"Welcome to the Bush-Obama White House"

[n david]

Great article by Ron Fornier from the National Journal.

SOURCE LINK

Welcome to the era of Bush-Obama, a 16-year span of U.S. history that will be remembered for an unprecedented erosion of civil liberties and a disregard for transparency. On the war against a tactic—terrorism—and its insidious fallout, the United States could have skipped the 2008 election.

It made little difference.

Despite his clear and popular promises to the contrary, President Obama has not shifted the balance between security and freedom to a more natural state—one not blinded by worst fears and tarred by power grabs. If anything, things have gotten worse.

• Killing civilians and U.S. citizens via drone.
  
• Seizing telephone records at the Associated Press in violation of Justice Department guidelines.
  
• Accusing a respected Fox News reporter of engaging in a conspiracy to commit treason for doing his job.
  
• Detaining terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, despite promises to end the ill-considered Bush policy.

But for several reasons the news is chilling.

1. Verizon probably isn't the only company coughing up its documents. Odds are incredibly strong that the government is prying into your telephone records today.
2. Issued in April, the NSA order "could represent the broadest surveillance order known to have been issued," according to The Washington Post. "It also would confirm long-standing suspicions of civil liberties advocates about the sweeping nature of U.S. surveillance through commercial carries under laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
3. This appears to be a "rubber stamp," order, reissued every few months since 2001. As is the case with all government programs, the systematic snooping into your telephone records is unlikely to ever expire without public outcry.
4. Congress is full of hypocrites. Liberals who criticized Bush are less incensed with Obama. Republicans who bowed to Bush are now blasting Obama. The next time your congressional representative criticizes Obama for curbing civil liberties, ask if he or she would vote to repeal the Patriot Act, the post-911 law that handed unfettered power to the intelligence and military bureaucracies. Most won't.
5. The Bush-Obama White House hates transparency. President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, were justifiably criticized by Democrats (none more successfully so than Obama himself) for their penchant for secrecy. Obama promised that he would run history's most transparent administration. By almost any measure, on domestic and well as foreign policies, Obama has broken that promise.

One thing we've learned about the Bush-Obama White House is that words don't matter. Watch what they do.

One thing is clear and irrefutable: W started the erosion of constitutional liberties with the PA and Obama has continued and expanded it with NDAA 2012, drones, phone/internet records grabs, etc.

As much as Obama hates W, they are very much alike in their disdain for transparency and civil liberties.