MICHAEL WALSH ON NSA AND THE SCANDALANCHE:

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MICHAEL WALSH ON NSA AND THE SCANDALANCHE:

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has pointed out, the courts have held that, while the contents of phone conversation are private, the records — who called whom, when, from where and for how long — of such calls are not.
What makes the news scary are the revelations of what else Team Obama’s been up to. Follow the bouncing scandal ball:
* On Benghazi, the administration has simply clammed up, keeping suspicions alive that there’s much more to this story. A handful of intrepid reporters have bucked the tide, but others have stopped asking why no help was sent and where President Obama was that night. Because . . .
* In clear violation of the First Amendment, the administration — allegedly angered about national-security leaks — seized phone records from the AP and Fox News in a what looks like a transparent attempt to put the fear of God into them and keep others incuriously toeing the party line, which mostly amount to: Trust us. But can we? Consider . . .
* The strange goings-on at the Environmental Protection Agency, where recently-departed chief Lisa Jackson was using a fictitious e-mail account in order to communicate privately without all those pesky “transparency” requirements. How widespread is this practice? What to make of word that Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was also using “secondary” e-mail accounts?
* Then came the IRS bombshell — something every taxpaying American can relate to. That a supposedly neutral collection agency with powers far beyond what we entrust to law enforcement would cheerfully target Tea Party and other righty groups for special scrutiny is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares. And although the IRS has tried to blame “rogue elements” in its Cincinnati office, whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork to point the finger directly at the White House.
All this adds up to a perfect storm of mistrust, now exacerbated by the fears of the surveillance state that has mushroomed since the panicky post-9/11 “reforms.” Thus Americans now fear a culture of suspicion among top law-enforcement officials, who treat more than 300 million overwhelmingly law-abiding Americans as potential criminals, subject to snoops and pat-downs.
And when that leviathan falls down on the job — as it did in failing to spot the Tsarnaev brothers — then the trade-off between liberty and security becomes a very bad bargain indeed.