Wire-Tapped

I'm no big fan of Julian Assange, but he does nail it when he tweets:

Trump: I was "wire tapped."
CNN: Haha. That idiot @realDonaldTrump thinks he was wiretapped.
..Six months later...
CNN: Trump was wiretapped

If you'll recall, the elites among the four constituencies were apoplectic over Donald Trump's then unsubstantiated claim that the Obama administration asked the intelligence community to "wire tap" his campaign. They parsed every one of his words, noting how ridiculous it all was. The smeared Devin Nunes, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who suggested that surveillance had happened. They swore, under oath and in front of the Congress that no wire tapping occurred. They shrugged their shoulders and indicated that there was no "unmasking."

Obama's DNI, James Clapper; FBI Director, James Comey; National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and CIA Director, John Brennan all lied ... repeated and blatantly.

Now, it seems that Trump was right—he and/or his people were "wire tapped" during a presidential campaign. It looks like the Obama administration not only weaponized the IRS (think: Lois Lerner et al) against their opponents but also weaponized the FBI, and possibly, the NSA against other political opponents. This level of corruption and illegality is dangerous, very dangerous. It's also corrupt, very corrupt. And it far surpasses anything that occurred during the two-bit burglary of DNC offices (known today as Watergate) that correctly brought down the Nixon presidency.

Sharyl Attkisson (one of few true journalists currently working in the media) writes:

Nobody wants our intel agencies to be used like the Stasi in East Germany; the secret police spying on its own citizens for political purposes. The prospect of our own NSA, CIA and FBI becoming politically weaponized has been shrouded by untruths, accusations and justifications.

You’ll recall DNI Clapper falsely assured Congress in 2013 that the NSA was not collecting “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Intel agencies secretly monitored conversations of members of Congress while the Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal.

In 2014, the CIA got caught spying on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, though CIA Director John Brennan had explicitly denied that.

There were also wiretaps on then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in 2011 under Obama. The same happened under President George W. Bush to former Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Calif.).

Journalists have been targeted, too.

Yet the trained hamsters who call themselves "journalists" seem notably uninterested. True, CNN recently broke the story, but I truly do believe they did so in the delusional view that it would make Trump look bad by extension, i.e., if Paul Manafort was being investigated, that makes Trump a bad guy.

Again from Attkisson, who writes about "wire tapping" directed at her:

... instead of getting the bigger story, some in the news media and quasi-news media published false and misleading narratives pushed by government interests. They implied the computer intrusions were the stuff of vivid imagination, conveniently dismissed forensic evidence from three independent examinations [of Attkisson's computers] that they didn’t review. All seemed happy enough to let news of the government’s alleged unlawful behavior fade away, rather than get to the bottom of it.

I have spent more than two years litigating against the Department of Justice for the computer intrusions. Forensics have revealed dates, times and methods of some of the illegal activities. The software used was proprietary to a federal intel agency. The intruders deployed a keystroke monitoring program, accessed the CBS News corporate computer system, listened in on my conversations by activating the computer’s microphone and used Skype to exfiltrate files.

We survived the government’s latest attempt to dismiss my lawsuit. There’s another hearing Friday. To date, the Trump Department of Justice — like the Obama Department of Justice — is fighting me in court and working to keep hidden the identities of those who accessed a government internet protocol address found in my computers.

There's a reason why those of us who are firm proponents of smaller government are so adamant about it, and why we think that the Democrats (and some GOP elites) love affair with Big Intrusive Government (BIG) is so dangerous. An oft quoted aphorism seems appropriate: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have." That includes your privacy and ultimately, your very freedom.

Barack Obama and his administration were corrupt and dishonest in their use of BIG. It's highly unlikely that anyone from that administration will be held accountable, much less prosecuted. But the actions of the Obama administration should serve as a warning to every American who thinks that personal freedom and privacy trump the needs of BIG. The only solution is to "drain the swamp" (as hard as that is) and make BIG smaller—much smaller.