Just a few articles worth perusing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/16/AR2005121600021.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/17/bush.nsa/
^What these articles show is that like Benghazi, the latest hullabaloo on the part of the Republicans is a manufactured scandal to convince those who already believe. What it is not is a principled defense of constitutional rights. Why? No less than three mainstream sources broke this story eight years ago. Two Presidential terms, I might add. In that span of time, both Democrats and Republicans had no shortage of opportunities to rein in the surveillance-industrial apparatus.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
^As this report from 2010 shows, the intelligence agencies have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of the current faux war on a method of warfare. In spite of pious words about shrinking government, this side of it has continued to grow. The watchmen on the walls are more numerous than ever, but efficiency at least appears to have undergone no real change. When the government has made no secret of this for years, and people suddenly discover outrage over what again was never a secret, one comes to an easy conclusion that spying is not the problem. Rather this outrage is yet another instance of someone noting the obvious and getting people mad that the obvious exists.
In a democracy, the answer to quis custodiet ipsos custodes is the masses, or it should be. When those same masses have been aware of something for years with not a murmur of protest, the question has a different answer. In the case of apathy and manufactured outrage, who will watch the watchmen? No-one. Because they've already said they're watching, and people simply don't care. The fault here is not George Bush's Administration itself, by this point. The fault is with the professional champions of partisan liberty who all oppose abuses of civil liberties unless they're the ones abusing them. After all, it has been eight years. One might be forgiven for assuming two Presidential terms should be time enough to get people to oppose this concept if the concept is really the problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/17/bush.nsa/
^What these articles show is that like Benghazi, the latest hullabaloo on the part of the Republicans is a manufactured scandal to convince those who already believe. What it is not is a principled defense of constitutional rights. Why? No less than three mainstream sources broke this story eight years ago. Two Presidential terms, I might add. In that span of time, both Democrats and Republicans had no shortage of opportunities to rein in the surveillance-industrial apparatus.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
^As this report from 2010 shows, the intelligence agencies have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of the current faux war on a method of warfare. In spite of pious words about shrinking government, this side of it has continued to grow. The watchmen on the walls are more numerous than ever, but efficiency at least appears to have undergone no real change. When the government has made no secret of this for years, and people suddenly discover outrage over what again was never a secret, one comes to an easy conclusion that spying is not the problem. Rather this outrage is yet another instance of someone noting the obvious and getting people mad that the obvious exists.
In a democracy, the answer to quis custodiet ipsos custodes is the masses, or it should be. When those same masses have been aware of something for years with not a murmur of protest, the question has a different answer. In the case of apathy and manufactured outrage, who will watch the watchmen? No-one. Because they've already said they're watching, and people simply don't care. The fault here is not George Bush's Administration itself, by this point. The fault is with the professional champions of partisan liberty who all oppose abuses of civil liberties unless they're the ones abusing them. After all, it has been eight years. One might be forgiven for assuming two Presidential terms should be time enough to get people to oppose this concept if the concept is really the problem.