General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)'Obama's new NSA proposal and Democratic partisan hackery,' by Glenn Greenwald [View all]
Source: The Intercept
I vividly recall the first time I realized just how mindlessly and uncritically supportive of President Obama many Democrats were willing to be. In April, 2009, two federal courts, in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, ruled that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) required the Pentagon to disclose dozens of graphic photos it possessed showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama administration announced that, rather than contest or appeal those rulings, they would comply with the court orders and release all the photos. The ACLU praised that decision: the fact that the Obama administration opted not to seek further review is a sign that it is committed to more transparency.
... But then just two weeks later Obama completely reversed himself, announcing that he would do everything possible to block the court order and prevent it from taking effect. ... Now, obviously, the people who had been defending Obamas original pro-transparency position (which included the ACLU, human rights groups, and civil liberties writers including me) changed course and criticized him.
... But thats not what large numbers of Democrats did. Many of them first sided with Obama when his administration originally announced hed release the photos. But then, with equal vigor, they also sided with Obama when a mere two weeks later he took the exact opposition position, the very anti-transparency view these Democrats had been attacking all along when voiced by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney.
... Were now about to have a similar lab experiment, this time in the context of the NSA. ... That puts hard-core Obama loyalists and pro-NSA Democrats the ones that populate MSNBC in an extremely difficult position. They have spent the last 10 months defending the NSA (i.e., defending Obama) by insisting that the NSA metadata program is both reasonable and necessary to Keep Us Safe. But now Obama claims he wants to end that very same program. So what will they do?
Read more: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/25/obamas-new-nsa-proposal-democratic-partisan-hackery/