News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 12, 2013: How pathetic is Barack Obama?
We may finally have consensus among Americans who are not Brain Dead.
All the hypocrisy of the Obama President I have been writing about for 128 weeks has finally come home to roost and you don’t need my clear vision or precise logic to understand or appreciate it without having to read Obama’s America every week.
In general it is Obama’s distorted National Security Agency – yes it’s his – he is President so he OWNS. But more specifically, what it does in the name of the government.
Has anyone noticed Obama has been a combination of silent about and supportive of the abuses the NSA has been now shown to be responsible for. No outrage on his part for a huge secret part of the Federal government illegally spying on Americans.
But that is not the worst of it. The NSA protecting Court of Inquisition officially named the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, an 11-member collection of specially chosen Federal judges who constitute the worst abuse of all. It is this Court that gives the NSA the “legal” rulings and exceptions from obeying U.S. law that allows the NSA to do its Dirty Work. The Federal Surveillance Court is an abomination.
President Obama is doing nothing at all to challenge this out of control Federal Court. He keeps appointing more judges to it, and he has never criticized it.
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal rarely agree on anything. But this week both had banner front page articles about the abuse of this Court and what do we get in response from The While House? SILENCE! Nothing but silence!
How can this be if Obama is this principled leader, this so called Constitutional scholar and change master for good? Because he isn’t any of that.; he is Slick Willy Barack.
It is time to quote from both the Times and the Journal. You don’t have to believe me although you certainly should. Read what they have to say:
Here is the New York Times headline on July 6, 2013 ….
“IN SECRET, COURT VASTLY BROADENS POWERS OF NSA”
And the front page of The Wall Street Journal., July 8, 2013 …
“SECRET COURT RULING EXPANDS SPY POWER”
Yes I will quote from both but what is the operative term in both major newspapers – SECRET COURT. Where do we expect you see SECRET COURTS operating?
SECRET COURTS operate in totalitarian countries with repressive governments.
But you don’t understand – then how can we have a SECRET COURT in the U.S.?
Since some of you may not get it let me repeat it …
SECRET COURTS operate in totalitarian countries with repressive governments.
What would a REAL President of the United States be doing right now?
CONDEMNING THE SECRET COURT AND VOWING TO DISBAND IT!
Again maybe some of you don’t get it so I will repeat myself …
We don’t have a REAL President today. We have a Con Man in The White House; masquerading as President for the last 4 + years and who will continue to do so for the next 3+ years, I could not be any sadder to say.
So what is an example of what this Secret Court has the ability to do? If they want, they can issue a “sealed” arrest warrant for you that will put you in jail not knowing even what you are supposedly charged with, and without any right to a lawyer or evidence or anything else if the Secret Court rules it is necessary to withhold from you even the most basic Constitutional protections if they rule it is “necessary for “national security.”
So WAKE up brothers and sisters before it is too late! Behind the benign face that NSA and its Secret Court flash for us and the media that they are protecting us and would never abuse their powers, (they are everyday), a monster out of control.
That has no place in our democratic republic supposedly of laws.
Finally now let me quote from these two articles …
Let’s start with The Wall Street Journal …
“The National Security Agency’s ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on a secret court ruling that redefined a single word: “relevant.”
“This change—which specifically enabled the surveillance recently revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden—was made by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a group of judges responsible for making decisions about government surveillance in national-security cases. In classified orders starting in the mid-2000s, the court accepted that “relevant” could be broadened to permit an entire database of records on millions of people, in contrast to a more conservative interpretation widely applied in criminal cases, in which only some of those records would likely be allowed, according to people familiar with the ruling.”
That is how their article begins. Now here is more …
“Relevant” has long been a broad standard, but the way the court is interpreting it, to mean, in effect, “everything,” is new, says Mark Eckenwiler, a senior counsel at Perkins Coie LLP who, until December, was the Justice Department’s primary authority on federal criminal surveillance law.
“I think it’s a stretch” of previous federal legal interpretations, says Mr. Eckenwiler, who hasn’t seen the secret ruling. If a federal attorney “served a grand-jury subpoena for such a broad class of records in a criminal investigation, ‘they’ would be laughed out of court.”
Now here is a brief taste of The New York Times article ….
This is how it begins …
“In more than a dozen classified rulings, nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyber attacks, officials say.”
“The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.”
“The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.”
Here is some more ..
“Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is impaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.”
“Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure, nondescript room in the federal courthouse in Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Most hail from districts outside the capital and come in rotating shifts to hear surveillance applications; a single judge signs most surveillance orders, which totaled nearly 1,800 last year. None of the requests from the intelligence agencies was denied, according to the court.”
Enough! If you haven’t gotten the message yet you never will.
Whether you have or have not. If we continue to allow a SECRET COURT to “flourish” in our so-called democratic republic of laws it is only going to get worse.
There is NO place for a Secret Court in a REAL democracy.
And no REAL American President would stand it.
Ooops, sorry we don’t have one right now.
About The Writer: Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
