Liberal Democrat Bob Beckel commenting on the National Security Agency's phone-records surveillance (fast forward to time marker 2:49 after the commercials stop):
Here is the money quote (around time marker 3:55):
“I think it is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution I’ve heard. They have no right to the phone records… It is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and it is deplorable. I didn’t like it when they did it during the Bush administration and I don’t like when they’re doing it now.”Mr. Beckel should expect an IRS audit in the near future.
“They have taken this PATRIOT Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken it and abused it,” Beck added. “You talk about fascism? You’re getting damn close to it."
2008 flashback:
HANOVER, N.H.--Barack Obama may be leading the Democratic presidential pack in every major poll here, but that didn't dissuade the Illinois senator from a final early-morning rally with the Facebook generation.
Clearly not content to leave their votes to the whims of online politicking, the Illinois senator stepped onto a stage fashioned in a Dartmouth College gymnasium, pulled an index card from his inside jacket pocket, and launched into a familiar set of talking points centered on what has become a familiar theme for his campaign: change and hope.
"My job this morning is to be so persuasive...that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack," he told a crowd of about 300 Ivy Leaguers--and, by the looks of it, a handful of locals who managed to gain access to what was supposed to be a students-only event.
For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and "wiretaps without warrants," he said. (He was referring to the lingering legal fallout over reports that the National Security Agency scooped up Americans' phone and Internet activities without court orders, ostensibly to monitor terrorist plots, in the years after the September 11 attacks.)
It's hardly a new stance for Obama, who has made similar statements in previous campaign speeches...
Flashback to 2007, when Barack Obama was a United States Senator:
Obama supporters have stopped this video from playing. No surprise!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteI will look for another copy of the video.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI have replace the video that wouldn't play with a video that WILL play.
Apologies for the commercials at the start of the video.
Now, was the first version I posted sabotaged so that it would not play? If so, the irony is thick!
ReplyDeleteThere is some small satisfaction watching many on the left now suck up to the idea that tyranny can be ok. No so much under bush.
ReplyDeleteBunkerville,
ReplyDeleteRemember those posts you did about the data collection center in Utah -- before the NSA whistleblower revealed certain information? Talk about timely! And nearly clairvoyant.
Hmmmm...: "Military told not to read Obama-scandal news."
ReplyDeleteHas this always been the norm?
Hey Lefties, don't forget not so distant history, you side used fences the keep the people IN.
ReplyDeleteWith respect, AOW do you think the right is in the lead informing us that this man is an arrogant liar?
ReplyDeleteI can remember when most of the right's efforts focused on his birth certificate.
This is what happens while you're busy worrying about the homosexuals. We told you so but the right wing has been eviscerated by fanatics and here we are with NO ORGANIZED ALTERNATIVES.
Duck,
ReplyDeleteI can remember when most of the right's efforts focused on his birth certificate.
This is what happens while you're busy worrying about the homosexuals.
I may have posted once or twice about Obama's birth certificate. But I never got into that particular meme very much.
As for homosexuals, I have never posted about the LGBTQ movement at all. Certainly, I have my own opinion about that matter -- and about abortion, as well.
But there are bigger fish to fry.
AOW do you think the right is in the lead informing us that this man is an arrogant liar?
Are you saying on implying that the Left is in the lead on that? Interested in your answer to that question. I mostly see the Left defending Obama. Perhaps you are reading other sources.
I do know that left wing blogs and left wing podcasts have been very critical of this stiff.
ReplyDeleteRemember #OWS and how you cheered when it was shut down?
I don't know what sources you read but magazine from The Progressive to The Nation has been critical of this man.
"Approaching fascism" seems to be an understatement to me.
ReplyDeleteBeckel is right on both counts. This is fascism and the so-called Patriot Act is anything but patriotic.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with COF ... we need to repeal the Patriot Act. Terrorists are not going to kill everyone in America. They may do some damage, but more damage is rendered to a nation founded on inalienable rights by denying to citizens these God-given protections FROM the government.
ReplyDeleteYou have as much chance of getting the Patriot Act repealed as you have of stopping the War on Drugs (remember to thank your hero Raygun).
ReplyDeleteThere is too much money involved in all this. Too many beltway bandit contractors making bundles of money for nothing.
Do rational people want the Patriot (LMFAO) Act repealed and DHS disbanded?
Of course. Will human scum like Rudy Giuliani and the rest accept that loss of income. Of course not.
He'll be on O'Really any night now telling us about scary Muslims.
If anyone knows about fascism, it's Bob Beckel.
ReplyDeleteBob Beckel is a bit late to this party. Obama crossed the Rubicon and became a fully fledged left wing fascist YEARS ago. And when he took office he immediately set about attempts to criminalize and punish political dissent. His early attacks on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were followed by sustained verbal assault on the Tea Party which coincides but it no coincidence with the IRS effort to suppress Tea Party activism.
ReplyDeleteI realize that half the country either doesn't care that Obama is targeting political opponents in this corrupt, anti-American way. But imagine how they would feel if a Republican did anything even close!
Well, since "we" have all felt this in our bones from the gitgo, the only thing really interesting about it is that the likes of BOB BECKEL would go so far as to ADMIT that this administration is POISON.
ReplyDeleteI do wish everyone would stop using outmoded terms like "fascist," "communist," "socialist," or even "liberal" and "progressive," BECAUSE what we are fighting is not any one of those things, as they have been historically. What we rail against, and wish we could defeat is TYRANNISM.
Yes I made up that word, because we NEED a new term to define a militant urge to conceptualize, foment and implement diabolical policies that effectively ENSLAVE great masses of people in the guise of HELPING them.
I've been irritated, terribly disappointed and often very angry at the way things have been going for more than four decades, but for the first time "I feel a faint cold thrill of fear in my veins" since this president won a second term.
What I hate most -- and think at bottom it's what every one of us hates -- is a realization that I, as a freeborn citizen of a once-great-now-moribund republic, have been rendered utterly powerless.
We're living like those silly cartoon characters who step off the edge of a cliff, don't realize it at first, and keep walking around in mid air, till finally they look down, and then go SPLAT!!!
Despite the bizarre, irrational ascent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the wake of all that has passed since Ronald Reagan occupied the White House, I cannot help but feel the future could not possibly hold anything very pleasant for The West.
He's losing his devoted followers. Beckle has turned against him on several things lately. Good to see.
ReplyDeleteDebbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
It seems like there is a new scandal or the rumor if a new scandal every day!
ReplyDelete"Mr. Beckel should expect an IRS audit in the near future."
ReplyDeleteLets hope so.
ReplyDeleteWashington is preoccupied with the political decisions surrounding last year’s attack in Benghazi, but nine months later the who and why of the terrorist assault that left four Americans dead remains shrouded in mystery. The King of the United States and the First Moocher are preoccupied holding parties for Snoopy Dog, Beyonce, and Jay Z, and Hillary got her 3AM call and choked. Bill wasn´t available to tell her what to do. She demonstrated how inept, incompetent and stupid a Democrat is
Glad to see more people are waking up on this. Big Brother is here, and here to stay.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I can't blame BO on this, for one reason: Bush passed the Patriot Act. Now, I'm not saying the tirade of Blame Bush. What I mean is this:
This has been a long time in coming, and has been building for even longer. Ever since FDR, we have had the slow slip down the hill to what is ultimately tyranny. Now, BO is abusing the power like all heck, but he didn't make it. He used what everyone else set up. Executive orders were made by someone else. Patriot Act as well. The government interfering with the economy was FDR. Whoever invented SS can be blamed for the health care. And so on. This isn't new. This is old.
The other presidents didn't abuse their king powers, not really. They knew better. They knew the public wouldn't let them. BO, though, from the start has been untouchable. Why? Well, media loves him. I think he is a puppet, and his puppetmasters have been making him immune. But in any case, no one, in the public or in the government, will challenge him. And he knows it. So, he took the power that was waiting for him, and ran with it.
The frog slowly boils, well, the frog is just about cooked. It isn't starting to boil- its ending. Whatever used to control government corruption is gone now. All three branches had been corrupted long ago, and now we see the fruits of it.
The executive does whatever it wants, the legislative banks the E up, and the judicial covers both branches asses. BO has made a critical error though- too much, too fast. The frog is waking up. It ins't quite dead yet. And this sudden burst of heat is alarming.
-Wildstar
Executive branch, Legislative branch, Judicial branch
ReplyDeleteis supposed to be like
ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
but it isn't. The Executive branch is cheating. It bought off the other two because they were to dumb to see it happen.
Interesting: "The Court Overseeing NSA Spying Has Already Found It Violated The Constitution."
ReplyDeleteExcerpt, but there is much more at the above link:
So in violating that law, the NSA is violating the constitutional right to privacy provided to Americans.
Here's a rundown of the other reports that corroborate Snowden's claims:
Former spy Mike Frost told 60 minutes about a secret government surveillance network called Echelon, in which all electronic communications are captured and analyzed for key words by super computers.
In April 2012 Wired's James Bamford — author of the book " The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America " — reported how the U.S. government hired two secretive Israeli companies to wiretap AT&T .
AT&T engineer Mark Klein discovered the "secret room" at AT&T central office in San Francisco , through which the NSA actively "vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" through the wiretapping rooms, emphasizing that "much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic."
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake corroborated Klein's assertions, testifying that the NSA is using Israeli-made hardware to " seize and save all personal electronic communications."
William Binney — one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history — has been very vocal since building the original program that crunched that data to identify, in real time, networks of connections between individuals based on their electronic communications.
This is a total invasion of privacy. I agree with most of what Beckel said. But under Bush this program was more focused and narrow. Thank God this guy revealed that our government is spying on us - data mining in an unprecedented way.
ReplyDeletedon't worry, someone will get to Beckel at the WH and he'll never say these things again no matter HOW much he thinks them.
ReplyDeleteWait till you see the article I found for Wed.'s post...man.
One of the biggest problems I had with the PATRIOT Act was that it didn't contain a clause suspending its funding and enforcement during Democrat presidencies.
ReplyDeleteSo, maybe it's affording powers to government that we shouldn't trust anybody with.