*Ping!*
The Bummer admin is, I think, too feckless to do very much about the tea parties. They can’t even get their own story straight for a week, much less organize the goon squads.
CITIZEN surveillance of Government is KEY!
BTTT
This guy makes a *lot* of accusations. Most of them I would only expect to hear from the loony left.
1. …isn’t it the U.S. government that secretly and illegally conspired with private telecom companies to record telephone conversations of private American citizens?
Illegally? Really? Reminds me of the people who want Bush and Cheney charged with war crimes..
2. And isn’t it the U.S. government that secured both civil and criminal immunity for the telecoms’ decision to sell out the privacy of their customers to the feds?
Is there something wrong with that?
3. Some of the things discussed might be illegal in nature but other things might just be things that would be embarrassing if the public were to find out. For example, conversations about the use or purchase of illicit drugs. Or married people having adulterous affairs. Or business people engaged in unethical conduct at work. Or hurtful gossip about friends and acquaintances.
Should people really have a right to privacy when they’re talking about things like that?
4. …the U.S. government, operating through the NSA in cooperation with U.S. telecoms, was secretly recording countless telephone conversations of countless Americans for an extended period of time.
Was that the program that keyed in on certain terms? The one that collected so much raw data that there was no way they could go through even a substantial fraction of it?
5. The recordings of those conversations are now in the permanent databases of the NSA and possibly other government agencies.
He knows that how?
6. People who are now tempted to, say, join a Tea Party protest movement now have to factor in their deliberations the fact that the government potentially has some very incriminating or embarrassing information that it could use against them in retaliation.
I’d bet that the vast majority of people tempted to join a “Tea Party protest movement” don’t have any such concerns.
7. …in much the same way that U.S. officials ensured that people found out that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.
Wait a minute, that was already public knowledge, wasn’t it? She was listed in several places as Joe Wilson’s wife, and he had a habit of telling people that his wife worked for the CIA. The only reason this issue is of interest to anyone was that it shone a light on the scurrilous trick she and her husband had played on Bush, America, and mankind. Naturally, the dims want to cover it up.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/03/serious_questions_for_henry_wa.html
8. …when Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio refused to go along with the illegal telecom surveillance scheme, the feds retaliated with an insider-trading prosecution against him.
Really? None of those 52 counts had any merit? Is there any credible corroboration of this, or are we looking at a desperate man saying anything to stay out of jail?
9. They secretly recorded (Martin Luther King’s) telephone conversations and then attempted to blackmail him into ceasing his civil-rights activities by threatening to release information about extramarital affairs that he was (undoubtedly) having.
So, I guess you’re just not allowed to talk any more about all the communists that King had around him, advising him. Couldn’t be that the FBI were worried about that, could it? Nope, no way. It was just racism, pure and simple, right?
10. The feds leaked the evidence they had acquired in their secret surveillance to some favored journalist stooges who then made the information public.
Journalist stooges? The way this guy eschews prejudicial language is impressive. The pseudo-journalist stooges we have these days wouldn’t publish anything bad about a fellow leftist if you put a gun to their heads. Of course, letting King’s worshippers know just what kind of a man they followed was a scurrilous, rascally thing to do. Even if it was true, it shouldn’t have been, and they had an obligation to pretend it wasn’t. Right?
“I can’t afford to have my telephone conversations disclosed to my family, my company, or the public.”
What in the world have such people been up to? And why should I be sympathetic to their desire to cover it up?
The play can be executed by both teams on the field, the Feds can observe and we can deceive, put the information machine into overload, there are many ways to do this, the favorite one of mine is to peruse the magazine stand and gather dozens of subscription forms, pick out a favorite address across America and start subscriptions to yourself.
Its all being tracked.