Can't help but laugh at republican cries for investigations and impeachments over AP and IRS
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from Bob Cesca at the Daily Banter:
If You’re Freaked Out by the AP and IRS Scandals, Blame a Republican
____ Right off the bat, it might surprise you to learn that it was a cabal of 31 Republican senators who demanded the investigation that eventually led to the subpoena of the AP’s phone records. So there’s that.
In a broader sense, however, I can’t help but to laugh whenever I hear a Republican scream about government overreach on national security and civil liberties. For eight years, the Republicans established an infrastructure under the banner of fighting evildoers at home and abroad — an infrastructure that included a wide variety of trespasses against civil liberties.
They seized phone records from reporters without subpoenas, they spied on liberal groups, they established the usage of body scanners and heightened security measures at airports, they loudly and in some cases tearfully demanded the ability to wiretap American citizens without warrants, they passed the USA PATRIOT Act and ultimately created the modern American surveillance state. The Bush era gave us this counter-terrorism Frankenstein, and now they’re suddenly alarmed about it.
But now that they’re not longer in charge, they melodramatically collapse onto their group fainting couch every time the Justice Department or the president ventures into the same territory — or, ironically enough, whenever the president doesn’t do enough along those lines. Whatever the Obama administration does, they’re against it. And so it is with the AP phone records situation. Once again, as with the IRS scandal, the cries for investigations and even impeachment are loud and plentiful.
For example, Bush’s former attorney general Michael Mukasey described the AP phone records situation by saying, “It’s reprehensible conduct.” This is the same attorney general who took over a Justice Department that had seized phone records from four journalists — without subpoenas — and never initiated an investigation. Mukasey was also directly involved with warrantless wiretapping of Americans citizens. And when it appeared as if Congress might pass legislation preventing this egregious activity from continuing, Mukasey *literally burst into tears* during a speech in which he demanded the power to continue the eavesdropping program or else there would surely be another 9/11. I’m not making that up . . .
read more: http://thedailybanter.com/2013/05/if-youre-freaked-out-by-the-ap-and-irs-scandals-blame-a-republican/
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