"Welcome to Post-Constitutional America" --Peter Van Buren

[KoKo]

by Peter Van Buren who blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraq Reconstruction

So welcome to post-Constitutional America. Its shape is, ominously enough, beginning to come into view.

Orwell’s famed dystopian novel 1984 was not intended as an instruction manual, but just days before the Manning verdict, the Obama administration essentially buried its now-ironic-campaign promise to protect whistleblowers, sending it down Washington’s version of the memory hole. Post-9/11, torture famously stopped being torture if an American did it, and its users were not prosecutable by the Justice Department.

Similarly, full-spectrum spying is not considered to violate the Fourth Amendment and does not even require probable cause. Low-level NSA analysts have desktop access to the private emails and phone calls of Americans. The Post Office photographs the envelopes of every one of the 160 billion pieces of mail it handles, collecting the metadata of "to:" and "from:" addresses. An Obama administration Insider Threat Program requires federal employees (including the Peace Corps) to report on the suspicious behavior of coworkers.

Government officials concerned over possible wrongdoing in their departments or agencies who “go through proper channels” are fired or prosecuted. Government whistleblowers are commanded to return to face justice, while law-breakers in the service of the government are allowed to flee justice. CIA officers who destroy evidence of torture go free, while a CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture is locked up.

Secret laws and secret courts can create secret law you can’t know about for “crimes” you don’t even know exist. You can nonetheless be arrested for committing them. Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, citizens, even librarians, can be served by the FBI with a National Security Letter (not requiring a court order) demanding records and other information, and gagging them from revealing to anyone that such information has been demanded or such a letter delivered. Citizens may be held without trial, and denied their Constitutional rights as soon as they are designated “terrorists.” Lawyers and habeas corpus are available only when the government allows.

In the last decade, 10 times as many employers turned to FBI criminal databases to screen job applicants. The press is restricted when it comes to covering “open trials.” The war on whistleblowers is metastasizing into a war on the First Amendment. People may now be convicted based on secret testimony by unnamed persons. Military courts and jails can replace civilian ones. Justice can be twisted and tangled into an almost unrecognizable form and then used to send a young man to prison for decades. Claiming its actions lawful while shielding the “legal” opinions cited, often even from Congress, the government can send its drones to assassinate its own citizens.

One by one, the tools and attitudes of the war on terror, of a world in which the “gloves” are eternally off, have come home. The comic strip character Pogo’s classic warning -- “We have met the enemy and he is us” -- seems ever less like a metaphor. According to the government, increasingly we are now indeed their enemy.

MUCH MORE...and an excellent, informative --although depressing, read at:

http://www.nationofchange.org/welcome-post-constitution-america-1375712052

[JimDandy]

1. K & R because this shit must be reined in.

[rwsanders]

2. Yep. And any "reform" will just be a show. These agencies have to be shut down.

[JimDandy]

5. Not shut down,

but returned to their original function (no spying on Americans) with a tiny budget, and a mission so small you could "drown it in a bathtub" (stealing from the repubs).

[rwsanders]

6. Well all the missions need to be analyzed and divided up so 1 doesn't get power...

I saw a chart somewhere that showed that we have about 19 'intelligence' agencies. One reason for the abuse is that they all want to prove they deserve funding.
I'll give another example of this. The Coa$t Gu@rd is supposed to be stopping smuggling. Well since 9/11 they has been chasing funding under the 'homeland security' mission for port security. So less for stopping smuggling.
So now the US Customs and Border patrol has been buying boats and making a mess of stopping people on the water (there was a good description of one encounter in a recent SAIL magazine).
So I'd say a few agencies with clearly defined (and as you say) small missions and budget.

[JDPriestly]

3. K&R because it's true.

[toby jo]

4. We have a congress at the ready to deal with this - 1/2 of whom are dysfunctional. The other 1/2,

well, don't seem up to the task.

I'm working on a surveillance type issue myself, running hard into all of these issues. I find myself turning more and more to popular culture than congress for a national grasp of the problem at hand. We'll get hearings with a documentary in hand or a strong push from social media. Waiting on congress to come to grips with it is like waiting for ole jc to show up.

We've overfed the beast.

[Enthusiast]

7. Kicked and Recommended! nt