Government criminalizes those who shine light on its crimes

In America, when the government commits crimes, it’s the people who reveal those crimes who are treated as criminals.

Only days after President Obama assured us that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program was in compliance with the law, The Washington Post has revealed that the program is actually a serial law-breaker.

Thanks to leaks provided by Edward Snowden, the paper reported that, according to the NSA’s own audit, the agency violated thelaw ‘thousands of times’ in the 12 month period of 2011-12.The NSA chief waved this off as nothing more than mere oversights. Do you think Snowden could get away with the same argument?

The head of the special secret court charged with oversight of the NSA’s activities has conceded that his ability to provide proper oversight isquite limited.

The statecan violate the law repeatedly and with complete impunity, but it’s Snowden who is the most wanted man in the world for publicizing these crimes.

This is yet another piece of evidence that, contrary to liberal self-delusion, the Obama administration is just as criminal as its predecessor.

Update: Looks like the UK government follows the same path. The Huffington Post reports that the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald was detained at London's Heathrow Airport under the country's Terrorism Act. Greenwald has been a high-profile critic of the UK's and US' attacks on civil liberties and has been instrumental in expose their abuses.

Corporate welfare, spying, Egyptian 'democracy' and malaria

-The Nation of Change website explores which company is the biggest wage stiffer in America. The article also pointed out that: A study in Wisconsin by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce determined that a typical Walmart store costs taxpayers over $1.7 million per year, or about $5,815 per employee.

-President Obama today announced modest changes to the program that spies on every America. Despite the tweaks, the program remains a clear violation of the 4th Amendment.
If Obama had truly ‘welcomed’ this debate, as he disingenuously claimed in his press conference, he would’ve started the debate on himself a long time ago. For him to say the debate would've happened without Snowden's actions is so disingenuous as to be laughable.

-John Kerry, secretary of state of our Nobel Peace Prize president, recently described the coup in Egypt as 'restoring democracy.' Yes, that's the military coup that overthrew a democratically-elected government. And we thought such Orwellian doublespeak was a relic of the Cold War. In Egypt itself, some protesters are trying to find a third way. "What Egypt is doing right now is repeating the same mistakes, only doing so with much greater enthusiasm and speed," warned one expert. "All of the plots in the 2011 transition — a rushed constitutional process, a failure to hammer out consensus on basic issues, a complete trust in the military — those are all being repeated."

-Many media outlets reported the successful trials of a vaccine against malaria, the world's deadliest disease. A hopeful sign... hopefully.

Thanks for the heads up!

How very kind of the US government to warn us that visitors to this summer's Beijing Olympics not to expect any privacy and they might be subjected to surveillance.

This is the same US government that has demanded the 'right' to spy on its own citizens arbitrarily and without any oversight whatsoever (in order to 'protect their freedoms'). The same US government that protects its own citizens' privacy by making private information on passport applications fair game to any Tom, Dick and Harry that feels like snooping... because such work is shipped out to private contractors with apparently less-than-rigorous controls.

And the consensus is that the most spied-on country that's a likely destination for US tourists is not China, but Britain.