NSA Eavesdropping Scandal Explodes Amidst Other Raging Obama Scandals
Spoiler alert! Obama has already read this blog!
Do you remember where you were when Princess Diana's car wreck made the news? Do you remember what you were doing when you first heard about it? Were you on the phone, at work, or giving the kids a bath? How did it make you feel? Every tragedy or event that's happened in human history always seems to leave a mark on us emotionally. How about when the World Trade Center was attacked? I remember getting a phone call from my husband who was at work, and he was telling me to turn the television on to find out what was going on. I turned on the 'tube' only to have a wave of nausea and a feeling of helplessness pass over me. To this day, I think about it, and it's sometimes hard to shake that feeling.
Now granted, to some folks, the latest information 'leak' about how the NSA has been listening in on our own private conversations may not rank up there with some of the events that I mentioned, but it does. Why, you may ask? Well, let's think about it for a minute. We all feel pretty safe in our homes, right? We rarely think about the possibility that in reality if a burglar wanted to break in, they could probably do it easily. Door frames give way to steel crow bars and blunt force, window glass shatters and breaks, and boom, the perp is in your house taking your stuff. So when you return (if you were lucky enough not to be there) and find your home in shambles, your shaken to your core. You feel VIOLATED. How could someone invade your space? Why would someone want to invade your privacy, your sanctuary and destroy your sense of security? Easy: you had something they wanted.
Let's ask ourselves, why would the government want to do it? Why would the government be listening in on law-abiding citizens' phone conversations on a day to day basis? Why would they want to read live chats and emails and Facebook messages? Easy: you have something they want, and it's called FREEDOM.
See, the government may not be using crow bars and screwdrivers, but they have essentially done the same thing, only worse. Their method is silent, sneaky and on-going. This is not just a one-time occurrence. This is something that's been happening for a long time right under our noses.
So then if we know the why, then how? How were they able to obtain personal emails, etc? One answer: the Patriot Act, which was passed by George W. Bush in 2001, and the Patriot Sunset Extension Act of 2011. In my humble opinion, all of this could be classified as 'knee-jerk' legislation. That's what happens when you have a tragedy or something scary that happens. No one wants bad things to happen so we try to legislate to keep the bad people away. That is also what happens when you have a sheeple that expect the government to 'do something' all the time, but I digress.
Now, I'm the type of person who wants to investigate, who wants questions answered and in hopes of doing that, I had some questions for my Congressman, John Culberson:
Kelly Horsley: A lot of talk is that The Patriot Act is to blame for the overreach of the NSA. What was the original intention of the Patriot Act?
Representative John Culberson: It had some good language in it. It was designed to listen to foreign nationals on foreign soil. It was never designed to listen to citizens on American soil.
Kelly Horsley: I also saw that you are working on writing legislation to close down the Department of Homeland Security. I'm personally not a fan of more laws on the books and from previous conversations, I know you aren't either. Can we just repeal the Patriot Act?
Representative Culberson: The goal is to dial back the Patriot Act. We should still be able to listen to foreign nationals on foreign soil, but the answer is to shut down the federal government and to go back to the Constitution.
Kelly Horsley: There are so many distractions right now for Congress and the American people with regard to the IRS Scandal, the AP phone tapping scandal and the Benghazi hearings, and now this. What can we as Americans do to help Congress stay vigilant?
Representative Culberson: I can keep you apprised of bills that need support and most of all we need to keep a Republican House. Can you imagine if we had a Democrat-controlled House? Can you imagine what the media would be doing if George Bush was president right now?
Representative Culberson also has an official statement from his Facebook page:
Looks like everyone who warned me about the Patriot Act was right - we have all been systematically lied to - It is as though we live in a totalitarian police state and I will do everything in in my power to undo the damage done to our privacy and our liberty and our Republic - "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it..."
I intend to start by filing legislation to start systematically shutting down the federal government by restoring the 10th Amendment powers of the States and restoring absolute individual liberty and privacy - I will begin with shutting down the Department of Homeland Security and strictly limiting its mission to securing our borders and ports of entry and tracking, detaining and deporting foreign nationals. I will also figure out how to repeal and/or roll back the Patriot Act to restore the absolute right to privacy that every law abiding American citizen is supposed to enjoy.
We should follow Israel's model for Homeland Security and quit focusing on objects and start focusing on behavior and people using common sense law enforcement techniques to follow and focus on those whose behavior matches the behavior of others who have attacked us. Common sense Israeli law enforcement techniques will work especially well in the war on these cowardly cave men because 100% of the terrorist attacks on Americans and Israelis have been carried out by Muslim extremist lunatics. This is not complicated. Political correctness needs to be tossed out in favor of common sense law enforcement techniques and an absolute guarantee of privacy for law abiding American citizens.
I regret that I voted to create The Department of Homeland Security and I regret that I voted for the Patriot Act. I never saw evidence of abuse of our privacy because Congress was lied to just as the public has been lied to. I will work hard to undo the damage these laws have done to our liberty, our privacy and to our Republic.
Essentially, the point driven home by Representative Culberson is that his desire is to shut down the federal government. Not in its entirety, but he wants to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. He also feels that we need to go back to the Constitution and limit the powers of the federal government. Hey, I can't argue with that.
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