The Obama Surveillance Revelations Are Pushing Liberals Over the Edge

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-obama-surveillance-revelations-are-pushing-liberals-over-the-edge/276755/




The email went out shortly after midnight Thursday, a few hours after the news broke about the Obama administration's large-scale monitoring of Americans' cell-phone records: "You are being spied on."

It was sent by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading liberal organization, to its list of supporters, and it asked them to sign a petition demanding an investigation of the cell-phone surveillance. "It's simply unacceptable," the email said.

As further revelations about domestic surveillance have emerged in recent days, the group has kept up the drumbeat. The response, PCCC officials say, has been overwhelming -- a sign of the widespread liberal anger at Obama over civil liberties.

"We just think that what's happening here is so outrageous, progressives can't afford to stand on the sidelines," PCCC's Zaid Jilani said. "We have to stand up for accountable, transparent government that respects your rights."

[Laelth]

1. "We have to stand up for accountable, transparent government that respects your rights."

Quite. I feel I have an ethical responsibility to do so.

-Laelth

[graham4anything]

2. President Obama made it public, ergo, it is transparent.

[zipplewrath]

9. Actually Snowden made it public

Obama just did the damage control. Good chance he hasn't begun to tell us "everything".

[dkf]

13. Lol

[premium]

19. Pres. Obama did not make it public,

Edward Snowden did.
When there are secret courts, secret warrants, that is NOT transparency or public.

[LondonReign2]

27. ...

[MNBrewer]

28. Neither

is true

[IADEMO2004]

3. They are jumping. nt

[hamster]

4. The PCCC

doesn't have the power of President Obama so they can't tell us what to do. We have to have Obama's back.

[Autumn]

10. No, I expect him to have my back. I already took care of his.

twice

[HereSince1628]

21. Well, can't we have his back, while we hold his feet to the fire?

OBAMA told the American people to hold his feet to the fire.

Now we're going to fight over sock toasting?

[hamster]

22. If we hold his feet to the fire

The Republicans will take the Senate. You DO NOT want that. We have to trust our president

[frylock]

23. fuck that shit

[premium]

24. So you're one of these

no matter what, we have to trust and believe everything?

[hamster]

25. I believe

We must support the party.

[premium]

26. Support the party, yes

but not blindly or in lockstep when there is something not right, we're not like the repubs.

[hamster]

29. That's what I'm sayin

If we don't support the party, the repubs will get back in and gum everything up.

[premium]

30. That's not how you were coming across,

you at first seemed to be saying that no matter what Pres. Obama was doing, we have to support him.
But you've clarified your statement.

BTW, welcome to DU.

[hamster]

32. Thank you

[HereSince1628]

31. I'd say that is an assumption on your part, seemingly hyperbolized

with nothing really in support of it.

[hootinholler]

5. Que the usual suspects!

Oh wait, some are already here.

[Whisp]

6. The Usual Suspects... I wonder who the leader is?

[forestpath]

7. Obama will just use this to burnish his third way creds.

[jeff47]

8. It's really amazing to watch a plan come together. (nt)

[liberal_at_heart]

11. One of many. Education and campaign reform being the biggest for me.

[hamster]

12. We just have to trust President Obama

He knows what he's doing. He's a chess player. He's roping the dopes (Repubs) again.

[AgingAmerican]

15. He is joining the Repubs and rope-a-doping the Democratic party.

sad

[Myrina]

20. Axelrod, is that you?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Good. Being "liberal" or "progressive" isn't about party loyalty.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789

[MindPilot]

16. True dat! n/t

[ProSense]

17. "You are being spied on."

No, we're not.

This is being "spied on", actually illegally eavesdropping on Americans.

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022959557

[ucrdem]

18. What edge? This one perhaps?