I don’t know this one hurts him with the left and the center.... Obama campaigned against all of this, and Bush paid a huge political price for enacting much of it, but the over-reach of big government with these programs pales in comparison to anything that Bush/Cheney ever could have dreamed of, so if there is any such thing as a principled liberal they will be up in arms about this scandal above all others, I have already checked on DU and they are ready to hero worship this guy, this very well could be the scandal that starts undoing the Obama Presidency. He is obviously going to have to answer to his base for this since they are genuinely surprised at the depth and scope of these programs, yes they are trying to blame Bush but that just rings hollow when their man has been at the helm for more than 4 years now and the power of these programs has grown exponentially..... Anyway we will see..
I think this may be an important point. An NSA agent defected to China and he is being hero-worshipped. The crown jewel of our intel services has been exposed, and the guy exposing it has gone over to the people who will know exactly what to do with his expertise.
this very well could be the scandal that starts undoing the Obama Presidency.
He is in the process of negotiating something with China to do with their hacking of our communications. He may simply negotiate away our ability to track their communications, while they are learning exactly how it works and how to turn the tables. And when he does, he'll recover his own hero-status with his leftist base. There may then be article after article extolling his brave decision to shut down our most important surveillance program. I can't help but think we're being had in a big way.
Bush put this evil system in place after 9/11, starting the surveillance state in earnest, in effect opening Pandora's Box. Then along come the unscrupulous thugs from Chicago, and they've been like kids in candy store with the new toy Bush handed them, evidently ramping it up into an out of control, unsupervised monstrosity to be used for their own political gain.