I just read on reddit that people who Google certain cooking untensils will get storm troopers raiding their home.

yeah, and the administration scrubbed the policy from his campaign website retroactively.

I'm identify as a progressive, but have also always identified more as a realist. So shit like this DOES make me want to pull a Palin "How's that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?" to a certain obnoxious obama super-supporter or two

Good.

It doesn't matter what you think.

As I said, best Republican President ever is Obama.

Now, about that purchase you made from Moscow, Congressman ... for your mistress ... we'd like you to vote this way or your wife and the public might find out next election.

So did previous administrations NOT bring legal action against whistleblowers?...

Or did they simply have whistleblowers killed, their deaths made to look like suicides/accidents, and the stories buried?

I mean, not to sound looney... but sometimes conspiracies really do happen, and I wouldn't put it past certain administration thugs (Cheney and Kissinger come to mind) to do exactly that.

Blaming Obama is still a distraction from truths which are going on. 1) Does anyone really think that McCain or Romney would have done much different? 2) The vector towards internet control has been quite clear for a while now, no matter who's been in the white house. Some groundwork was laid during the Clinton years, accelerated greatly during the "OMG terrorist a-rabs" years of Bush/Cheney, and O is simply there to seal the deal. His record in the Senate indicated pretty clearly he had no problem w/ gov't spying. 3) It seems clear that it makes no difference who is in the WH, there is definitely a group of unelected people who have staked out a power base & will use it against both the American people & the politicians they elect.

This has happened before, on a much smaller scale, w/ Hoover & the FBI. No president could dislodge him, as he had the goods on all of them. Right now, there is no major personality showing itself, which leads me to believe that it's rather a group, instead of one individual. But I'm only guessing here, trying to figure out from the shadows on the wall.

My main point here is that democracy is so broken in America right now, w/ gerrymandering and few limits on monetary influence, that it will take decades to correct it. In the meantime, there are other groups involved, unelected & ignored by the media, that are working to alter America drastically to a country that is far more controllable. The major media is quite tame, you won't see this on tv. Their biggest threat is the internet, where information flows rapidly and easily. I think this has far less to do w/ spying and more to do w/ controlling the flow of that information. And I sincerely doubt that any president, no matter what stripe, can or will get in the way of that.

Rape anyone lately Assange?

@11 actually, the grass is brown or tan and the sky is grey.

Or at least it is in Seattle.

@10

If he's innocent then why won't he face his accusers? I don't have time to read your lengthy dissertation.

Frankly, I'm not quite worried about this. The worst thing the government's going to learn from snooping in my Internets is that I find monster girl ecchi amusing (if not actually arousing) and that I ripped off a malfunctioning vending machine in high school.
Sure, Uncle Sam could in theory dig up embarrassing stuff on any of us. But the amount of effort needed to do things that way compared with the relative ease of harassing someone they don't like in more conventional ways (IRS audit, anyone?)...it's sound and fury at this point. The Republican Party WANTS us to make a big deal out of this instead of riding their pasty white asses about their refusal to let anything get accomplished.