Thank You For Data-Mining

Context does matter but Obamas lost all credibility Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. - The New York Times is not happy with President Obama. In fact the New York Times Editorial Board even declared the president has lost all credibility on the issue of Electronic Surveillance. But why would anyone trust what appears to be an increasingly out-of-control bureaucracy with massive amounts of data on who we call what emails we send what books we read and what Internet sites we visit?   The Wall Street Journal on the other hand stands by the program in an editorial entitled Thank You For Data-Mining. It makes the point that if it werent for the IRS scandal folks probably wouldnt be so upset. To the Journal thats the whole point! Context matters! If it werent for:

1.  The Obama Administrations attack on our 1st Amendment & 2nd Amendment rights;
2. Its use of the IRS to intimidate and silence its critics;
3. Its reliance on class warfare;
4. Its use of secret email addresses;
5. Its actual day-to-day weakness in confronting radical Islam ... and
   • more Americans might be willing to trust it more on a whole host of things.

But at this point the average Americans liberties are much more likely to be restricted by the left than any combination of imams mullahs and Islamic extremists. Given all we do know today as opposed to a month or two ago who wants to bet we will find out that this data was misused too? The left routinely hurls more vitriol and anger at conservatives than it expresses against jihadists. A plethora of government agencies have identified conservatives constitutionalists Christians and homeschoolers as potential terrorists. Should any reasonable person trust them to do the right thing on any issue? To not abuse our privacy rights? Obamas defenders insist that the mining of phone data has helped prevent attacks. Perhaps so. But what about these cases:

1. The government had much more specific information than call volume regarding Fort Hoot shooter Major Nidal Hasan. It had Internet postings his emails with a known America-hating jihadist and his rants on the job. Yet with data much more specific than anything collected by Verizon this administration and its politically correct minions in our military were unable to act and soldiers were murdered.
2. The administration was directly informed about the Tsarnaev brothers by Russian intelligence. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on the terrorist watch list. But as the broken bodies were being picked up off the streets of Boston all we got was an avalanche of excuses as to why it was unreasonable to expect the government to pick these two terrorists off the watch list.
3. In Benghazi there had been warnings that Al Qaeda was going to strike on the anniversary of 9/11. Internet      postings and rumors were rampant. The militia hired to protect Ambassador Stevens told us it would not do so. Yet the administration allowed our ambassador and State Department employees to walk right into the worst nest of jihadists in the whole sorry state of Libya.

And in spite of all their data collection the White House then tried to tell us that it wasnt Al Qaeda but Muslim movie critics who burned our consulate and murdered our ambassador and three other Americans. All of this suggests that when it has specific information tied to specific names the administration is often unable to save American lives. So how are we supposed to believe that billions and billions of bytes of phone call data are essential to keeping us safe? War On Terror Is Over A constant theme of this administration has been The war on terror is over. Barack Obama ran as a candidate in 2008 on a promise to withdraw from Iraq. In 2012 he vowed to end the war in Afghanistan too. And just days or weeks ago he essentially declared that the global war on terror is over. Most wars end with one side winning and one side losing. When the president says Weve ended the war in Iraq and we are ending the war in Afghanistan he never says our troops were victorious on the battlefield. And there is no sign our jihadist enemy has surrendered. But if Obama believes the war is over then why is his administration increasing its surveillance of the American people? There is a disconnect here that makes no sense. Obama is telling us the war on terror is over but he is demanding that we tolerate the massive collection of data. Many Americans may be willing to tolerate government intrusiveness in a time of war with suitable safeguards. But the IRS the Department of Justice and too many other acronymed-Federal Government Agencies appear to be having trouble with safeguards and the president is clearly not fighting any war with the objective of winning it.