I posted last week about Barack Obama out “Bushing” George Bush when it came to using the Patriot Act to violate the constitution. Things are now getting a lot worse. The Huffington Post published this piece with the subheading “Trend of Activist Searches Began Under Bush, Continues Under Obama”. The post details how the FBI raided homes of peace activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. The writer exhorts Obama to “speak out against the surveillance of Americans who are merely exercising their constitutional rights. As a former law professor he knows the long history of such abuse and how important it is to contain enforcement.”
Fine advice. One problem, though. The Obama Administration is overseeing these raids.
My favorite part of this whole mess? The groups who were victims of this raid supported Obama’s presidential campaign and were thrilled by his victory, saying “Obama’s election represents a rejection of the Bush administration policies and a desire amongst the people for a progressive agenda from the government.”
Justin Raimondo wrote a post aptly titled “The Obama Boomerang” at antiwar.com. He compares these raids to actions taken by former FBI director J Edgar Hoover against Martin Luther King. His vision of the future is grim:
“The Minneapolis and Chicago raids are just the beginning. The logic of the “war on terrorism,” and its legal machinery here on the home front, is an ever-expanding campaign to associate political dissent – and, specifically, dissent from our interventionist foreign policy – with violence and treason. And it will be a lot easier to pull this off under a “progressive” veneer.”
In a letter to the editor at stltoday.com, Bill Ramsey of Human Rights Action Service summed up the constitutional issues nicely:
“Recent actions by the Obama administration, presented as counter terrorism measures, are, in fact, dangerous violations of the rights of free speech, association and public dissent.”
Let’s all not forget how the Fourth Amendment appears no longer to be an issue either. At least in theory, U.S. citizens have the right not to be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure. I don’t think our founding fathers meant that to be interpreted as we can do what we want if we don’t like what you’re saying.
