Rogue agency out of control

In my previous column, I wrote, “Whether Edward Snowden is an American hero or a turncoat is still being debated. I ask how can someone who revealed a massive unconstitutional domestic spying operation against the American people to the American people be a turncoat.”

As recently as this week, people I know and respect were challenging Snowden because he (1) went to China, (2) went to Russia, then (3) applied for asylum in Russia, which he accepted. These people are focused on the illegal actions committed by Snowden. What about the illegal actions of the U.S. Government against the American people?

Now, reports from multiple news sources reveal that the National Security Agency has violated laws thousands of times since 2008. President Obama went on the talk show circuit last week and flatly stated that there is no domestic spying program in operation. Today, we know he lied.

Congress’ inept oversight of the National Security Agency (NSA), in essence, allowed the NSA to repeatedly violate the Constitution, the rights and privacy of all American citizens. Obama’s public denials of a domestic spying program can now be interpreted that he knew all the time.

The actions of the NSA directly violate the constraints of the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

President Obama and his National Security Agency have eviscerated the Fourth Amendment. Obama’s surveillance state now threatens the First Amendment. By stripping Americans of their rights and privacy, Americans will be increasingly apprehensive about what to say, do and think: an onerous expansion of “political correctness” in speech, which is nothing less than evisceration of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech.

Obama’s policies are creating an atmosphere where oppressive surveillance makes everyone except the political class afraid of saying the wrong thing, leading inevitably to self-censorship: the same self-censorship that occurred in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Russia and China and Cuba and Latvia and . . .

The solution: First, Congress must respect the Constitution, and it must rewrite the FISA and Patriot statutes to further restrict the ability of government to violate Constitutional constraints. The massive domestic spying program must cease.

Second General Keith Alexander, Director of the NSA, and James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, must be removed from their positions and prosecuted.

Third, any subordinate who obeyed orders from Clapper and Alexander to violate the Constitutional rights and privacy of Americans must be removed and prosecuted (the Allies prosecuted Nazi German officers who obeyed orders to commit crimes . . . following orders to commit crimes is not a defense, as the world saw at Nuremberg).

The critical question is what to do with a president who not only endorsed and expanded a domestic spying program against the American people, but who also willingly and knowingly lied to the American people about the existence of the Constitutionally illegal program?

If the United States Government is to prosecute the underlings of Clapper and Alexander for following orders to commit crimes against the American people, does it not also make sense to not only prosecute Clapper and Alexander for issuing those orders, but also the person who issued the orders to Clapper and Alexander? Then, the House of Representatives must impeach President Obama.

Failure to find President Obama guilty of violating, on a massive scale, the Constitutional rights and privacy of American citizens will simply clarify to and for the American people that the United States Government is no longer a government of, for and by the people.

The failure to find guilt will mean the United States has been transformed into a progressive surveillance state, essentially controlled by one political party intent on changing American citizens to “surveillance-state-subjects,” stripped of all Constitutional rights.