Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) warned two years ago that when the US public discovered how the Patriot Act is actually interpreted by the FBI and NSA with regard to domestic surveillance, they will be stunned and angry:
He had to talk analogically about the issue, however, since PRISM was classified. So he told about a CIA program to keep 10,000 files on domestic surveillance targets, in contravention of the agency’s charter and US law.
What was Wyden trying to tell us? Do we yet know the extent of the abuses?
Wyden owes it to the American people to make a run for the Presidency in the next election. Should I get the opportunity to vote for him, I will register and do it.
Fine, but what do you know about his OTHER positions? His legislative history? His level of experience? Is he generally right, or is this a fluke?
Please don’t take my negativity personally. I’ve just gotten terminally tired of people popping off with “You oughta run for prezzydent!” anytime they hear something they happen to agree with.
Yeah, but I thought Sen. Feingold warned us about this mess in 2001; as the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act?
Well, I discuss this in far too many words in a response to the next article (if approved). In brief, I think President Obama is pushing the limits of what “U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T.” authorizes to make a point – IS THIS WHAT AMERICANS REALLY WANT?.
Congress keeps re-authorizing the law, provision by provision, as expiration dates come up. Nobody questions it.* Nobody questioned it under Bush Junior.* But now, because the President is a Democrat, it’s out in the open and everyone is angry.
About time.
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* By “nobody”, I of course have totally excluded the liberal media and liberals. Just as the American media and decision-making process has been doing for decades. Face it, we’re invisible. We’re not on the map.
The Central Intelligence Agency kept files on over 300,000 Americans under Operation CHAOS during the Vietnam War. The program was run by CIA Director Richard Helms to determine if the US anti-war movement was being controlled or influenced by foreign governments – Helms later reported to the President that there was no proof of this uncovered.
The only real opposition to the aggressive conduct of US intelligence organizations against its own citizens is Congressional committees and public interest organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
MK- your last paragraph above is irony, right?
And I have always wondered, as I’m sure other have,about whether those lipless, grim, Superpatriots like the Dulleses and Lemay and Rough Men actually believed any of the themes and stories they told themselves about some grand Manichaean conflict — other than the back-and-forth between the identical types of people on both sides of those Curtains (What was ours? Iron and Bamboo were taken — were our wizards and warlords operating behind the Nylon Curtain?) who by doing what they had a serious bent to do, ( link to sovietologist.blogspot.com ) made the rest of us suspect our neighbors and learn to duck’n’cover and how “with enough shovels, we’re all going to make it: dig a hole and throw a couple of doors and some dirt on top — it’s the dirt that does it” — thereby interring our sorry carcasses to reduce the health consequences for the Blessed Survivors emerging from the Continuity of Government Bunkers… link to amazon.com