Obama LOSES the media left…quelles dommages!

NYT:

EDITORIAL-

Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.

The New Republic:

Show Me the Memo- Obama should share his legal justification for collecting Verizon’s phone records

BY JEFFREY ROSEN

he revelation by The Guardian that the Obama administration’s National Security Agency has been secretly collecting logs of domestic and international telephone calls from Verizon “on an ongoing daily basis” under the Patriot Act is the most disturbing misuse of the government surveillance authority since the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretaps, some of which were later authorized by Congress. But the Obama surveillance program, which may represent a continuation of the Bush program under different legal authority, has an even more disturbing antecedent: the abuse of government surveillance powers by the NSA, FBI, CIA, and IRS during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations that led to the Church commission.

The Church commission asked a central question—does the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures apply to domestic surveillance? In answering yes, Congress created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, in 1978 to supervise domestic eavesdropping by issuing secret warrants for specified items, such as the records of car-rental companies or storage facilities. But then came Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001, which broadened the scope of data for which secret warrant could be issued to include “any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents and other items).” In other words, the government could now seize anything in secret, and without notification to those being spied on. The only qualification was that the seized data had to be relevant to a terrorism investigation and “not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution.”

The order authorizing the massive surveillance through Verizon was signed by Roger Vinson, a retired federal judge in Florida who in 2011 issued a sweeping opinion striking down the Affordable Care Act. The Obama administration insists that its invocation of Section 215 is legal, but refuses to release the secret memorandum justifying its legal conclusion—just at it had earlier refused to release its legal memorandum justifying targeted drone killings, before changing its mind.

SLATE:

The GOP’s Free Pass

It’s almost impossible for Republicans to overplay their hand on the IRS scandal. And they are just getting started.Ever since the Obama administration ran aground on a series of scandals, Republicans have been trying hard to go from zero to Watergate. No matter how hard they stomp on the accelerator, the car won’t go. On the left, there is a similar desire to go from zero to McCarthy. The main target: Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who has been investigating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups. On Sunday, Issa called White House spokesman Jay Carney a “paid liar,” in keeping with the Republican congressman’s general temperament, which is to accuse first and find the facts later. Democrats are trying to promote the idea that Republicans are overplaying their hand with these controversies. Several times, analysts have raised the specter of the 1990s House Republicans who took their party over the cliff with mad passion in the investigations of Bill Clinton.

Republicans have not overplayed their hand. Unlike the late 1990s, they have the country with them in their pursuit of answers. Americans want to get to the bottom of the IRS mess, the issue that has prompted some of Issa’s extravagancies. New revelations, like this week’s disclosures about IRS profligacy, are offering fresh reasons for outrage, and the disciplining of two IRS officials for receiving gifts against ethics rules ratifies the investigations. New polls show that the country thinks the president is less trustworthy, so the chances the public will rush to his defense against the meanies going after him is shrinking. 

KARMA.

7 of 9. Senate Race.