Imperial Presidency

White House Picks Creepy Panel to Review NSA Programs

"A group of veteran security experts and former White House officials has been selected to conduct a full review of U.S. surveillance programs and other secret government efforts disclosed over recent months, ABC News has learned. The recent acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell, will be among what President Obama called a 'high-level group of outside experts' scrutinizing the controversial programs. Joining Morell on the panel will be former White House officials Richard Clarke, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire. An announcement is expected Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter told ABC News’ Jon Karl." Continue reading →

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White House: Obama has no plans to reschedule marijuana

"'The administration’s position on this has been clear and consistent for some time now that while the prosecution of drug traffickers remains an important priority, the president and the administration believe that targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious illnesses and their caregivers, is not the best allocation for federal law enforcement resources,' Earnest replied. At the press briefing, Earnest also indicated that the Obama administration has no intention of making it easier to research the medical benefits of marijuana." Continue reading →

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The price Gina Gray paid for whistleblowing through ‘proper internal channels’

"Gray is the Defense Department whistleblower whose case I have been following for five years. She was the Army civilian worker who, before and after her employment, exposed much of the wrongdoing at Arlington National Cemetery— misplaced graves, mishandled remains and financial mismanagement — and she attempted to do it through the proper internal channels. Pentagon sources have confirmed to me her crucial role in bringing the scandal to light. For her troubles, Gray was fired. Gray, who worked in Iraq as an Army contractor and Army public affairs specialist, is now unemployed and living in North Carolina." Continue reading →

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Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches

"If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches. But as the storage capacity of cellphones rises, that position could become harder to defend. Our smart phones increasingly contain everything about our digital lives: our e-mails, text messages, photographs, browser histories and more. It would be troubling if the police had the power to get all that information with no warrant merely by arresting a suspect." Continue reading →

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Decline and Fall: The Second Stage is Anger

"Not too long ago, I predicted that if I live to the average American male lifespan of 76 — I’m 46 now — I’ll have outlived the United States as we know it. At the time, I feared I was being over-optimistic, but lately I’m leaning the other way and thinking that my timetable may have been unduly timid. The recent temper tantrums of the American political class and its toadies abroad bring to mind an old saying (incorrectly attributed to Gandhi) — 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win' — and the Kubler-Ross model of grief. Our would-be masters appear to have moved forward from 'denial' to 'anger' in a big way." Continue reading →

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The NSA: ‘The Abyss from Which There Is No Return’

"By sifting through the detritus of your once-private life, the government will come to its own conclusions about who you are, where you fit in, and how best to deal with you should the need arise. Indeed, we are all becoming data collected in government files. Surveillance of all citizens, even the innocent sort, gradually poisons the soul of a nation. Surveillance limits personal options—denies freedom of choice—and increases the powers of those who are in a position to enjoy the fruits of this activity. Frankly, we are long past the point where we should be merely alarmed. These are no longer experiments on our freedoms. These are acts of aggression." Continue reading →

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The Phony Trade-off Between Privacy and Security

"What Barack Obama, Mike Rogers, Peter King, and their ilk mean when they tell us that 'we' need to find the right balance between security and privacy is that they will dictate to us what the alleged balance will be. We will have no real say in the matter, and they can be counted on to find the balance on the 'security' side of the spectrum as suits their interests. Of course, our rulers can’t really set things to the security side of the spectrum because the game is rigged. When we give up privacy — or, rather, when our rulers take it — we don’t get security in return; we get a more intrusive state, which means we get more insecurity." Continue reading →

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Vote Harder: The Barack Obama Story

"He opposed the Iraq war, promised to shut down Gitmo and denounced warrantless domestic wiretapping by the NSA. But we see this 'progressive' superstar, who all but promised to usher in a 21st century Church Committee, presiding over the massive expansion of illegal drone warfare around the world and the largest expansion of the surveillance state in history. We see this man, who promised the 'most transparent administration in history,' pursuing vindictive reprisals — on a scale rivaling Woodrow Wilson or Richard Nixon — against whistleblowers who expose the surveillance state’s terrifying scope." Continue reading →

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Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions

"The Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in. And concern was rising inside and outside the organization about Douglas J. Band, a onetime personal assistant to Mr. Clinton who had started a lucrative corporate consulting firm — which Mr. Clinton joined as a paid adviser — while overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation’s glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities." Continue reading →

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NSA abuses contradict Obama and congressional claims of oversight

"Government officials from President Obama on down have insisted the nation's surveillance programs are subject to layers of oversight. 'I am comfortable that the program currently is not being abused,' Mr. Obama said in a press conference last week, when he announced new efforts at increasing transparency. 'Part of the reason they're not abused is because these checks are in place.' However, the latest revelation that the NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times, as documented in an internal report -- an internal report withheld from at least one leader in Congress responsible for oversight -- proves they were wrong." Continue reading →

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