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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Some Progressive Liberals Come Out Against Obama Over Civil Liberty Issue, Others Show Their Hypocrisy

By Susan Duclos


Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union are all harshly calling the Obama administration out over civil liberty issues, and demanding an investigation of the cell-phone surveillance by NSA after the bombshell news that Obama's programs expanded on the type of surveillance conducted by the Bush administration.

Other organizations that criticized the Bush administration over the same issues are silent about the overreaching spying by the Obama administration

Via The Atlantic:

The email went out shortly after midnight Thursday, a few hours after the news broke about the Obama administration's large-scale monitoring of Americans' cell-phone records: "You are being spied on."

It was sent by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading liberal organization, to its list of supporters, and it asked them to sign a petition demanding an investigation of the cell-phone surveillance. "It's simply unacceptable," the email said.

As further revelations about domestic surveillance have emerged in recent days, the group has kept up the drumbeat. The response, PCCC officials say, has been overwhelming -- a sign of the widespread liberal anger at Obama over civil liberties.

"We just think that what's happening here is so outrageous, progressives can't afford to stand on the sidelines," PCCC's Zaid Jilani said. "We have to stand up for accountable, transparent government that respects your rights."


[...]

The partisan grassroots appear similarly divided. MoveOn.org has been silent on the issue -- the group's website features petitions about military sexual assault and genetically modified crops, but nothing about civil liberties. Similarly, Americans United for Change has stayed focused on gun control and criticizing congressional Republicans....

The hypocrisy isn't just coming from liberal organizations that found the Bush administration's surveillance protocols unacceptable, yet are completely ignoring more invasive programs under Obama, but recent Pew Research numbers find that hypocrisy has trickled down to Democrats across the country.

A Pew poll released Monday found majorities of Americans approve of call tracking and disapprove of email monitoring. The 41 percent of Americans who disapprove of secret NSA phone-record collection included 34 percent of Democrats -- about half the proportion who disapproved of surveillance tactics in the Bush Administration.

Only 37 percent of the Democrats polled years ago about Bush's surveillance programs and found them unacceptable are willing to call out Obama on the NSA's secret court orders to obtain millions of Verizon customer's phone records.

The other 27 percent?  Hypocrites, because the spying under Obama has been far more extensive.

Those are the ones that can be considered Obamabots.


Full Wake up America NSA scandal coverage found here.