Jim Hightower: Repeal the Patriot Act

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/19-2

It's not enough to fight NSA's outrageously invasive spying on us — the Patriot Act itself is a shameful betrayal of America's ideals, and it must be repealed. When whistleblower Eric Snowden literally blew the lid off NSA's seven-year, super-snooper program of rummaging electronically through about a billion phone calls made every day by us average Americans, Al Gore tweeted: "Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?" It's definitely not just you, Al — this latest explosion of the Fourth Amendment is so mega-awful that authorities had to conjure up a new word for the process: Metadata mining. Most shocking, however, is the tin-eared, who-cares reaction by both Republican and Democratic leaders to this outrageous meta-surveillance. For example, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham blustered that, "It doesn't bother me one bit that NSA has my number." Hey, Lindsey, it's not your number we're worried about. It's NSA's collection of our entire country's numbers. Then came Sen. Saxby Chambliss: "We have not had any citizen who has registered a complaint," he blathered. Hello, Sen. Clueless: No one knew to complain since y'all kept the program secret from us! Remember? Even more ridiculous was President Obama's feeble effort to rationalize this spookery by declaring that Congress knew about it, as did a special spy court that routinely reviews and blesses it, so it's all legit. In a perplexed voice, Obama added: "If people cant trust the executive branch, but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges ... then we're going to have some problems here." Gosh sir, We the People have now learned that all three branches of government have furtively conspired for seven years to violate our privacy — so, no, we don't trust any of them. And, yes, that is a biiiiiiig problem.