Remember, You Shouldn't Worry If You Have Nothing To Hide

I seriously want to punch the jackass who said that first.

Someone somewhere in our government long ago came to the conclusion that there are no adults with critical thinking capabilities left in this country so everyone must obviously be treated like a fucking three year old and that is infuriating.

I know I really started noticing this phenomena under the Bush administration, especially right after 9/11 when the Dept. of Homeland Security was still Dick Cheney's wet dream.

Ever since then it has come down to the fact that our government does whatever it damn well pleases, without even asking forgiveness instead of permission after it gets it's hand slammed in the cookie jar of Constitutional propriety.

Whenever confronted with these abuses, they will look you right in the eye with all the earnestness of a first grader who has learned to lie and has gotten away with it, all the while wiping their muddy feet on the Fourth Amendment right in front of you and swear it's for your own good.

The Obama administration has turned this into an art form.

Chilling free speech: Fed's passion to monitor us has become insatiable

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Published October 23, 2014


Earlier this week, the federal government’s National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science -- encouragement that it achieves by awarding grants to scholars and universities -- announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media.

The NSF dubbed the project Truthy, a reference to comedian Stephen Colbert’s invention and hilarious use of the word “truthiness.”

The reference to Colbert is cute, and he is a very funny guy, but when the feds get into the business of monitoring speech, it is surely no joke; it is a nightmare. It is part of the Obama administration’s persistent efforts to monitor communication and scrutinize the expressions of opinions it hates and fears.

All presidents push the envelope when it comes to exercising their constitutional powers. But we never before have seen in modern times a president like the present one.

We already know the National Security Agency has the digital versions of all telephone conversations and emails sent to, from or within the U.S. since 2005. Edward Snowden's revelations of all this are credible and substantiated, and the government’s denials are weak and unavailing -- so weak and unavailing that many NSA agents disbelieve them.

But the government’s unbridled passion to monitor us has become insatiable. Just two months ago, the Federal Communications Commission, which licenses broadcasters, threatened to place federal agents in cable television newsrooms so they can see how stories are generated and produced. The FCC doesn’t even regulate cable, yet it threatened to enhance its own authority by monitoring cable companies from the inside.

What’s going on here?

What’s going on here, and has been going on since President Obama took office in January 2009, is a government with little or no fidelity to basic constitutional norms. There is no defense under the Constitution to any aspect of the government's -- federal, state, regional, local or hybrid; or any entity owned or controlled by any government; or any entity that exercises the government’s coercive powers or spends or receives its money -- monitoring the expressive behavior of anyone in the U.S., not in a newsroom, on social media or anywhere else.

You can read the rest here.