SCENE: MITCH Berg is shopping at an electronics store. Avery LIBRELLE runs into him in the aisle.
MITCH: So – your president is kinda going nuts, here, siccing government agencies on private citizens and dissident groups.
LIBRELLE: Ha ha, Merg. All of this surveillance started under Chimpy McBushitler! If you supported it then, you have to support it now!
MITCH: For starters, Obama’s ramped it up to a new level; I’ve seen no evidence that Bush took the domestic surveillance to anything like the level that Obama has.
LIBRELLE: So there’s an amount of domestic surveillance you deem acceptable?
MITCH: Sure – with a warrant, and observing the due process of law that’s supposed to be a Fourth Amendment right.
LIBRELLE: Hah! So you’re a Fourther.
MITCH: I suppose you could say that. Weren’t you a Fourther when Bush was President?
LIBRELLE: That was different.
MITCH: Ah. OK. Secondly, I didn’t support it back then.
LIBRELLE: You didn’t stop it!
MITCH: How would I stop government surveillance?
LIBRELLE: By blowing the whistle.
MITCH: I don’t work anywhere near the field.
LIBRELLE: What is this “Work” you keep talking about?
MITCH: Fair enough. Thirdly; you complained about government surveillance under Bush…
LIBRELLE: Hissssssssss…
MITCH: …but Bush did little more than expand on policies that Bill Clinton…
LIBRELLE: Yaaaaaay!
MITCH: …initiated with his 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Counterterrorism act, which greatly expanded the Fed’s wiretapping and domestic surveillance rights. I mean, do you remember “Echelon?”
LIBRELLE: The thing that had all you paranoid Faux-News-watching Alex-Jones-listening Bristol-Palin-is-Trig’s-Mom-believing wingnuts pooping in your pants back in the nineties?
MITCH: Right. The government’s purported effort to create broad-based systematic eavesdropping on domestic telephone and online communications.
LIBRELLE: Yeah!
MITCH: So let me be clear here; you supported Clinton’s domestic wiretapping and surveillance efforts?
LIBRELLE: Of course. There were Right-Wing militias roaming the countryside blowing up federal buildings and churches and kidnapping Cuban kids.
MITCH: Right. But under Bush…
LIBRELLE: …it was oppression of domestic dissent!
MITCH: …while under Obama…
LIBRELLE: …he’s got a war on terror on two fronts – the Middle East and here at home! And if you oppose him, you support putting bombs in the hands of right-wingers like the Tsarnaev brothers!
MITCH: Um…gotcha. What’s in the bag?
LIBRELLE: All my electronics. I’m having the service department wrap them in tinfoil.
(And SCENE)
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