Democrat Senator Feinstein on Gov’t Surveillance: Rules for Me, but Not for Thee

It must be wonderful to live in a world where the rules don’t apply to you, …because you make all the rules.

And it must come as quite a shock when suddenly your rights are being usurped, right along with those of the hoi polloi:

(via Washington Post) – “…Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.) made waves Tuesday when she publicly accused the Central Intelligence Agency of spying on Senate computers in an alleged attempt to thwart her committee’s investigation into Bush era interrogation and detention practices. The senator even suggested that the agency had violated the Constitution and federal law.

But while Feinstein is up in arms about the intelligence agency’s search of her staff’s computer system and network, she has been an avid defender of National Security Agency surveillance programs. “It’s called protecting America,” she said shortly after the news broke that the NSA was collecting domestic phone records in bulk...”

#NSA spying: New Efforts and New Effects

A couple NSA-related news articles from the last few days which, for whatever reason, haven’t generated nearly enough buzz:

NSA surveillance hurting tech firms’ business

(via USA Today) – The National Security Agency, and revelations about its extensive surveillance operations — sometimes with the cooperation of tech firms — have undermined the ability of many U.S. companies to sell products in key foreign countries, creating a fissure with the U.S. government and prompting some to scramble to create “NSA-resistant” products. The fallout could cost the tech industry billions of dollars in potential contracts, which has executives seething at the White House.

Obama and the #NSA: “Trust us!! It’s not like we’ve ever lied to you BEFORE…”

President Obama’s latest speech/presser about the NSA could be summed-up by the following Tweet: 

The guy who never asked a single question about how his “signature accomplishment” was coming along is ALL OVER this NSA thing, folks.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 17, 2014

Quite so. It was a rambling, barely coherent collection of blather and nonsense, laced with pinkie-promise assurances of “only when necessary” & “Hey, we’re not interested in YOU“.

Here’s just a snippet:

Obama’s NEW Year, …even worse than his OLD Year.

There’s an old Calvin & Hobbes cartoon that is appropriate for around this time of year, but also has a deeper correlation to our politics today:

I truly believe that this sums up our President’s approach to most of what he does. How else to explain the Obamacare rollout, or the NSA snooping, or IRS targeting, or Fast And Furious, or Benghazi, or Iran, or…. well, you get the idea.

Far from being a diabolical mastermind deftly pulling the country’s strings, Obama is the equivalent of a zit-faced, ideological teenager out joyriding in his daddy’s car. Sure, he’s drunk with power and bent on the country’s destruction, and I daresay he’s overall quite pleased with the results thus far.

BUT, but he’s not actually in control of this mess. For that to be the case would require a once-in-a-generation leader/manager of tremendous skill and experience; a combination of Churchill and Jack Welch, with a dash of Patton thrown in. And if there’s one thing we DO know, …that sure-as-shootin’ ain’t Barack.

This is partially explained by his background: he’s never had to actually deliver, whether during his time as President of the Harvard Law Review, or as a State Senator, or while a U.S. Senator.

Never.

He was allowed to just give speeches, vote “present”, and sorta… coast.

How to pull a prank in Obama’s America….

–

…because asking “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” is so passé:

(***Image courtesy of Doug over at Stix Blog)

Open letter to the #NSA…

Running short on time today, so I’m ‘re-blogging’ a great post that I read last week. Written by a blogger known only as “zombie“, this is easily one of (if not THE) most creative takes on NSA snooping/spying yet. 

Enjoy. 

–JTR

————-

(**Originally published at PJMedia.com on June 12, 2013)

To: doesn’t_matter@you’ll_read_this_regardless_of_the_address.com

From: zombie@z0mbietime.com

Dear NSA,

According to Janet (Big Sis) Napolitano, comparisons to an “Orwellian State” are just crazy talk!

Well, that just settles everything, doesn’t it?

I mean, if Janet Napolitano says north is south, and east is west, we all should probably just start recalibrating our GPS systems immediately: she and her cohorts wouldn’t LIE to us, after all!!

Lest you think I’m taking her out of context, here’s the whole thing:

“I think people have gotten the idea that there’s an Orwellian state out there that somehow we’re operating in. That’s far from the case,” she told Errol Louis during an appearance on Road to City Hall.

Thanks to the #NSA, you’re now an “Enemy of the State” (or you soon could be…)

One of my top twenty movies of all time is Enemy of the State, a 1998 film starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith. If you haven’t seen it, Smith plays a normal guy (married, good job, etc.) who unwittingly gets mixed up in an NSA-ordered murder of a politician. The rest is about what happens to Smith’s life when the NSA decides it needs to rip that life to shreds.

This man, almost overnight, loses his job, his wife, access to his bank account, and is hotly pursued by law enforcement. Through satellites, cameras, and tons of cool tech, he’s tracked everywhere: nowhere seems to be safe. The film’s title is accurate: he literally is made into an Enemy of the State. If it weren’t for Gene Hackman’s character, Smith would have been jailed, or dead, or both.

Back in 1998 this was still relatively fantastical, taken seriously only by the professionally paranoid. We couldn’t have that sort of thing happen in the cradle of freedom and liberty.

Welcome to “Enemy of the State”, circa 2013: