It never ends

If you thought accountability and rule of law were coming back to America, think again. Obama ran on a platform of transparency and an end to executive abuses of power. While he has made good on these promises to some degree—shutting down secret prisons, ending CIA torture—the essence of shadow-side government, the mindset that allowed such abuses to occur in the first place, remains.

With the Obama Department of Justice’s (DOJ) assertion that illegal wiretapping suits against the government should be dismissed on the grounds that not doing so would be a threat to national security is the same tune Bush and company sung. I wish it were the case that this was the only argument presented by the Obama camp as that would only be disheartening, What is horrifying is Obama’s unprecedented claim that the government is immune from suit in cases of illegal wiretapping unless the information gathered is “willfully disclosed.” As Keith Olbermann of CNBC points out, this amounts to saying it’s okay to steal as long as you don’t use the money.

Even Bush never went so far as to suggest that the people have no legal recourse when it comes to unconstitutional spying, which is more or less what the DOJ is saying. What’s so frustrating is that, having bought into Obama’s campaign rhetoric, many of us believed these kinds of stunts were over. This issue seemingly proves, however, that while Obama has no intention of abusing executive power—for now—he also has no intention of ceding his office’s option to do so in the future.

It’s a sad fact that we have two basic choices in politics today: big government that leans left and big government that leans right. Either way we’re stuck with an opaque, coercive institution. We as citizens are partly to blame, however, for not demanding otherwise.

If you’re as outraged as I am, write or call your elected officials and demand a reversal on this position. We need to remind those in power that our forefathers saw government as a necessary evil, whose existence was to be justified to the people at all times. Let’s remind our leaders that the Constitution was meant not to embolden, but restrain them.