Pelosi protects Stasi superstate

The key person keeping the NSA-Stasi National Security State going is Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco., the House Democratic Leader; and former and possibly future House Speaker. Reported Foreign Policy magazine:

“The obituary of Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment to claw back the sweeping powers of the National Security Agency has largely been written as a victory for the White House and NSA chief Keith Alexander, who lobbied the Hill aggressively in the days and hours ahead of Wednesday’s shockingly close vote. But Hill sources say most of the credit for the amendment’s defeat goes to someone else: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. It’s an odd turn, considering that Pelosi has been, on many occasions, a vocal surveillance critic.“

Say, wasn’t San Francisco supposed to be the world’s freest, loosest, swingingist, wildest place?

Nope. That’s just public relations. If it really were such a place, it would vote Pelosi out at the next election. But it won’t. She’ll still get the same 85 percent she got in 2012.

As Pelosi’s vote shows, San Francisco, whatever it may have been like at Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love in 1967, now is a center of Stasi-style repression and control. The people there, by backing Pelosi, want the NSA to continue to spy on everything everybody does.

Let’s contrast her with my favorite Democrat, a liberal of the Old School, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. He recently gave a remarkable speech for the Center for American Progress Event on NSA Surveillance. He said:

“When the Patriot Act was last reauthorized, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and said:

“I want to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry. From my position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I had seen government activities conducted under the umbrella of the Patriot Act that I knew would astonish most Americans.

“At the time, Senate rules about classified information barred me from giving any specifics of what I’d seen except to describe it as Secret Law ­­– a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, issued by a secret court, that authorizes secret surveillance programs ­ programs that I and colleagues think go far beyond the intent of the statute.”

Get that? “We, the People” put Wyden and other members of Congress in office so they can watch government and tell us what’s going on. But it’s all “secret…secret…secret…secret.” And he can’t talk about it!

The whistleblower Edward Snowden since has revealed the extent — that is, total spying on us — of the NSA’s Stasi-snooping activities.

Fourth Amendment

All of this violates the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Of course, the excuse the government gives is to protect us from “terrorism.” In fact, it’s just to control us.

Wyden:

“If that is not enough to give you pause, then consider that not only were the existence of and the legal justification for these programs kept completely secret from the American people, senior officials from across the government were making statements to the public about domestic surveillance that were clearly misleading and at times simply false. Senator Mark Udall and I tried again and again to get the executive branch to be straight with the public, but under the classification rules observed by the Senate we are not even allowed to tap the truth out in Morse code ­ and we tried just about everything else we could think of to warn the American people.”

He’s referring to how NSA boss James Clapper lied to Congress on March 12 about whether the NSA spied on absolutely everybody. Yet Clapper has not been fired by President Obama. Nor has Clapper been impeached and removed from office by Congress. Pelosi has led no movement to punish Clapper.

Bipartisan repression

Of course, Republicans are just as much to blame as Pelosi. President George W. Bush imposed the totalitarian “Patriot” (really, Traitors’) Act in 2001, after it was passed by the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate.

And on the NSA vote, Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio voted the same as the woman he replaced in that office: Nancy Pelosi. They also did what Democratic President Obama told them. And the House vote on the NSA bill split both parties; although a majority of Republicans favored it (siding with Pelosi and Obama, their supposed opponents); while a majority of Democrats opposed it.

So it’s bipartisan support in Congress for the NSA-Stasi police state, despite the outcries by the American people against this tyranny.

But Pelosi, coming from once carefree and anarchic San Francisco, has become a symbol of the city’s, and America’s, flip from freedom into repression.