{"id":9856,"date":"2011-05-26T10:17:43","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T18:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=9856"},"modified":"2011-05-26T10:17:43","modified_gmt":"2011-05-26T18:17:43","slug":"harry-reid-channeling-dick-cheney-in-fear-mongering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/26\/harry-reid-channeling-dick-cheney-in-fear-mongering\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Reid Channeling Dick Cheney in Fear Mongering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apologists for the Democratic Party who refine \u201clesser evil voting\u201d to a high art, should have been hanging their heads low for quite a while now with the advent of Obama\u2019s Bush policies on national security and foreign policy (among others). But this jingoist, warring bipartisanship – regardless of campaign slogans to the contrary – manifests throughout Congress as well, of course. Harry Reid has been summoning the ghost of Dick Cheney to fear monger civil libertarians on the Patriot Act. Either you\u2019re for the Patriot Act, or you\u2019re for the terrorists, he says.<\/p>\n

Spencer Ackerman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Remember back when a Republican was in the White House and demanded broad surveillance authority? Here\u2019s Reid back then.\u00a0\u201dWhether out of convenience, incompetence, or outright disdain for the rule of law, the administration chose to ignore Congress and ignore the Constitution<\/a>,\u201d Reid said about Bush\u2019s warrantless surveillance program. When Bush insisted Congress entrench that surveillance with legislation in 2008, Reid turned around and demanded Bush \u201cstop fear-mongering and start being honest with the American people about national security<\/a>.\u201d Any claim about the detrimental impact about a lapse in widespread surveillance were \u201cscare tactics\u201d to Reid that\u00a0\u201dirresponsibly distort reality<\/a>.\u201d (Then\u00a0Reid rolled over for Bush<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s nowhere near the end of Reid\u2019s hypocrisy here. When the Senate debated renewing the Patriot Act in 2006, Reid, a supporter of the bill\u2019s surveillance procedures, himself slowed up the bill\u2019s passage to\u00a0allow amendments to it<\/em> \u2014 the better to allow \u201csensible checks on the arbitrary exercise of executive power<\/a>.\u201d Sounding a whole lot like Rand Paul, the 2006-vintage Reid registered his \u201cobjection to the procedural maneuver under which Senators have been blocked from offering any amendments to this bill\u201d and reminded his colleagues,\u00a0\u201dthe hallmark of the Senate is free speech and open debate.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This happens to be as predictable as gravity effects the fallen here on earth. Still, with election cycles revving up, we can be sure the entirety of the American electorate will clamor for their chosen parties and candidates, utterly convinced by their perfunctory rhetoric. And consistent libertarians will endure a year or two of condemnation for cynicism and patriotic duties to vote gone unfulfilled, and then find their vindication again when those newly elected liars prove as cowardly and dishonest as Harry Reid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apologists for the Democratic Party who refine \u201clesser evil voting\u201d to a high art, should have been hanging their heads low for quite a while now with the advent of Obama\u2019s Bush policies on national security and foreign policy (among others). But this jingoist, warring bipartisanship – regardless of campaign slogans to the contrary – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9857,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9856\/revisions\/9857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9856"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}