Remember The Intimidation? This Is Not New Behavior From Obama

A rally and march in protest of higher taxes in Santa Barbara, Calif., April 4.

Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org. [KA-ZING! Take that, MoveOn!]

This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don’t know each other.

In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves. … [THIS SELF-DETERMINATIVE ACTION HARD FOR THE LEFTIES TO GRASP SINCE THEY COMPLIANTLY WAIT TO TAKE THEIR ORDERS FROM MOVEON ET AL.]

So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. …

NRO’s Andy McCarthy also has a new remarkable piece – “The Obama Administration Is Criminalizing Dissent? Intimidating Its Ideological Opponents? You Must Be Joking“ – condemning the DHS report. All of you who’ve been longtime readers and supported Hillary will vividly recall these wholly inappropriate uses of Obot government figures to silence dissent and to intimidate ordinary citizens who are NOT extremists — and note that the litany of anti-Constitutional examples was written by McCarthy in October 2008:

The DHS screed … is entirely predictable. The only conceivable surprise is that it is so blatant and has happened so soon. But all they’ve done is commit to paper the same stuff they say to each other in conversation. [...]

[From a McCarthy column in 2008]I’ll be blunt: Sen. Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent….

[I]n St. Louis, local law-enforcement authorities, dominated by Democrat-party activists, [are] threatening libel prosecutions against Obama’s political opposition. County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, abetted by a local sheriff and encouraged by the Obama campaign, warned that members of the public who dared speak out against Obama during the campaign’s crucial final weeks would face criminal libel charges — if, in the judgment of these conflicted officials, such criticism of their champion was “false.” [YES! THIS REALLY OCCURRED!]

The chill wind was bracing. The Taliban could not better rig matters. The Prophet of Change is only to be admired, not questioned. In the stretch run of an American election, there is to be no examination of a candidate for the world’s most powerful office — whether about his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis. Comment on any of this and risk indictment or, at the very least, government harassment and exorbitant legal fees.

Nor was this an isolated incident.

Item: When the American Issues Project ran political ads calling attention to Obama’s extensive ties to Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist who brags about having bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, the Obama campaign pressured the Justice Department to launch an absurd criminal prosecution.

Item: When commentator Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center was invited on a Chicago radio program to discuss his investigation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an “education reform” project in which Obama and Ayers (just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood”) collaborated to dole out over $100 million, the Obama campaign issued an Internet action alert. Supporters, armed with the campaign’s non-responsive talking points, dutifully flooded the program with calls and emails, protesting Kurtz’s appearance and attempting to shout him down.

Item: Both Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, have indicated that an Obama administration would use its control of the Justice Department to prosecute its political opponents, including Bush administration officials responsible for the national security policies put in effect after nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Item: There is a troubling report that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Section, top officials of which are Obama contributors, has suggested criminal prosecutions against those they anticipate will engage in voter “intimidation” or “oppression” in an election involving a black candidate. (Memo to my former DOJ colleagues: In a system that presumes innocence even after crimes have undeniably been committed, responsible prosecutors don’t assume non-suspects will commit future law violations — especially when doing so necessarily undermines the First Amendment freedoms those prosecutors solemnly swear to uphold.) [Emphasis added.]

Just consider the DHS gambit the first of many Domestic Contingency Operations. … Read all.

McCarthy’s title for his 2008 article? “Obama’s Assault on the First Amendment.”

Now Obama and his administration are going further than Bush to seize and concentrate all power in the executive branch.

But Americans are proving that we have not forgotten our forefather’s courage in standing up and fighting tyranny!

And any decent American should be proud of those organizing and attending today’s events! It does NOT matter that we agree with the sentiments of all who are participating. What counts is that they are the kinds of people who ordinarily don’t do protests, but they feel compelled to speak out! BRAVO!