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Shahid Buttar, Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, returns to talk about the latest assaults on our rights by Congress and the Obama administration. We open with a recap of the recent Senate vote to extend the FISA revisions from 2008 for another 5 years, with no amendments. We talk about the central role of California Senator Feinstein in creating a phony “Bill of Rights cliff” and demagoguing her colleagues Wyden, Merkley, and Paul for proposing modest amendments. We note that the other senator from California, Barbara Boxer, did not vote on the amendments or the bill, even though she had been a vocal opponent in 2008.
We talk about the important report on December 13 in the Wall Street Journal about the debate in the Obama White House over the rules for collecting and retaining data on Americans, even those who are never charged–it was increased tenfold, to 5 years. Two women from Homeland Security and another woman from Justice resisted the changes; they lost, and all have since left their jobs. The National Countertterrorism Center (NCTC) now has sweeping powers to collect and hold data on us–like John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program under Bush that was killed when Democrats raised a fuss. Now it’s OK, because Democrats are running it.
We also talk about the unconstitutional detention clause in the 2012 NDAA, the badly written Feinstein amendment (which was pulled from the bill anyway) and a recent amicus brief filed in the challenge brought by Chris Hedges and others, by Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II.
And we discuss recent disclosures about the FBI’s suppression of peaceful protesters in the Occupy movement.
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