Has the Corruption in Washington Reached Critical Mass?

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


If President Obama has lost the New York Times, it could be that the ship is really sinking. Here is the NYT editorial board in the wake of the NSA phone records news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html?_r=1

"The administration has lost all credibility"

*Update: That sentence has been changed to read, "The administration has lost all credibility on this issue."

Welcome to the world, New York Times. Where the Hell have you been? I mean Operation Fast and Furious escaped your notice as well as Eric Holder's lies under oath about that scandal. Benghazi and all the attendant lies escaped your notice as well.

But I stand corrected; The Times meant only on this issue.

Of course, today, Obama explained it all and assured us there is nothing to worry about. What a contrast from candidate Obama in 2007 when he promised his audience that none of this would happen in his administration. (Hat tip Liberty Blitzkrieg)

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/06/07/flashback-to-2007-obamas-speech-on-warrantless-wiretapping/

So now we have the NSA getting the communication records of every single Verizon customer. And it's not just Verizon, Folks. The revelations keep on coming.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/07/intelligence-officials-reportedly-mining-data-from-us-internet-companies/

And poor old James Clapper. He needs Google to get his information.

I understand that many conservatives are defending the NSA actions. Mike Rogers, a Republican who sits on the House intelligence committee is defending it and saying it has already thwarted a terror attack. This morning, radio talk show host Dennis Prager was also defending it as necessary to fight terrorism. These methods are way beyond what I was familiar with as a DEA agent who retired in the 1990s. Telephone toll records on drug traffickers and even wiretaps were part of the effort. Gathering data on every American in order to find some trend or something that leaps out at you as terrorism is way above my expertise. So I have questions: Is it necessary for the government to know all of my communications and what I do on the Internet in order to pick out the bad guys?

Perhaps.

Is this really the goal? If it is and it works, I will go along. Maybe President Obama has learned what candidate Obama did not know; that there are technological resources out there that can prevent a terror act even though they put private information on virtually all Americans in the government's files. Certainly, our government would never use this in the wrong ways. They would never use it to target political opponents.

Would they?

The IRS sure did.

Then there was this comment by none other than Maxine Waters last year during the campaign.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/eIA1lQBqH1s



So is it legitimate to question what the Obama administration is doing here?

Amid all this we have the EPA using drones to fly over farms to enforce the Clean Water Act. This is the department run by Lisa Jackson, aka Richard Windsor, who had his/her separate e-mail account and was awarded three awards for Ethics in Government.

Besides that, we have Holder's Justice Department going after the communications of the AP journalists as well as Fox's James Rosen, whom they identified as a "possible criminal co-conspirator" complete with Eric Holder's signature (but Holder says he had no knowledge of anything like that). We have the IRS targeting conservative groups and spending tons of money on conferences with line dances and artists paid to paint portraits of Bono, a high-ranking official who takes the 5th, and another who was overseeing the targeting of Tea Party groups, who did such a good job, she got hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonus payments and was promoted to oversee IRS's involvement in enforcing ObamaCare. Oh, did you know that the IRS paid out $133,000 to private event planners to arrange those conferences? I have news for you. When I was in DEA, I had the occasion to be assigned to organize a few conferences myself. That happened several times when I was in DEA's International Training Division my last two years before retirement. I arranged similar events in Washington, Kiev, and Guatemala. That meant I secured the hotel where people stayed, conference rooms, interpreters, speakers, meals, and everything else needed. I didn't have the luxury of hiring an event planner. We were expected to do that ourselves. We were expected to get the best rate available from the hotels, whereas the event planners go after the highest rates they can find so they get a bigger commission.

Event planners. Gimme a break!

It comes down to this: Given all of the scandals going on in this administration, where high-ranking officials are committing perjury or taking the 5th, do you trust this bunch to protect the rights of the rest of us while supposedly trying to find the bad guys who want to do us harm?

I guess they could try profiling.