Stephen Colbert captures the problem for the Republican party with the recent revelations of government violations of people’s privacy. They would normally enjoy anything that embarrasses the Obama administration but since they also love the national security state and indeed expanded and exploited its powers shamelessly during the Bush administration, they are caught in a bind.
The Colbert Report
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(This clip aired on June 6, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Assumes facts not in evidence: there is nothing even suggested that shows the Republicans fear hypocrisy. In fact, they may well view shouts of hypocrisy as garlands of victory, given the anti-intellectual stance of the party, if they can say it’s only libruls doing it.
CaitieCat:
Hey, keep your filthy hands off my hypocrisy. I can hyprocricise when I want, where I want, who I want! (But do as I say, not as I do.)
Does that sound about right? :p
Since the republicans all voted for the Patriot Act and the original 2007 FISA act -- and since this is exactly the kind of fascist-state control they want to see, I doubt if they have any dilemma here.
This is exactly the kind of repressive tool they wanted for years -- and nothing to do with potential terrorism either. We are told that use of this database has already (ie somehow in the last seven years) “prevented a terrorist strike” -- but we are given no details so how can we know? What we can know is that the federal government is amassing an enormous amount of data that can be used for any purpose once they have a suspect whether the “crime” be plotting a terrorist act (definition required please) or unpaid parking tickets or planning a protest against teh latest governmental denial of constitutional freedoms or tracking a drug cartel or pedophile ring or communists, socialists and liberals as potential enemies of the state. The USA has become what it once feared.
One nitpick, that annoys my IT personality, this stuff is DATA not metadata. The nedia can’t even get that right.
And one concern: how long before the Chinese hack into this database to monitor their own dissidents? That is if NSA doesn’t just give them the data……
media not nedia.