Thank God For Edward Snowden!

The US government has been invading our privacy, and the Federal Courts have allowed it! If it were not for Edward Snowden, we the people would never have learned about Operation Prism, the gathering of a wealth of information regarding everybody’s use of electronic media, by the NSA without regard to any suspicion of wrongdoing by anyone. In my last post, I called the President, The Congress and the Courts our Royalty. The following statement by our administration is reminiscent of Nixon’s statement about the Watergate break in, “If the President does it, it is not illegal.”
“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. In essence, they have stated that anything they do in the name of national security, even violating the constitutional protections of the people, it is OK. If that is not a royal statement, then what is? Obama has said, ”Nobody is listening to your calls”. I would add the word, “yet”, to that statement.
How did this come about?  After 9/11, we were a frightened people and we let the government pass the “Patriot Act”.  It is this act that the Courts have allowed the government to violate our rights under the constitution in the name of national security. When this act was challenged in the Supreme Court, they upheld much of it even though it violates the constitutional protection provided in the fourth amendment. In Germany, the persecution of the Jews and Gays was upheld by their Supreme Court as well. I see a parallel here. Title II of that act which specifies the Enhanced Surveillance Procedures needs to be scrutinized and limited to protect our rights now, and in the future. If we surrender our rights to due process, what do we have left? We have done things in wartime that we felt necessary to protect our country, like moving all Americans of Japanese descent to concentration camps in Arizona during World War II, only to regret this injustice later. That injustice affected a segment of our population; the present injustice affects us all. We should not repeat this type of breach of our rights in the name of the “War on Terror” today.
The argument that this blanket data bank of our phone calls and our use of Google and the Internet has made our protection easier.  Actually, I cannot see how. If a person becomes a suspect as a potential terrorist, the Justice department can get a valid warrant to mine his or hers phone, Google, and Internet usage data at that time. This would be constitutional. Getting and storing all our data without regard to our being a suspect is going too far. This has to stop! It is time we revisited the Patriot Act, and allowed our justice system as envisioned by the Founding Fathers to work again. If we allow the government to do anything in the name of national security without regard to the constitution that they have sworn to protect and uphold, then we will be living in a police state. We must insist on restoring the rights in the Bill of Rights, and chiding our royal president for stepping over the line. He is our President, not our father, nor our King.  He has yet to take responsibility for the persecution inflicted on conservative action groups by the IRS. This, too, is the act of a King, not a leader of free people. Read the Act, or even read Title !! of the act to learn what they have done to our rights by interpreting our situation as an Emergency or otherwise. How could the Courts have allowed them to get away with this injustice!!!!