The revelations of Barack Obama's spying on the American people are only matched by the lack of spine on the part of Congress.
Glenn Greenwald (Guardian) broke the news: two weeks ago about the NSA collecting metadata on all Americans phone calls. Then came the news that the NSA and FBI were using PRISM, a program collecting data from the internet -- video, photos, e-mails, you name it. (Justin Rainmondo of Antiwar.com is calling it "Datagate").
This was enough for a functioning Congress to call for public hearings.
But we don't have a functioning Congress, we have a self-serving one where the biggest concern is, as Senator Mark Kirk wanted to know two weeks ago, is the government spying on them?
They don't give a damn about representing Americans.
They only care about themselves.
Are they being spied on?
And the only thing worse than those self-obsessed are the ones like Senator Dianne Feinstein who lied to the American people last week in the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing when she declared that any listening in on phone calls would require a court order. As the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committe, she'd already been briefed months ago that the NSA was not bound by that. A fact other members of Congress were only briefed on last week.
Dianne Feinstein intentionally lying to members of Congress and the public should result in, at the very least, an investigation into her actions by the US Senate Select Committee on Ethics.
That won't happen.
Because no one in the Congress seems to give a damn about either the American people or the US Constitution.
People like Dianne Feinstein have been actively attacking the Constitution and ripping it apart in the supposed name of 'protection.'
The American people were not consulted.
Here's a lonely voice that should instead be a chorus of Congressional voices:
-
Americans deserve to know govt's secret interpretation of US
#surveillance laws. Govt overreach is never good.#COpolitcs
Mark Udall
Thank you, Senator Mark Udall, for giving a damn.
It's a shame there are so few of you in Congress, but thank you.
There's Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Rand Paul. But the most vocal politician may be former Vice President Al Gore who told The Guardian newspaper last week, "I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way. Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
It's really something that Congress can make so very clear their distaste and disdain for the "security guard" profession (see this "Iraq snapshot" and this "Iraq snapshot"); however, the assault on the Constitution is something they need to ponder at length.
Though they appear to have forgotten, they took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Instead, the likes of Dianne Feinstein have worked overtime to shred and spit on the Constitution.
And they have the nerve to attack whistle-blower Ed Snowden?
The ones who belong in jail are them: Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and every other member of Congress who broke their sworn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Those idiots, those assholes, need to be real careful right now. They're tossing around the word "treason" and applying it to Ed Snowden.
Treason? That would include failing to uphold a sworn oath so they need to be real careful about using the T-word.
---------------------------------
Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Predator of the United States."