The Fraudulent Hunt for Snowden

The big story today is the hunt for Edward Snowden - and, in particular, the gall of Russia for not just turning Snowden over to the U.S.  After all, he has been charged with espionage, and that's a very serious crime.  Senator Schumer (D-NY) even sees Russia's failure to turn over Snowden as equivalent to Russia's lack of cooperation with our plans for Syria.

How, exactly, Snowden has committed espionage has never been made clear.  Did he gave valuable information to a country engaged in war with the U.S.?  No one has alleged that he did.   Apparently his "crime" was telling the American people the truth about our own government's spying upon us - a truth that our government has systematically lied about over the years in testimony to Congress.  In what warped reasoning is telling the truth about that an act of espionage?

But our government needs that charge brought against Snowden, so we can pressure foreign governments to turn him over to us.   And if a government sees through that, and decides not to give us Snowden - because he's a whistle blower not a traitor - then that government gets criticized not only by Schumer, with his absurd analogy between Snowden and Syria, but by Jay Carney, John Kerry, and the whole weight of the elected and appointed American government.

And this of course is exactly what the government most wants.  Redirect everyone's attention to the flight of a whistle blower labelled traitor, and the countries who might object to that label, rather than the illegal activity that the whistle was blown upon: the US government's illegal collection of communication information from the American people, and its repeated lying about that every chance it got.

See also: David Gregory vs. Glenn Greenwald: Lessons about So-Called Progressives

Jay Carney (and Obama) Have It All Wrong about Police and OWS

So did you catch this statement the other from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney?

Speaking November 15 aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said “The president’s position is that obviously every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues.”

Carney was seeking to debunk questions about whether the Federal government is in some way coordinating the police crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protests across the country this past week.  (We already know that the Mayors of New York, Oakland, and 16 other American cities coordinated their unconstitutional attacks on the protesters.)

But Carney's statement also says something quite important - crucial - that he likely did not intend.  And that is:  allowing municipalities to make their own decisions regarding the protesters is not an expression of innocence, but an admission of guilt, when what the cities are doing is pepper-spraying the protesters, arresting and beating protesters as well as reporters, and (in the case of NYC) deliberately shutting off the eviction of Zuccotti Park from the press.

The First Amendment guarantees citizens the right to peaceably assemble.   The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble," and the Fourteenth Amendment extends that restriction to all levels of government, including municipalities.

So in leaving decisions about how to respond to OWS protests to municipalities, the Obama administration is plainly shirking its responsibility to make sure no local government violates the First Amendment rights of citizens - by allowing them to be attacked by police, and by preventing the media from fully reporting these violations to the people.

This is not only shameful but an admission of an inability to govern by the Obama administration.   I hope Obama and his advisers wake up to this disgrace and outrage before he's voted out of office.


Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1