Cafferty on Fire
On CNN, regarding today’s domestic spying revelations. Watch the video here (hat tip to Americablog).
CNN’s WOLF BLITZER: …[some wisdom] from Jack Cafferty in New York.CNN’s JACK CAFFERTY: I don’t know about wisdom but you’ll get a bit of outrage. We better hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that’s standing between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He’s vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.
Shortly after 9-11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the war on terror, President Bush says.
Why don’t you go find Osama Bin Laden and seal the country’s borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?
The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and he declared the government’s doing nothing wrong and all of this is just fine.
Is it? Is it legal?
Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn’t have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.
Read that sentence again.
A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it’s not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says okay and drops the whole thing.
We’re in some serious trouble here boys and girls.
Here’s the question.
“Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or permission?”
If it doesn’t it sure as hell ought to.
After reading that from Jack I half expected a Howard Beale moment.
"'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:"