"Transparency" in the Obama Administration looking very dim (Page 5) davidk14: . What gets me... Where are the liberals that should be going ballistic that their freedoms are being slaughtered? If Bush had done this, there would be blood flowing in the streets. Where are the Wall Street protesters? Where is the ACLU? The NAACP? Where is the DOJ? . .  duncan124: It seems the story has something to do with ' Corwin ' and a Wireclubber claiming he was Corwin and trying to be a dictator.  OCD_OCD: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html Saying that the gathering of telephonic records has been done for "years" (meaning "blame it on Bush" is more than a little disingenuous. Never were the communications of Americans not involved in contact with terrorists targeted or ordered. This is a far cry from what the current administration is doing. ..."The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks."... ..."But in the end Mr. Bush won out, as administration officials helped forge a deal between Republican and Democratic leaders that included almost all the major elements the White House wanted. The measure gives the executive branch broader latitude in eavesdropping on people abroad and at home who it believes are tied to terrorism, and it reduces the role of a secret intelligence court in overseeing some operations. ..."Supporters maintained that the plan includes enough safeguards to protect Americans’ civil liberties, including reviews by several inspectors general. There is nothing to fear in the bill, said Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who was a lead negotiator, “unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html duncan124: "Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon " . You can't claim that characters such as Corwin are n't fake and harmful. The BBC has been asking for a Snooper Charter all by itself without any political support. In fact it is not a change in the US law. It is because it is a voice over service and the US decided that phones that were connected to computers by hand operated connections were unsafe as the computer sometimes miss understood the connection sounds. Its seems that by repeating the old news you are trying to help Cameron in the Cougar room!!! OCD_OCD: WTF are you talking about, Duncan? Have you slipped your caretaker some LSD and taken to the internet in your tinfoil hat? What you said wasn't even remotely on topic.  OCD_OCD: WASHINGTON (AP) - As a candidate, Barack Obama vowed to bring a different, better kind of leadership to the dysfunctional capital. He'd make government more efficient, accountable and transparent. He'd rise above the "small-ball" nature of doing business. And he'd work with Republicans to break Washington paralysis. You can trust me, Obama said back in 2008. And - for a while, at least - a good piece of the country did. But with big promises often come big failures - and the potential for big hits to the one thing that can make or break a presidency: credibility. A series of mounting controversies is exposing both the risks of political promise-making and the limits of national-level governing while undercutting the core assurance Obama made from the outset: that he and his administration would behave differently. The latest: the government's acknowledgement that, in a holdover from the Bush administration and with a bipartisan Congress' approval and a secret court's authorization, it was siphoning the phone records of millions of American citizens in a massive data-collection effort officials say was meant to protect the nation from terrorism. This came after the disclosure that the government was snooping on journalists. Also, the IRS' improper targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status has spiraled into a wholesale examination of the agency, including the finding that it spent $49 million in taxpayer money on 225 employee conferences over the past three years. At the same time, Obama's immigration reform agenda is hardly a sure thing on Capitol Hill, and debate starting this week on the Senate floor is certain to show deep divisions over it. Gun control legislation is all but dead. And he's barely speaking to Republicans who control the House, much less working with them on a top priority: tax reform. Even Democrats are warning that more angst may be ahead as the government steps up its efforts to implement Obama's extraordinarily expensive, deeply unpopular health care law. Collectively, the issues call into question not only whether the nation's government can be trusted but also whether the leadership itself can. All of this has Obama on the verge of losing the already waning faith of the American people. And without their confidence, it's really difficult for presidents to get anything done - particularly those in the second term of a presidency and inching toward lame-duck status. The ramifications stretch beyond the White House. If enough Americans lose faith in Obama, he will lack strong coattails come next fall's congressional elections. Big losses in those races will make it harder for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, especially if it's Hillary Rodham Clinton, to run as an extension of Obama's presidency and convince the American public to give Democrats another four years. Obama seemed to recognize this last week. He emphasized to anxious Americans that the other two branches of government were as responsible as the White House for signing off on the vast data-gathering program. "We've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight," Obama said. "And if people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here." The government is an enormous operation, and it's unrealistic to think it will operate smoothly all of the time. But, as the head of it, Obama faces the reality of all of his successors: The buck stops with him. If the controversies drag on, morale across America could end up taking a huge hit, just when the mood seems to be improving along with an economic uptick. Or, Americans could end up buying Obama's arguments that safety sometimes trumps privacy, that his administration is taking action on the IRS, and that he's doing the best he can to forge bipartisan compromise when Republicans are obstructing progress. Every president faces the predicament of overpromising. Often the gap can be chalked up to the difference between campaigning and governing, between rhetoric and reality. As with past presidents, people desperate to turn the page on the previous administration voted for the Obama they wanted and now are grappling with the Obama they got. From the start of his career, Obama tried to sculpt an almost nonpartisan persona as he spoke of bridging divides and rejecting politics as usual. He attracted scores of supporters from across the ideological spectrum with his promises to behave differently. And they largely believed what he said. Back then, he held an advantage as one of the most trusted figures in American politics. In January 2008, Obama had an 8-point edge over Clinton as the more honest and trustworthy candidate in the Democratic primary. That grew to a 23-point advantage by April of that year, according to Washington Post-ABC News polls. Later that year, the Post-ABC poll showed Obama up 8 points on Republican nominee John McCain as the more honest candidate. Obama held such strong marks during his first term, with the public giving the new president the benefit of the doubt. Up for re-election, he went into the 2012 campaign home stretch topping Mitt Romney by 9 points on honesty in a mid-October ABC/Post poll. But now, that carefully honed image of trustworthiness may be changing in Americans' eyes. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted late last month found 49 percent of people consider Obama honest and trustworthy, a dip from the organization's last read on the matter in September 2011 when 58 percent said the same. He also has taken a hit among independents, which used to be a source of strength for him, since his second-term controversies have emerged. Now just 40 percent say he is honest and trustworthy, down from 58 percent in September 2011. Obama has waning opportunities to turn it around. He's halfway through his fifth year, and with midterm elections next fall, there's no time to waste. If he can't convince the American people that they can trust him, he could end up damaging the legacy he has worked so hard to control and shape - and be remembered, even by those who once supported him, as the very opposite of the different type of leader he promised to be. --- OCD_OCD: Erg. How many misdeeds can they keep covered up? It looks like a lot of them. Unfortunately, they aren't staying covered up. http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/06/10/cbs-news-u-s-state-department-cover-ups-range-from-prostitution-charges-to-drug-rings/ OCD_OCD: WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – Uncovered documents show the U.S. State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal behavior ranging from sexual assaults to an underground drug ring. CBS News reports that is has unearthed documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal watchdog agency, that implicate the State Department in a series of misconducts worldwide. The memo, reported by CBS News’ John Miller, cited eight specific examples, including allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.” Former State Department internal investigator Aurelia Fedenisn told CBS News, “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.” Often times, other DSS agents were simply told to back off of investigations of high-ranking State Department members. Fedenisn told CBS that “hostile intelligence services” allow criminal behavior to continue. In one such cover-up, investigators were told to stop probing the case of a U.S. ambassador who was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park. The memo states that the ambassador was permitted to return to his post despite having, “routinely ditched…his protective security detail” in order to “solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.” A draft of the Inspector General’s report on the performance of the Diplomatic Security Service, obtained by CBS News, states, “Hindering such cases calls into question the integrity of the investigative process, can result in counterintelligence vulnerabilities and can allow criminal behavior to continue.” Fedenisn was part of the team that drafted the whistleblower report, and CBS News reports that two hours after the charges were reported, investigators from the State Department’s Inspector General showed up at her door. A statement to CBS News states, “It goes without saying that the Department does not condone interference with investigation by any of its employees.” davidk14: . I want to  Another case of over promising and then undelivered. In this case, intentionally under delivering. I spoke with a law enforcement official the other day. He said quite frankly, the administration murdered the Ambassador and the others. He said this without reservation. I think the Verizon thing finally sent this administration into a tailspin. . . OCD_OCD: Oh, yuk. US Ambassador to Belgium sounds like a perv and the Administration stepped in to shut the investigation down. WTF? | Politics Chat Room 28 People Chatting Similar Conversations |
me up!