{"id":8933,"date":"2010-03-01T06:27:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T11:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8933"},"modified":"2010-02-28T09:27:34","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T14:27:34","slug":"transparent-as-mud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8933","title":{"rendered":"Transparent As Mud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Right after the inauguration last year, I was guesting on Marty Owings&#8217; internet talk show Radio Free Nation (which still appears on Saturday nights).\u00a0 The show was pretty diverse; you had a center-lefty (Marty) and a group of far, far, far lefties.\u00a0 And me.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway &#8211; I made a fearless prediction for them.\u00a0 Barack Obama would <em>not <\/em>get us out of Iraq; he would <em>not <\/em>resolve the Afghan situation; he would <em>not <\/em>close Guantanamo or end rendition; and he would <em>not <\/em>change\u00a0 Bush-Administration policies like the Patriot Act.<\/p>\n<p>Was I right?<\/p>\n<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/anthony-kang\/2010\/02\/27\/obama-signs-one-year-extension-patriot-act-saturday-night-course\">duh<\/a>; it doesn&#8217;t take any more of a rocket surgeon today to figure out that Obama is an emptier suit on foreign policy and defense than on most topics than it did a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>The funny part?\u00a0 He tried to do it on the sly:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With virtually zero debate &#8211; or media attention &#8211; President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension for what many considered the most crucial and controversial aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act. The provisions, set to expire Sunday without the signature of Obama, include extensions to allow:<\/p>\n<p>-1) &#8220;roving&#8221; wiretaps, permitting surveillance on multiple phones and e-mail addresses.<\/p>\n<p>-2) court-approved seizures of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.<\/p>\n<p>-3) surveillance on &#8220;lone-wolf&#8221; foreign nationals, who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.<\/p>\n<p>Originally set to expire in December, a two-month extension was passed by Congress late last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Simple fact:\u00a0 Dick Cheney is Barack Obama&#8217;s foremost counterterror strategist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Right after the inauguration last year, I was guesting on Marty Owings&#8217; internet talk show Radio Free Nation (which still appears on Saturday nights).\u00a0 The show was pretty diverse; you had a center-lefty (Marty) and a group of far, far, far lefties.\u00a0 And me. Anyway &#8211; I made a fearless prediction for them.\u00a0 Barack Obama [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8933"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8937,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8933\/revisions\/8937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}