Now that he’s in power, he’s a lot more amenable to keeping all the powers that George W. Bush accumulated. Today the Justice Department revealed that the administration will seek to extend Patriot Act provisions for roving wiretaps, monitoring “lone wolf terrorists,” and snooping on your business and library records. That a Democratic administration is doing this should not come as a surprise, of course, since the original Patriot Act was cobbled together from a leftover wish-list of powers that the Clinton Justice Department wanted. The national-security state is nothing if not bipartisan.
Obama’s National Security State
Posted in liberties.
2 Responses to Obama’s National Security State
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ojc says:
Clinton’s domestic terrorism bill post-Oklahoma City is the best example of this national security bipartisanship. Ironically, I distinctly recall some Republicans fretting about the danger it posed to civil liberties. Remember the worry on the right about the FBI’s malfeasance at Ruby Ridge and Waco? Somehow that was forgotten in recent years.
Obviously, as we encounter various domestic security threats, law enforcement needs to adapt. But should this take the form of the federalizing and militarizing domestic policy work (i.e. the routine use of quasi-military SWAT teams)? Many conservatives rightly decried Janet Napolitano’s “domestic terrorism” scare campaign from earlier this year, but they failed to notice they had originally handed her department an arsenal of snooping tools under Bush II.
Indeed, the phenomenon of the “National Security State” is an illustration of a broader bipartisan regime that extends to all kinds of domestic and foreign policy issues. After all, who bailed out Wall Street? This is no shadowy conspiracy; it’s merely the quite openly accepted status quo. We need to applaud all the conservatives and liberals with intellectual honesty that step up to expose the rotten elements of this regime.
I agree the National Security State is bipartisan, but can’t remember back to the old days (Clinton and/or pre-9/11). Can you dredge up a link or two about the leftover wish list?