Chomsky:The White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties"

[nashville_brook]

38. yep -- and that's exactly where the critique should be pointed

i think it was Geithner's recent book that we get the observation that Obama never saw himself as a populist (despite the community organizer background, etc). a populist would JUMP on the opportunity to right the ship on this. they'd make the distinction between necessary and sufficient levels of intelligence and would absolutely fight against dragnet intel gathering on American citizens.

i remember when Bush Jr was leaving office and there was discussion of bureaucrats in various agencies, but especially intelligence/ops "burrowing" in. that many operatives were left in positions of power and could be counted on by the NeoCons to continue their project/s.

this is where we as Dems make the strongest argument against this bullshit: these people aren't OUR people. this is not how a Democratic administration oversees the power of the intelligence community. we have to make the distinction, or else we lose the ability to make the argument that our candidates can do better. we lose our brand, we lose elections and most importantly we lose our civil liberties.