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He revealed massive, consistent, continuing violations of the US Constitution that began with the Patriot Act and the onset of the Bush administration. Nobody, anywhere, has been immune from unreasonable searches and seizures of "their persons, houses, papers, and effects" in the form of computer data and telephone records by American spies. Obama may wish to disagree but the massive attempts to discredit Snowden's revelations only show how close to the bone his truth cuts. Warrantless wiretaps have been issued, as the President and his lackeys have pointed out, but by a nameless, faceless claque of judges, without Congressional oversight. Obama signed a reauthorization of this spying that included no additional oversight. So much for the ideals of America's supposedly liberal president. Snowden revealed this information to the American people and the world. It is information that is already known to many. The Iranians know who invented STUXNET, which made their uranium enrichment centrifuges spin like Tibetan whirligigs. The Chinese have known for years who is flitting among their defense contracts. He did not reveal intelligence, he revealed the embarrassing fact that laws are being broken by the government and rights ignored, and he demolished a phony holier than thou sense of outrage that other countries are doing evil unto an innocent and guileless American government. It turns out that some 62 percent of the American people think that what the government is doing is just fine, and that they are being protected from terrorists intent on wreaking havoc. But look at what this kind of chicanery has produced so far. The government insists it has produced valuable intelligence. But the government in the past has been assiduous in triumphal announcements when "terrorists" are thwarted. It caught a couple of disgruntled Pakistani ice cream sellers in Lodi, California, who were egged on by FBI informants into making some vague plans to engage in some unformed scheme. There are malcontents lodged in jails in several places in the United States for doing nothing more than making a few beer-filled threats that were turned into terror stories with the help of paid informants aided and abetted by electronic surveillance laws. Some of the incidents that resulted in real threats were never detected. The Army psychiatrist who shot 16 of his comrades in Fort Hood, Texas was never detected. The man who attempted to bomb New Year celebrations in New York's Times Square was undetected. The authorities appear to have ignored traditional Russian gumshoe warnings about the Boston Marathon bombers ? until this vast, amorphous, usually unmanageable cloud of data managed to allow the FBI to harass everybody who had ever made or had a phone call with the Tsarnaev brothers. So far, we have had no arrests, but one questionable shooting in custody. y In the meantime, the woods are full of sullen high school dropouts protected by the Second Amendment, the one that allows Americans to carry arms and is so sacrosanct that no politician dares touch it. Spying on your own people is fine but we Americans dare not violate the Constitution by restricting the use of semi-automatic weapons that can take out an entire grade school class in seconds. "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," the Second Amendment says. According to the Roberts Supreme Court's interpretation, that "well-regulated militia" appears to include Sandy Hook's Adam Lanza, who killed 20 schoolchildren and six staff; James Holmes, who shot dead 12 people and wounded 58 in a theater in Aurora, Colorado; Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who killed 12 students and one teacher, wounding 21 more in the Columbine murders in Littleton Colorado, and thousands of other murders. It is a staggering death toll -- 32,163 in 2010, making a mockery of the numbers from terror attack attempts. Some well-regulated militia! The Bill of Rights came about because the founding fathers catalogued "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States." They wished to see that this would not happen again and thus enshrined some of the most basic freedoms known to the world at that time. On the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the American people need to understand that the Declaration has been spun on its principles. The citizenry are not safe in their homes from surreptitious prying, nor are they safe on the streets where the right to keep and bear arms puts them in random jeopardy. Snowden acted in the best traditions of the American spirit.
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written by Joe Kicker, July 02, 2013
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