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Some Democrats, who are so overjoyed to be rid of the Bush administration, assume that paradise is about to arrive. But the Clinton Administrations #’s 1 and 2 also were bad times for civil liberties. Investigative journalist James Bovard explains:
The Bush administration has probably illegally violated Americans’ privacy more than any presidency in at least a generation. Many Americans are understandably ready to throw out Republicans who trampled the Bill of Rights.
But is the solution to elect a Democrat? Many liberals were shocked in July when putative Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama voted in favor of the bill to retroactively immunize illegal wiretapping by Bush officials and telephone-company executives. Even worse, the bill authorizes the federal government to conduct far more warrantless wiretaps whenever the president claims the nation is endangered.
Some Americans are looking back at the 1990s as a comparative Golden Age for Privacy. Unfortunately, most people have forgotten that the Democratic Party’s record on surveillance was dreadful.
The Clinton administration consistently championed the right of government employees to stick their noses almost anywhere — into people’s email, car, house, or personal effects. Clintonites set off one false alarm after another to justify extending government’s right to intrude. The administration consistently sought to exploit technological development in order to maximize government’s control over the citizenry.
It was a phenomenon that I liked to call “jackboot liberalism.”
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