Biden Administration is back to spying on political enemies

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

– Ben Franklin, 1759

 We must blame it on George Bush the Younger and the hysteria after the 9/11 attacks.  He mistakenly gave our government too much power to spy on us through the ironically named “Patriot Act” and other morphing and unaccountable Federal agencies. A huge mistake. And a great blow to minimal government and our Constitutional Rights.

Under Obama, and now Biden, the hyper-political Democrats are reportedly using the NSA and other strong-arm government agencies against their political adversaries. The NSA, FBI and other agencies are spying and bullying folks with right-of-center political views? What do they think they are, Facebook?

The latest example is Tucker Carlson.  The strongest and most reasoned opponent of the current leftist regime found out through a whistleblower that he is being spied upon by the NSA and other Federal henchmen. This is illegal, but when asked, the spy agencies do not have to answer — to anyone. It is not what our spying apparatus is supposed to be about.

The U.S. government can’t spy on an American citizen or on his web traffic without a warrant. That’s a right reserved exclusively to girlfriends tracking their boyfriends on Facebook.

Obama first weaponized the agencies against his enemies. The ones we found out about were Eric Holder, his “wing man” Attorney General, spying on James Rosen of Fox News and Lois Lerner, the IRS tyrant who harassed Tea Party organizations using the strong-arm tactics of the federal morass.

The IRS was used to target political opponents and then, when caught, it “lost” its emails. Harry Reid stood on the Senate floor and knowingly lied about Mitt Romney not paying his taxes. Most troubling, our Justice Department seems more intent on settling racial and political scores (as with the recent Trump Organization indictments) than on prosecuting actual dangerous criminals.

Of course, the government protects itself and is not accountable, not even to Congress. They now fear these agencies. The NSA and FBI spying on political enemies reminds us all that we’re a government of the peephole, by the peephole and for the peephole.

The corrupt New York Democrat DA going after the Trump Organization under an unprecedented and dubious pretense and arresting the CFO for not reporting his free parking, are evidence of the uneven hand of “justice” under Democrat control.

Using the NSA to go after Tucker Carlson and the government’s illegal data collection activities for vindictive reasons should embarrass all Democrats, a group very hard to embarrass. This is the most vengeful manhunt since Taylor Swift resumed dating.

We need finally to get to decide the limits of what of ours the government can force from us, and a healthy mistrust of government must be our guide in doing so.  I’d like to think our government would only use the data collected to protect us from terrorism, but that is not the way this White House rolls.

Premised on ramped-up post-9/11 fears, politicians since George W. Bush have built costly, perpetual Washington bureaucracies. It was voted on about 99 to 1 in the Senate. The last 99 to 1 vote in Senate was to go to war in Iraq. It always scared me when Congress is this unanimous.

The political class has a mission here: Scare the people, take their money, and build itself an empire.  That is what politicians do. Make upstarts scared of taking you on; that is the mantra of many in Washington. They fear the truth Tucker Carlson traffics in.

On January 6^th, a few knuckleheads dressed up like extras from “Braveheart” who were fed up with the direction the country was going walked through the Capitol Building and monkeyed with Nancy Pelosi’s podium.  All of a sudden they are the most dangerous political class in this country. Really?

In my view, Eric Snowden did the country a service by telling us what the NSA was doing to us. What he did embarrassed and angered the political class. But a person does not go to jail for embarrassing our country. If so, Joe Biden would be serving a life term.

There was a freak tornado that hit Washington D.C. last week. It came in from Virginia, uprooted trees and made its way toward our Capitol Building. It was clearly an Act of God.  But Democrats will make the FBI investigate and expect insurrection charges to follow because God has right wing ties.

Ron Hart, a libertarian syndicated op-ed humorist,award-winning author and TV/radio commentator, can be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com or visit www.RonaldHart.com