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Democrats who pretend to be outraged over Trump’s harsh criticism of the media have a shocking indifference when the actual civil rights of a journalist are abused by government powers.
Shocking may not be quite the right word there, since they were ambivalent when Obama did it. Perhaps ‘horrifying’ or ‘disgusting’ would fit better.
The Democrat Party who will happily stand up in Congress and denounce, by name, individual news personalities from the House Floor, calling for their network to silence them obviously don’t have much regard for the leash our Framers put on the neck of the government to protect it from the citizen.
Reports of Tucker Carlson being both surveilled by the NSA and having his conversations illegally unmasked (having personal name and identifiers attributed to them) contrary to his rights as a US citizen was met by a mixture of scoffing and indifference by elected leftists, most news organizations.
Then, when Axios confirmed it, the conversation switched to reasons why such surveillance and unmasking was, in fact, justifiable.
Do we really need to ask how they would have responded if Trump’s administration were surveilling and unmasking someone from CNN or MSNBC? Say Anderson Cooper, Brian Stelter, or Rachel Maddow? Can you imagine how shrill Don Lemon or Fredo would become if THEY were the target of such action? Right.
So, people who still care about such infractions, people who have seen the impunity with which the Spygate cabal (not to mention the Impeachment cabals) demonstrated an ability to weaponize government institutions to achieve political aims without ever paying a price for it, are speaking out and demanding an accounting.
It’s called ‘oversight’ and it is a responsibility explicitly given to Congress to keep tyranny and corruption of this sort from running rampant.
“There is a process,” Grenell said on Saturday of the allegations. “Somebody asked who this U.S. person was. And they went through the process of unmasking, and then somebody came in and said to this person … it’s Tucker Carlson from Fox News. That should have never been shared with anybody.”
“There are two violations there,” Grenell said. “And somebody should lose their security clearance, and possibly be prosecuted.”
In the course of monitoring communications with foreign officials, the conversations of U.S. citizens are at times incidentally collected by intelligence agencies. The identity of these people is usually redacted in transcripts or intelligence reports if they’re not the subject of surveillance. “Unmasking” refers to the process of revealing the name of the U.S. citizen.
…Grenell said that if the allegations are true, the individual could face federal prosecution. — EpochTimes
Rand Paul is demanding an internal investigation into the matter.
“I write to you to demand that you investigate the National Security Agency’s (NSA) alleged spying and unmasking of Tucker Carlson, as well as any leaks of his private emails from the NSA to other reporters,” Paul wrote in a letter to NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone.
…Paul, however, insisted that the NSA’s “long train of abuses” lends the agency not to be trusted.
“I am open-minded enough to believe, if given convincing evidence, that the NSA may be telling the truth, but when a long train of abuses conducted by the NSA evinces a consistent design to evade the law and violate the constitutionally-protected liberties of the people, the NSA must do more than tweet a carefully worded denial to be trusted,” he wrote.
In late June, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tasked Republicans on the Intelligence Committee to investigate the NSA over concerns of “politicization.”
There has been a “disturbing trend” at the agency, the California Republican said, following the Biden administration’s move to sideline Michael Ellis, a top NSA lawyer picked by former President Donald Trump. McCarthy also insisted the agency has “refused to deliver information requested by the Republican Members on the House Intelligence Committee.”
The latest incident outlined by McCarthy was Carlson’s claims.
“The NSA cannot be used as a political instrument, and House Republicans will ensure accountability and transparency,” the top Republican remarked at the time. —WashingtonExaminer
If they refuse to respond to such reasonable demands for accountability, there is another way to get their attention. Both a threat and a solution they might actually fear. One that probably led to the swamp turning its rage against General Flynn.
Audit them, and cut their funding.
If they have so much extra time and money sloshing around that they can run pet projects against private citizens instead of looking into foreign threats including China’s attempt to infiltrate every level of our society so they can bleed off our industry and information, maybe an awful lot of that funding and manpower is actually surplus.
For the record, that is exactly the suggestion Tom Fitton’s watchdog group ‘Judicial Watch’ is proposing to reign in the rogue tendencies of the FBI.
Seeing abuses of power like these, while doing nothing to restrain them is no better than endorsing them.
That which is rewarded is repeated.
It’s put up or shut up time.
