4/21/15, "Jeb Bush Praises Obama’s Expansion of NSA Surveillance," Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, firstlook.org
"One of the most glaring myths propagated by Washington — especially the two parties’ media loyalists — is that bipartisanship is basically impossible, that the two parties agree on so little,
that they are constantly at each other’s throats over everything. As is so often the case for Washington partisan propaganda, the reality is exactly the opposite: from trade deals to Wall Street bailouts to a massive National Security and Penal State, the two parties are in full agreement on the bulk of the most significant D.C. policies (which is why the leading candidates of the two parties (from America’s two ruling royal families) will have the same funding base). But because policies that command the agreement of the two parties’ establishments are largely ignored by the D.C. press in favor of the issues where they have some disagreements, the illusion is created that they agree on nothing.
To illustrate how true this all is, consider the comments today of leading GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. He appeared on Michael Medved’s conservative talk radio program, and was asked by the host what his favorite part of the Obama administration has been. His answer? As McClatchy’s Lesley Clark noted on Twitter, Bush hailed “Obama’s enhancement of NSA.” The audio was first posted by Ian Hanchett and is embedded below; here is the full transcript of the exchange:
Medved: If you were to look back at the last seven years, almost, what has been the best part of the Obama administration?It’s hardly unusual for even the most extremist right-wing Republicans to praise Obama’s foreign policy. GOP Congressman Peter King has repeatedly done just that, hailing Obama’s use of drones, assassination of a U.S. citizen with no due process, his upholding of indefinite detention powers, and the truncating of Miranda rights in terrorism cases. Just this week, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham — who has advocated bombing almost more Muslim countries in the last decade than he has fingers — said that he prefers Obama’s foreign policy over Rand Paul’s. A bipartisan coalition of Congressional outsiders tried in late 2013 to defund the NSA domestic spying program and almost succeeded, but the union of the parties’ establishments — the Obama White House, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi — whipped just enough votes to protect the program.
Jeb Bush: I would say the best part of the Obama administration would be his continuance of the protections of the homeland using the big metadata programs, the NSA being enhanced. Advancing this — even though he never defends it, even though he never openly admits it, there has been a continuation of a very important service, which is the first obligation, I think of our national government is to keep us safe. And the technologies that now can be applied to make that so, while protecting civil liberties are there. And he’s not abandoned them, even though there was some indication that he might.
The cause of NSA mass surveillance has been particularly embraced by many Democrats because it was Obama doing it (as I’ve said before, if Edward Snowden had leaked this information when a Republican was in the Oval Office, there would be a massive statue erected of him outside of the MSNBC studios, where he is now often vilified). And now, Jeb Bush (in contrast to Rand Paul, who vowed to end NSA spying “on Day One”) has declared himself fully in support of that cause, hailing Obama for expanding these capabilities." via Free Rep.
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Added: The US without an opposition party to the Democrats:
12/12/13: "If RINOs are not replaced, and if a genuine opposition party is not established, nothing can save the Constitution-or the representative democracy and freedoms that are the heritage of this country." (end of article)
12/12/2013, "The Nuclear Option: Misplaced Conservative Outrage," American Thinker, by Lester Jackson .
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But when it comes to perversity, nothing can top...
ObamaCare. After being publicly threatened by President Obama and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy, Chief Justice Roberts had the effrontery to blame the voters in justifying his thoroughly disingenuous cave-in upholding this law, now inflicting hardships on growing millions of Americans. Nevertheless, there can be no better illustration of tyranny of a corrupt willful minority than this "act of government mayhem." Neither Senator Obama nor a muzzled Speaker Pelosi campaigned for this in 2008; Mitt Romney largely ignored it in 2012. Once unleashed, Pelosi famously declared that the 2,400-page legislation had to be enacted to find out what was in it (bureaucratic license to excrete 11,000 pages of authoritarian regulations, many unfathomable). Is there anyone so deluded by ideology or partisanship as to believe that anywhere near a majority of the people ever sought or approved this monstrosity? Indeed, when ObamaCare was a major issue, in 2010, Republicans decisively captured the House.
The only reason for continuation of this unpopular disaster is tyranny. And this is tyranny not of the majority, but of the ruling class -- executive, legislative, judicial and media. According to Dick Armey, when leftist ideologue George Miller was told most people did not want a prior ObamaCare version, the latter replied that they were going to get it "whether they want it or not." Rep. Miller claims to not remember, but this is exactly what happened!
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Let's not delude ourselves. The filibuster has prevented a few bad Senate actions (and many good ones). However, it has not protected the people against ever-increasing federal power -- power abused with reckless abandon well before abuse on steroids by Obama.
Thus, it would be highly ill-advised to so exalt the filibuster that purportedly outraged Republicans attempt to restore it. An ominous reaction to the nuclear option came from Republican Senator Flake: "That's what I fear. I fear that once Republicans get the majority, it's very tough to tell the base that you're going to diminish your own authority." (Flake is an ObamaCare enabler.) Can anything better show what's wrong with RINOs? This man not only cowers at exercising his existing power, but he fears that he might not be able to reduce it!
Many of today's worst problems are due not just to aggressive leftist Democrats who will stop at nothing, but also to timid RINOs who stand for nothing. Although Senator Flake fears that a Republican majority will not restore the filibuster, what the rest of us should fear is the fear of the likes of Senator Flake.
It is galling that John Boehner became speaker in 2011, because Tea Party Republicans campaigned on a promise to avert the current ObamaCare disaster. In January 2011, Obama had not yet been re-elected, and the House Republican mandate was at its pinnacle. All Republicans had to do was not vote for money to implement ObamaCare. It is absolutely absurd to say that this required approval of the president or the Senate. The Constitution is crystal-clear: if the House refuses to vote for appropriations, there is nothing anybody else can do about it except scream to high heaven, much as Republicans have done over the nuclear option. (Democrats do not care who screams and how loud; RINOs quake at the very prospect.)
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Future historians will have ample reason to conclude that the great tragedy of the Obama dictatorship was not the demise of the filibuster, but that, at a critical moment, House leaders blocked fulfillment of the very promise that made them leaders.
As for filibustering to block judges who would legitimize further unconstitutional abuse of power, never forget Chief Justice Roberts. Those who revere the Constitution and were shocked by ObamaCare's intimidated savior should remember this: reliance on judges is gambling. Heed Judge Learned Hand's warning that we "rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes." .
Above all, remember that President Obama is able to abuse power only because the RINO-led House timidly refuses to constitutionally block money for such abuse. If RINOs are not replaced, and if a genuine opposition party is not established, nothing can save the Constitution -- or the representative democracy and freedoms that are the heritage of this country."
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Lester Jackson, Ph.D., a former college political science teacher, views mainstream media truth suppression as essential to harmful judicial activism. His recent articles are collected here."
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