Why the NSA revelations aren’t like the IRS scandal or Benghazi for Obama

[struggle4progress]

By Sean Sullivan, Published: June 7, 2013 at 4:01 pm

... “With respect to all these programs, the relevant intelligence committees are fully briefed on these programs. These are programs that have been authorized by broad bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006. And so, I think at the outset, it’s important to understand that your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we’re doing,” Obama said ...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said the NSA phone records collection helped thwart a significant case of terrorism in the United States “within the last few years.” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) defended the secret program, too ...

Sixty-eight percent of the public said it’s more important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if it intrudes on personal privacy, while 26 percent said it was more important to avoid intruding on privacy, according to a November 2010 Washington Post-ABC News poll. The sentiment crossed party lines, with 69 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans saying the government should investigate threats ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/06/07/why-the-nsa-revelations-arent-like-the-irs-scandal-or-benghazi-for-obama/

[delrem]

1. George W. Bush wins!!! whoop de do...

[Laelth]

2. It would not surprise me one bit ...

... to discover that this poll (and others like it) is the primary reason that our President continues to back this wholesale collection of data.

I'd prefer the President buck popular opinion from time to time and do the right thing. Obama isn't running for re-election. He could do the right thing if he wanted to. He could restore the 4th Amendment by simply standing down. As the executive, he could order the NSA to stop collecting this data. He has not. Why not simply agree with me that the President should just order the NSA to stop?

-Laelth

[blkmusclmachine]

5. Who counted the votes for this poll, Diebold?

[Gus Lammas]

3. Great article from The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/all-the-infrastructure-a-tyrant-would-need-courtesy-of-bush-and-obama/276635/

I don't have enough posts in to start a thread about it, so feel free to start your own if you'd like!

[alsame]

4. Thank you, that article is spot on. I will

start a thread, thanks.

[JoeyT]

6. The way the questions in that poll are worded I'm amazed it wasn't 100%:

"3. What do you think is more important right now - (for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy); or (for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats)?"

That's more or less irrelevant to what's going on now. They're not "investigating possible terrorist threats". Investigating possible terrorist threats is getting a warrant to investigate a single person or a group of people. What they're doing is data collection on a massive scale that includes a whole bunch of people that aren't suspected of anything at all.

The way this scandal is different from Benghazi and the IRS scandal is that this one contains an actual issue.