution will come true. As Lord Acton stated: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”