Bob Beckel: Obama Approaching Fascism

Liberal Democrat Bob Beckel commenting on the National Security Agency's phone-records surveillance:



Here is the money quote:

“I think it is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution I’ve heard. They have no right to the phone records… It is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and it is deplorable. I didn’t like it when they did it during the Bush administration and I don’t like when they’re doing it now.”

“They have taken this PATRIOT Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken it and abused it,” Beck added. “You talk about fascism? You’re getting damn close to it."

Mr. Beckel should expect an IRS audit in the near future.

2008 flashback:

HANOVER, N.H.--Barack Obama may be leading the Democratic presidential pack in every major poll here, but that didn't dissuade the Illinois senator from a final early-morning rally with the Facebook generation.

Clearly not content to leave their votes to the whims of online politicking, the Illinois senator stepped onto a stage fashioned in a Dartmouth College gymnasium, pulled an index card from his inside jacket pocket, and launched into a familiar set of talking points centered on what has become a familiar theme for his campaign: change and hope.

"My job this morning is to be so persuasive...that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack," he told a crowd of about 300 Ivy Leaguers--and, by the looks of it, a handful of locals who managed to gain access to what was supposed to be a students-only event.

For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and "wiretaps without warrants," he said. (He was referring to the lingering legal fallout over reports that the National Security Agency scooped up Americans' phone and Internet activities without court orders, ostensibly to monitor terrorist plots, in the years after the September 11 attacks.)

It's hardly a new stance for Obama, who has made similar statements in previous campaign speeches...

Flashback to 2007, when Barack Obama was a United States Senator: