Keith Olbermann Needs to Take Obama to Task for His FISA Betrayal

Earlier this week, Keith Olbermann complained about FISA and the Justice Department’s proposed changes on domestic snooping. It was nice to hear Olbermann excoriate the government for creating an "embryonic police state," never mind this sucker is beyond gestation and growing in our midst like a tenacious weed. Olbermann took the Democrats to task for allowing the FISA revision and allowing the Bush neocons and the Justice Department to propose local cops be tapped to snoop for the feds, in other words recruited to become Stasi operatives taking orders from the DHS, FBI, and CIA, "embedded" in the neighborhood cop shop as of 2003 with the enactment of HR 3439. Ain’t nothing embryonic" about it.

Olbermann showed his real colors. He said the next president — assumed to be Obama, as Olbermann is a Democrat — will be saddled with Bush’s intelligence "embryo." Keith made it sound like Obama disapproves and the already long established and well developed snoop state apparatus will be a yoke around his neck. In fact, Obama voted in the Senate for the current FISA bill, to the chagrin of no shortage of Democrats, many now finally coming around and realizing there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans and if you turn ‘em upside down they all look alike.

Under Democrat Lyndon Johnson, the snoop state flourished, from COINTELPRO to the CIA’s Operation CHAOS and beyond. "At this time, there was an impression given to the intelligence community of ‘get the job done’ regardless of the methods," writes Major Kevin G. Donaleski, USMC.

In 1975, the Church Committee concluded government officials, in both Democrat and Republican administrations, had "violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law" and had "undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs…. primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone ‘bugs’, surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins."

Back in the day all of this was illegal. Now, under the guise of the Patriot Act, the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, the Protect America Act of 2007, and a flurry of executive orders the violation of the Constitution is regarded as legal.

Obama, if elected, will not throw out these laws, or shut down the NSA’s warrantless surveillance, he will enhance them. In fact, once elected, Obama will likely organize and unleash his promised National Security Force, a secret national police force larger than anything over at the Pentagon.

Can we expect Keith Olbermann to talk about these issues come November and the selection of Barack Obama? Probably not, although he seems willing to take the Democrats in Congress to task for going along to get along with Bush and his neocon students of Carl Schmitt, the Nazi jurist who advocated a dictatorship of the executive.

It’s all partisan double talk. Far too many Democrats, apparently including Mr. Olbermann, are not really interested in restoring the Constitution and the republic. It’s all about getting their guy in office. Obama revealed his true colors when he voted for the FISA "compromise." Once in office, the Democrats will make the same old flaccid excuses now made by the neocons in order to continue the erosion of our liberty.