February 18, 2010
"We all share the goal of capturing the terrorists and protecting national security," said a politician in 2008. The same man added that we as a nation "can do that without violating the privacy of the American people." He also invoked the name of then-President Bush – who was roundly vilified by civil-rights activists for his support of the Patriot Act and for warrantless domestic wiretaps used in anti-terror surveillance – in criticizing then-presidential candidate John McCain. "Like President Bush," the politician said, "Senator McCain is presenting the American people with a false choice – national security or civil liberties. We need a president who understands that we can have both. It's what our values and our Constitution demands."
You may have guessed in context that the politician speaking was none other than Joe Biden, now our vice president. He was referring to candidate Barack Hussein Obama's opposition to the Bush administration's domestic security policies. While it is laudable when a politician takes a stand for civil liberties and refuses to participate in the erosion of civil rights that seems always to run apace with efforts to combat terrorism, there's a problem. That problem is that the Obama administration has proven every bit as corrosive, and in fact much more so, to your civil liberties than moderate Republicans like George W. Bush ever thought of being.
As CNET's Declan McCullagh reported last week, the Obama administration "has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no 'reasonable expectation of privacy'" where the GPS location data of their cell phones is concerned. "[A] customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records," McCullagh quotes the Justice Department's lawyers.
Obama was not even president when he first flip-flopped on the wiretap issue. His administration subsequently brought much more authority to the same "change of heart," arguing that because state secrets are involved, the service provider involved in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping case cannot be sued. This turnabout earned Obama a tongue-lashing from Democrat Russ Feingold in 2009. Wringing his hands and playing the civil libertarian as persuasively as a Democrat can, Feingold exhorted Obama to "formally and promptly renounce the assertions of executive authority made by the Bush administration with regard to warrantless wiretapping." The irate Feingold correctly pointed out that Obama, while (briefly) a United States senator, asserted that "the warrantless wiretapping program was illegal" and that Obama's attorney general "expressed the same view, both as a private citizen and at his confirmation hearing."
Obama further muddied the issue last month when he announced the nomination of David Kris to lead the national security division of the Justice Department. In 2005, Kris wrote an analysis of the Bush administration's wiretap program in which he criticized its legal arguments as "weak." Obama therefore seeks to elevate to a position of authority in national security a man who believes the very program Obama's administration now supports is illegal. It would be easy, therefore, to say that Obama has sent the American people mixed messages on his support for civil liberties ... except that he's actually been remarkably consistent.
Despite whatever muddled bureaucratic maneuvering and political posturing may take place, President Barack Hussein Obama is motivated by one overarching goal: the gradual but ultimately total destruction of the American people's civil rights. Whether his minions are arrogantly proclaiming that the American people should have "no expectation of privacy" in their comings and goings because Glorious Leader Obama says so, dramatically expanding the power of the National Security Council (to make it more "elastic" – never a good sign in federal agencies), or trying to turn the Department of Homeland Security into a brownshirted domestic federal police force that can round up the American people and place them in camps, Obama's policies inevitably, inexorably and invariably lead to more government control and less freedom. The opposite is never the case.
When Barack Hussein Obama's audacious power grabs affect the daily lives of broad swaths of our citizenry, as they do whenever he targets consumer technology, many people are rightly alarmed. We've seen this over and over again. He and his storm troopers want to be able to track your phone without a warrant and whenever it suits them. Will it be such a leap when they decide your phone calls are no more private than your GPS location data? These are the people, after all, who want to control the Internet (when they're not turning over control of key portions of its infrastructure to foreign powers). These are also the people who set up an e-mail address so your fellow citizens could inform on you to Glorious Leader Obama whenever you dared to express an opinion contrary to the Democratic Party line.
The real problem is that, despite these warning signs, the American people are not alarmed enough. Barack Hussein Obama is not merely an inconsistent and hypocritical politician who believes fervently in the power of big government, socialism and invasive control over the individual lives of the American people. He is also a brittle, arrogant, pompous and autocratic would-be tyrant who lives and breathes a sense of entitlement. He believes he is entitled to rule. He believes he is entitled to take anything from you that he wishes in order to further that rule. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is his enemy and that his enemies must be destroyed. He believes that the destruction of such unbelievers is justified whenever and wherever an American citizen, a member of the political opposition or even a member of his own political party dares to stand in his way and thwart his impulsive and ill-conceived demands.
Every single free American has a stake in opposing President Obama's agenda. If they wish to remain free, they cannot believe anything else. They will, in turn, become Obama's enemies – if not in their eyes, then in his.
We are all on Obama's enemies list, and we should be.
