Obama Addresses NSA Spying

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	Obama Addresses NSA Spying As Barack Obama's approval ratings slip back into the 30s, he addressed one of the many scandals swirling around his administration: the NSA. It was last summer when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents, which revealed the expansive nature of our government's collection of data. There is virtually nothing the government isn't tracking, and this goes for pretty much everyone: law-abiding American citizens, foreign leaders, terrorists, and maybe even members of our own Congress. The revelations continue to pour in, painting a more complete picture of the extensive nature of the NSA's capabilities. For example, in the last week we've learned that the NSA collects millions of text messages each and every day in "untargeted" global sweeps of data. We also learned that the NSA has placed software on hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, which allows it to monitor these computers, even when they are offline. Stories like these have only compounded people's suspicions about big government, the transparency of this administration (or government in general), and called into question our expectations of privacy and our Constitutional rights. I supported the Patriot Act and I understand the usefulness of such techniques to track down terrorists and protect our nation. But what we've come to learn is that the powers in the Patriot Act have been greatly perverted to justify something beyond which we could comprehend, much less comport with our expected protections under the Constitution. I'm concerned that the collection of all of this data has occurred, particularly on law-abiding Americans citizens, and I've yet to see how it has stopped a terrorist attack (Fort Hood) or been successful in its original purpose. Not only are our rights being violated, but they are being violated at the expense of a program that is questionably successful. Are our civil liberties worth sacrificing in the face of terrorists threats? That's a very dangerous and slippery slope...continued

Washington Continues To Spend
The House and Senate this week passed an enormous $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. The bill is over 1,500 pages long and, needless to say, no lawmaker has read the entire piece of legislation.

While it is a step in the right direction that Washington is actually passing spending bills, this bill in particular is a step in the wrong direction. After all, it increases spending (yet again!) and does nothing to address our ever-growing national debt, which is now over $17 trillion and climbing.

Large bills such as this are generally ripe with spending on all sorts of useless or wasteful programs.

The Heritage Foundation found a few examples...

Today's "Hot Topic" From the Hannity Forums:
Obama NSA Announcement - Posted by RTchoke
Anybody watching this? thoughts, opinions etc. So far it seems to be a run down of ways you are watched, tracked etc and intelligence gathering back to colonial times.

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