It's an unusual but perhaps critical issue on which I beg to differ with the estimable Charles Pierce, who feels that Obama has lost his grip on his administration. This is very similar to the media gabble heading into the weekend that Grandma Feinstein is suddenly mounting a principled stand against the vicissitudes of the intrusive meta-security state.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. People are welcome to insist upon and celebrate the substantive differences between the current boss and the previous, insofar as they do exist, though I suggest that perhaps Obama has not been and never will be the transformative figure he originally campaigned as. For the most part, in fact, he is simply a smoother and more articulate continuation of many of the Cheney regime's more objectionable policies.
Perhaps nowhere is this more true than the expansion of the capacity of the internal state security apparatus to spy upon and permanently archive the metadata comings and goings of its inhabitants, who through political and economic attrition have become less and less the traditional idea of "citizens," as in an informed and empowered body electorate, but rather a collection of demographics to be herded and cajoled, so as to make the picking of their pockets a simpler process for the rentiers who actually own the system.
In other words, Feinstein has been a US Senator for a very long time, and the head of the Intelligence Committee for a long time, and never before had any issue with the spying capacity or activities of the CIA or FBI or NSA -- in fact, it has been part and parcel of her office to enhance those capabilities. But now it's a problem, because the watchdog has stretched its leash, and is spying on elites and peons alike. You can see the problem for poor DiFi, suddenly the champion of principle, after previous tilts at such threats to the republic as flag burning and video game violence.
Similarly, Obama's problem is not that the CIA has exceeded its operational portfolio but rather, as with the self-serving data dumping of Edward Snowden, that the organization has now been observed doing so. These things are not errors or flaws in the system; they are features. The organizations in question are doing precisely what they've been asked to do, designed to do.
What's really unclear is why any of this should be worthy of note, especially under the hoary rubric of a "free society" -- the average 'murkin, like his proletarian counterpart in Russia, is much more authoritarian, or at least comfortable with the characteristics of such governments, than he lets on. Hell, this is a country where you can literally get away with murdering a kid for sneaking into your daughter's bedroom for illicit nookie, you think enough people give a shit that the Feebs are archiving their porn searches?
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. People are welcome to insist upon and celebrate the substantive differences between the current boss and the previous, insofar as they do exist, though I suggest that perhaps Obama has not been and never will be the transformative figure he originally campaigned as. For the most part, in fact, he is simply a smoother and more articulate continuation of many of the Cheney regime's more objectionable policies.
Perhaps nowhere is this more true than the expansion of the capacity of the internal state security apparatus to spy upon and permanently archive the metadata comings and goings of its inhabitants, who through political and economic attrition have become less and less the traditional idea of "citizens," as in an informed and empowered body electorate, but rather a collection of demographics to be herded and cajoled, so as to make the picking of their pockets a simpler process for the rentiers who actually own the system.
In other words, Feinstein has been a US Senator for a very long time, and the head of the Intelligence Committee for a long time, and never before had any issue with the spying capacity or activities of the CIA or FBI or NSA -- in fact, it has been part and parcel of her office to enhance those capabilities. But now it's a problem, because the watchdog has stretched its leash, and is spying on elites and peons alike. You can see the problem for poor DiFi, suddenly the champion of principle, after previous tilts at such threats to the republic as flag burning and video game violence.
Similarly, Obama's problem is not that the CIA has exceeded its operational portfolio but rather, as with the self-serving data dumping of Edward Snowden, that the organization has now been observed doing so. These things are not errors or flaws in the system; they are features. The organizations in question are doing precisely what they've been asked to do, designed to do.
What's really unclear is why any of this should be worthy of note, especially under the hoary rubric of a "free society" -- the average 'murkin, like his proletarian counterpart in Russia, is much more authoritarian, or at least comfortable with the characteristics of such governments, than he lets on. Hell, this is a country where you can literally get away with murdering a kid for sneaking into your daughter's bedroom for illicit nookie, you think enough people give a shit that the Feebs are archiving their porn searches?
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