Satirically delicious.

“Yes, the National Security Administration is spying on our phone calls, and unlike during the Bush administration, this time it’s the Obama administration. Yeah, this guy, he is always trying to outdo his predecessor. ‘Oh, he poured water on their face? I’m going to blow ’em up! HAHAHA! Did I win?’”

“Folks, I’m going to be straight with you. I’m conflicted here, folks. On the one hand, this proves Obama is a tyrannical despot who ignores all the rules. On the other hand, I kind of like tyrannical despots who ignore all the rules. Shows spunk.”

– Stephen Colbert, June 6, 2013

H/T Conservative Videos.com
Days later Colbert tweets:

If you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide from the giant surveillance apparatus the government’s been hiding.

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) June 11, 2013

Related:
Joe Biden 2006: Bush #NSA Collecting Phone Records “Very, Very Intrusive” [Video]

Say it aint so Joe!

“I don’t have to listen to your phone calls to know what you’re doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive.”

(Center for Democracy & Technology) –When the story broke that the NSA has spent the past several years collecting the phone records of millions of U.S. mobile customers, the Obama administration and other lawmakers were quick to dismiss the immense privacy implications posed by such information.

We disagree, and believe then-Senator and now-Vice President Joe Biden got it right in 2006 while commenting on the Bush-era NSA’s similar mass collection of calling records.

If you agree and want to see reforms to rein in NSA spying, visit our coalition site at https://optin.stopwatching.us to make your voice heard.

Related:
2005 Obama Slammed Patriot Act; “Fishing Expedition Through Phone Calls, Emails…Gives People No Rights”

(2006) Obama Condemned #NSA’s Wiretapping Americans & Collecting Their Phone Records “No President Is Above The Law”

Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated

Video: Harry Reid Was Against The Patriot Act Before He Was For It

Obama Regime Invokes Special Privilege To Suppress Legal Scrutiny Of NSA Data Mining ‘Nat’l Security Trumps Constitution & Fed Law –No Court Can Stop Them’

(The Guardian) ….He has had “a very comfortable life” that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

He described how he once viewed the internet as “the most important invention in all of human history”. As an adolescent, he spent days at a time “speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own”.

But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. “I don’t see myself as a hero,” he said, “because what I’m doing is self-interested: I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA’s surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. “What they’re doing” poses “an existential threat to democracy”, he said.

Continued >>>

#IStandWithEdwardSnowden

#IStandWithEdwardSnowden HERO. #nuffsaid #nsa #prism #tcot #freedomovertyranny #EdwardSnowden

— Velvet Hammer (@velvethammer) June 10, 2013

Previously:

• Obama Regime Invokes Special Privilege To Suppress Legal Scrutiny Of Data Mining ‘Nat’l Security Trumps Constitution & Fed Law –No Court Can Stop Them’
• Rush Limbaugh: America in the Midst of a Coup d’Etat [Audio & Transcript]
• AP Photos: MASSIVE Secret #NSA Data Center Bluffdale, Utah –The Agency Collects An Est. 3 BILLION Phone Calls Each Day
• Mark Levin Blasts Obama: “We Have The Elements Of A Police State” [Audio]
• 2005 Obama Slammed Patriot Act; “Fishing Expedition Through Phone Calls, Emails…Gives People No Rights”
• 2006 Obama Condemned #NSA’s Wiretapping Americans & Collecting Their Phone Records “No President Is Above The Law”
• @JudgeNap RAILS Against #NSA Abuse: “They Got a Search Warrant for a 113 Million Phones!” “Constitutionally Impermissible” [Video]
• Internet Dragnet From Hell !
• Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated
• Dem Rep @MaxineWaters to @RolandsMartin: ‘Obama Has Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone’
• Obama’s NSA Top Secret FISA Court Order Commands @VerizonWireless Hand Over [ALL] Call Data Of [ALL] Customers –Both Parties, On A Daily Basis [Update: Order Does Not Rule Out Telephony Services Communication; Text Messages, Multimedia Etc. @ATT Too?

“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.”― George Orwell, 1984

Try and wrap your heads around this.

(The Guardian) …..The use of the privilege has been personally approved by President Obama and several of the administration’s most senior officials: in addition to Clapper, they include the director of the NSA Keith Alexander and Eric Holder, the attorney general. “The attorney general has personally reviewed and approved the government’s privilege assertion in these cases,” legal documents state.

In comments on Friday about the surveillance controversy, Obama insisted that the secret programmes were subjected “not only to congressional oversight but judicial oversight”. He said federal judges were “looking over our shoulders”.

But civil liberties lawyers say that the use of the privilege to shut down legal challenges was making a mockery of such “judicial oversight”. Though classified information was shown to judges in camera, the citing of the precedent in the name of national security cowed judges into submission.

“The administration is saying that even if they are violating the constitution or committing a federal crime no court can stop them because it would compromise national security.

That’s a very dangerous argument,” said Ilann Maazel, a lawyer with the New York-based Emery Celli firm who acts as lead counsel in the Shubert case.

“This has been legally frustrating and personally upsetting,” Maazel added. “We have asked the government time after time what is the limit to the state secrets privilege, whether there’s anything the government can’t do and keep it secret, and every time the answer is: no.” [...]

Keeping in the spirit of Orwell’s 1984. Double think; National Security = National Terrorism?

Trust Me = Mistrust Me –But there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

Obama’s speech in San Jose June 7, 2013:

That’s not to suggest that you just say, trust me; we’re doing the right thing; we know who the bad guys are.  And the reason that’s not how it works is because we’ve got congressional oversight and judicial oversight.  And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.

To say that we [already] have some problems, would be putting it lightly.

Nobody is listening to your telephone calls = Damn straight we are?

(CNN) …..All the revelations about U.S. surveillance programs in recent days have put the government on the defensive, set privacy advocates howling for reform and left millions of Americans somewhere in the middle, wondering what the news means to them and what, if anything, they should do about it.

The man at the top says they should just relax.

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Barack Obama said Friday as he tried to reassure Americans who have had to digest a dizzying array of revelations in the past few days. [...]

Ronald Bailey at Reason’s Hit & Run on the 4th amendment forbidding dragnet searches:

I am no constitutional scholar, but I had some vague notion the Fourth Amendment forbids dragnet searches by government officials. The just-the-facts-ma’am jurisprudence website, the Legal Information Institute run by Cornell University seems to agree:

Law enforcement may only conduct a search if individualized suspicion (emphasis added) motivates the search. The Fourth Amendment prohibits generalized searches (emphasis added), unless extraordinary circumstances place the general public in danger.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s pretty hard to get more generalized than snooping every telephone call that citizens make. And considering that your chances of dying in a terrorist attack is somewhere around 1 in 20 million, it’s ridiculous to argue that such a massive spying operation is justified by some kind of extraordinary circumstances that are placing the general public in danger. [...]

Hmm…

If the programs needed secrecy to succeed, will NSA shut them down now? If not, did they ever need be secret? Or did I just blow your mind?

— Matt Apuzzo (@mattapuzzo) June 7, 2013

In related Fed data mining news:

Via @joypullmann Obama DOE wants to monitor students’ “appreciation 4 diversity,” “service orientation” & “empathy.” michellemalkin.com/2013/03/15/tim…

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) March 15, 2013

Previously:

• Rush Limbaugh: America in the Midst of a Coup d’Etat [Audio & Transcript]
• AP Photos: MASSIVE Secret #NSA Data Center Bluffdale, Utah –The Agency Collects An Est. 3 BILLION Phone Calls Each Day
• Mark Levin Blasts Obama: “We Have The Elements Of A Police State” [Audio]
• 2005 Obama Slammed Patriot Act; “Fishing Expedition Through Phone Calls, Emails…Gives People No Rights”
• 2006 Obama Condemned #NSA’s Wiretapping Americans & Collecting Their Phone Records “No President Is Above The Law”
• @JudgeNap RAILS Against #NSA Abuse: “They Got a Search Warrant for a 113 Million Phones!” “Constitutionally Impermissible” [Video]
• Internet Dragnet From Hell !
• Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated
• Dem Rep @MaxineWaters to @RolandsMartin: ‘Obama Has Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone’
• Obama’s NSA Top Secret FISA Court Order Commands @VerizonWireless Hand Over [ALL] Call Data Of [ALL] Customers –Both Parties, On A Daily Basis [Update: Order Does Not Rule Out Telephony Services Communication; Text Messages, Multimedia Etc. @ATT Too?

Rush Limbaugh reacting to the multitude of Obama Scandals, and the newest revelation that Obama’s NSA is collecting phone and internet data on millions of Americans.

Transcript:

What everybody knows and nobody wants to really come to grips with is that we are in the midst of a coup taking place.

Now, I know what’s gonna happen. The people on the other side of the glass: “Will you dial that coup talk back?” That’s all the headlines are gonna be. I don’t care. In fact, it’s almost on par with: “I hope he fails.” How does that sound now, by the way: “I hope he fails”? I’m constantly looking for ways here to persuade people of what I passionately believe, and I’m not in it to lie to anybody. There’s nothing to be gained by lying to you about what I really think. There’s nothing to be gained here by lying about facts. There’s nothing to be gained here by gaining ground under false pretense.

So if the Constitution exists as it is, the country was founded as it was, and an administration comes along and doesn’t like that and is doing everything it can to overturn that Constitution without a convention, doing everything it can to change direction of this country, and what’s the word, transform it, what’s wrong with calling this a coup? “Mr. Limbaugh, a coup is when rebels join forces with the military and start launching military attacks and shooting people.” No, no, no. Not always. And that’s my point.

When I was a kid, my dad kept saying, “Son, if things don’t change, the Soviets are gonna take over this country without firing a shot.” What he was talking about was a coup. Anyway, folks, there’s a lot here to be concerned about. And you know it as well as I do. I get a little perplexed when people that I think see the world as I do and are, in my opinion, on my side, want to come along for reasons I can’t fathom to excuse things that need not be excused. Now, Obama went out there today, he’s in Palm Springs, and he addressed this NSA story. He defended the spy programs as legitimate because Congress has been consistently informed about ‘em. He didn’t get mad, but he sort of complained about all the “hype” over the phone data gathering, because it’s approved by the FISA court. It’s approved by the Congress.

He said (paraphrasing), “Nobody’s listening to your phone calls. They’re looking at megadata,” he meant metadata, “and tracking terrorists. Nobody’s listening to content. Modest encroachments on privacy are worth doing. We’re gonna have to make some choices as a society. You can’t have 100% security and have 100% privacy.” This is what he said today out in Palm Springs. This is the guy, don’t forget, who got elected convincing people that this kind of stuff was never gonna happen anywhere. This is the guy who got elected mischaracterizing the kind of intelligence gathering that was ongoing with the Bush administration.

This is the guy who got elected president by telling us that what is happening now was never going to happen when he was president. This is a guy who got elected telling us in 2007, 2008 that what’s going on now was going on then. Bush was doing this, identical stuff, that’s what they’re trying to tell us, even now. He got elected warning us that what’s happening now was happening in 2007, 2008, and promising us, this was not gonna happen. And everything that was happening in 2007 has only grown. There’s only more of it. It’s more sweeping than it’s ever been.

Full transcript at Rush Limbaugh.com.

Related:

• AP Photos: MASSIVE Secret #NSA Data Center Bluffdale, Utah –The Agency Collects An Est. 3 BILLION Phone Calls Each Day
• Mark Levin Blasts Obama: “We Have The Elements Of A Police State” [Audio]
• 2005 Obama Slammed Patriot Act; “Fishing Expedition Through Phone Calls, Emails…Gives People No Rights”
• 2006 Obama Condemned #NSA’s Wiretapping Americans & Collecting Their Phone Records “No President Is Above The Law”
• @JudgeNap RAILS Against #NSA Abuse: “They Got a Search Warrant for a 113 Million Phones!” “Constitutionally Impermissible” [Video]
• Internet Dragnet From Hell !
• Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated
• Dem Rep @MaxineWaters to @RolandsMartin: ‘Obama Has Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone’
• Obama’s NSA Top Secret FISA Court Order Commands @VerizonWireless Hand Over [ALL] Call Data Of [ALL] Customers –Both Parties, On A Daily Basis [Update: Order Does Not Rule Out Telephony Services Communication; Text Messages, Multimedia Etc. @ATT Too?

Spine chilling…

Via Real Clear Politics:

A military no trespassing sign is seen in front of Utah’s NSA Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, Friday, June 7, 2013. President Barack Obama vigorously defended sweeping secret surveillance into America’s phone records and foreigners’ Internet use, declaring “we have to make choices as a society.” It was revealed late Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. phone customers.
Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP Date: June 07, 2013

An aerial view of the NSA’s Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency’s need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach.
Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP Date: June 06, 2013

An detail aerial view of the NSA’s Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency’s need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach.
Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP Date: June 06, 2013

FILE- This photo from Thursday, June 6, 2013, shows an aerial view of the National Security Agency’s data center in Bluffdale, Utah. Former NSA employee William Binney told The Associated Press that he estimates the agency collects records on 3 billion phone calls each day.
Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP Date: June 06, 2013

This aerial view shows the NSA’s Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency’s need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach.
Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP Date: June 06, 2013

More here.

Related:

• Mark Levin Blasts Obama: “We Have The Elements Of A Police State” [Audio]
• 2005 Obama Slammed Patriot Act; “Fishing Expedition Through Phone Calls, Emails…Gives People No Rights”
• 2006 Obama Condemned #NSA’s Wiretapping Americans & Collecting Their Phone Records “No President Is Above The Law”
• @JudgeNap RAILS Against #NSA Abuse: “They Got a Search Warrant for a 113 Million Phones!” “Constitutionally Impermissible” [Video]
• Internet Dragnet From Hell !
• Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated
• Dem Rep @MaxineWaters to @RolandsMartin: ‘Obama Has Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone’
• Obama’s NSA Top Secret FISA Court Order Commands @VerizonWireless Hand Over [ALL] Call Data Of [ALL] Customers –Both Parties, On A Daily Basis [Update: Order Does Not Rule Out Telephony Services Communication; Text Messages, Multimedia Etc. @ATT Too?

Via The DailyRushbo

As “just plain wrong“.

“…And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document – through library books that you read the phone calls you’ve made, the emails that you’ve sent – this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong. Giving law enforcement the tools they need to investigate suspicious activity is one thing – and it’s the right thing – but doing it without any real oversight seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals America stands for.”

Once in power, the ‘Patriot Act’ shoe was on the other foot. As Obama learned to love it and all the power that comes with it. In May 2011, just before the act was about to expire, the Patriot Act extension was signed by Obama.

Big brother (still) watching: Obama extends Patriot Act:

Related:

(2006) Obama Condemned #NSA’s Wiretapping Americans & Collecting Their Phone Records “No President Is Above The Law”

@JudgeNap RAILS Against #NSA Abuse: “They Got a Search Warrant for a 113 Million Phones!” “Constitutionally Impermissible” [Video]

Internet Dragnet From Hell !

Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated

Obama’s NSA Top Secret FISA Court Order Commands @VerizonWireless Hand Over [ALL] Call Data Of [ALL] Customers –Both Parties, On A Daily Basis [Update: Order Does Not Rule Out Telephony Services Communication; Text Messages, Multimedia Etc.

Video: Harry Reid Was Against The Patriot Act Before He Was For It

Faux outrage in defense of ‘liberty’ which he neither respects nor supports.

I have no doubt that General Hayden will be confirmed. But I am going to reluctantly vote against him to send a signal to this administration that even in these circumstances, even in these trying times, President Bush is not above the law. No President is above the law. I am voting against Mr. Hayden in the hope that he will be more humble before the great weight of responsibility that he has not only to protect our lives but to protect our democracy.

Americans fought a Revolution in part over the right to be free from unreasonable searches–to ensure that our Government could not come knocking in the middle of the night for no reason. We need to find a way forward to make sure we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy and liberty of innocent Americans. We have to find a way to give the President the power he needs to protect us, while making sure he does not abuse that power. It is possible to do that. We have done it before. We could do it again.

Merely a Bush card, no more, no less.

Related:

@JudgeNap RAILS Against #NSA Abuse: “They Got a Search Warrant for a 113 Million Phones!” “Constitutionally Impermissible” [Video]

Internet Dragnet From Hell !

Obama Flashback: ‘No Warrantless Wiretaps If You Elect Me’ -Updated

Obama’s NSA Top Secret FISA Court Order Commands @VerizonWireless Hand Over [ALL] Call Data Of [ALL] Customers –Both Parties, On A Daily Basis [Update: Order Does Not Rule Out Telephony Services Communication; Text Messages, Multimedia Etc.

“This is a fishing expedition on the grandest scale we’ve ever seen in American history.”

“They’re looking for a select group of people and in order to find that select group of people the Constitution says to present some evidence against them to a judge and get a search warrant for their phones. Rather than doing that, they got a search warrant for 113 million phones.”

“Who would trust them after this? The Constitution doesn’t trust them.”

“This is just a shortcut to make it easier for America’s spies to spy on Americans. Shep, they spied on the West Wing, they spied on the Pentagon, they spied on the Supreme Court, they spied on the CIA! This is spies spying on spies. This is the most extraordinarily broad search warrant ever issued in the history of the federal courts of the United States!”

“The whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to prevent the government from doing this, to prevent it from interfering with the privacy rights of a lot of innocent people in order to find a few that may be planning something wrong.”

“Nobody wants the wrong thing to happen but the idea that we would sacrifice liberty in order to obtain safety is a canard. This is just a shortcut to make it easier for American spies to spy on Americans.”

“This is the most extraordinarily broad search warrant every issued in the history of the federal courts of the United States.”

Will ObamaCare cover stress related health issues brought on by the Regime’s tyranny?