Up-dated ~ June 6, 2013 @ 3:30 p.m.

Andrew C. McCarthy, who tends to be knowledgeable – and therefore reliable – on all things Islamic, i.e. terrorism, says we shouldn’t panic yet; Phone Record Gathering Story Blown Out of Proportion.
But he does get to the heart of the matter ~

(It is) critical to have a trustworthy president and administration – including an attorney general Congress can trust to provide truthful, accurate and complete information. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the Obama administration – with its serial lawlessness, authoritarian abuses of power to harass dissenters, and pattern of misleading and stonewalling Congress – has so grossly violated the public trust that it is unfit to exercise the executive’s awesome investigative authorities.

 
In this case, where national security is critical;

The problem here is not government power. It is the government officials we’ve elected to wield it.

Original post ~ June 6, 2013

What’s it going to take to get America off the couch? One scandal after another and we just roll over and change the channel.
 
The latest news – NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data from April 25 to July 19 (UK Guardian exclusive) – would have a vigilant citizenry up in arms.
 
Shouldn’t we be even slightly concerned when, as Tim Stanley at the UK Telegraph puts it; Barack Obama’s national security state is now beyond democratic control?

Those crazy American conspiracy theorists who live up trees with guns and drink their own pee don’t seem quite so crazy anymore. 
 
It turns out that a “secret court order” has empowered the US government to collect the phone records of millions of users of Verizon, one of the most popular telephone providers – a massive domestic surveillance programme and a shocking intrusion into the lives of others. For the first time in history, being an AT&T customer doesn’t seem such a bad thing after all…
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A few observations. First, America is so conscious and proud of its history as a beacon of liberty that it often overlooks the tyranny that occurs on its own shores in the name of safeguarding democracy. The national security state has expanded to the point whereby it now functions outside of democratic control and with clear disregard for the Constitution. What’s especially creepy about this case is that the state felt no legal obligation to tell citizens that it was spying on them – or at least considering it. The result is a disturbing paradox: it’s legal to collect information from companies but illegal for the companies to try to tell their customers about it. It seems that the law prefers to take the side of the state.
 
Second, you get what you vote for – and both Republicans and Democrats keep on voting for authoritarians…
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Finally, totaling every scandal up – IRS, AP phone records, Fox journalists being targeted, the Benghazi mess – this has to be the most furtively authoritarian White House since Nixon’s. We don’t yet have a “smoking email” from Obama ordering all of this, but it can’t be said often enough that there is a correlation between Obama’s “progressive” domestic agenda and the misbehavior of the other agencies governed by his administration – forcing people to buy healthcare even when they can’t afford it, bailing out the banks, war in Libya and the use of drone strikes to kill US citizens.
 
This is exactly what the Tea Party was founded to expose and oppose. All the laughter once directed at the “paranoid” Right now rings hollow.

Americans better ditch the remote and become just remotely concerned about their disappearing freedoms – before they roll over and discover they’re all gone.
 
Related:

History lesson: The crucial differences between Bush and Obama’s NSA phone surveillance programs ~ Michelle Malkin wants to know how the administration is remotely justified in collecting this information.