At several points in the last few years, as I gamely tried to convince conservatives that they should be concerned about the scale and scope of the Bush-Cheney surveillance state [...] I was ridiculed as an hysteric. When forced to defend basic civil liberties against a presidency claiming unprecedented war powers within the boundaries of the US and potentially against American citizens, I found only one argument got through. What if Hillary Clinton got this kind of power? And the pathological partisanship of the right briefly faltered for just a little before the full-bore Bush-backing denialism kicked back in.So what happened? After the Department of Homeland Security spent the last 8 years with its eyes turned inwards looking for terrorists on American soil, it has started looking for terrorists on American soil in a place where the right wing would rather they not look: Within the right wing.
All of a sudden, that terrorist surveillance program isn't as apple-pie flavored as it used to be, is it? Well, let's just comfort those folks over there on the Far Right with some words that might seem very familiar to them: "You don't have anything to worry about if you haven't done anything wrong."
Want a real laugh? Wait until those ex post facto idiots see the new "No Fly List".
1 comment:
Unless your new laws dictate a perpetual regime, any new laws you give you have to forsee the 'worst person you can think of' having such powers. How is it that politicians rarely see past their terms in office?
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