President Obama Address NSA Surveillance Concerns: You Can Trust Me I Am A Trustworthy Robot

The main argument I got from more thoughtful critics of President Bush was that we wouldn't want a leftist or Democrat president to have this power, so we should oppose the wiretapping etc as well.

Of course now that there IS a leftist/Democrat doing it, they are mum on the topic. At worst they are mildly concerned but hey, Obama's a good guy so it will all be okay!

Except he's doing far more than the Bush administration was, and has demonstrated a definite tendency to sic the government on political enemies using the information gathered through this spying, so that's a bit more troubling...

Incidentally, one of the FISA judges that oversee wiretapping etc by the federal government said what the Bush administration was doing was legal. He was retired, but still was on the panel in the past. So its not true to say no judges signed off on his program.

Posted by Christopher Taylor at July 14, 2013 9:47 PM

It's too bad xtranormal is going out of business.

Posted by ahem at July 15, 2013 7:04 AM

"The main argument I got from more thoughtful critics of President Bush was that we wouldn't want a leftist or Democrat president to have this power, so we should oppose the wiretapping etc as well.

Of course now that there IS a leftist/Democrat doing it, they are mum on the topic. At worst they are mildly concerned but hey, Obama's a good guy so it will all be okay!

Except he's doing far more than the Bush administration was, and has demonstrated a definite tendency to sic the government on political enemies using the information gathered through this spying, so that's a bit more troubling..."

One of the big problems I see with this.... if we limited as a matter of principle the government's powers to what we'd be willing to trust a chicken@#$% little $%@# of a corrupt Chicago ward heeler with, it wouldn't have been able to handle major crises like, for example, WW2.

Posted by Phil Fraering at July 15, 2013 8:21 AM

Phil, I would suggest there is a legal, constitutional remedy that we have not used in the last 72 years. We have sent troops to Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf a couple of times, Afghanistan, Somalia, been involved in numerous "kinetic" actions like Kosovo and Libya. But the last time we had a formal declaration of war was after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

That's what Bush should have done, but that would have required defining the enemy instead of a tactic.

Posted by mushroom at July 15, 2013 9:22 PM