Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Obama’s request for emails opposing his policies amounts to domestic spying!

I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House. I suspect that you would have been leading the charge in condemning such a program-and I would have been at your side denouncing such heavy-handed government action.
– Letter by Senator John Cornyn to President Obama.

Full text of Cornyn’s letter:

Dear President Obama,

I write to express my concern about a new White House program to monitor American citizens’ speech opposing your health care policies, and to seek your assurances that this program is being carried out in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and America’s tradition of free speech and public discourse.

Yesterday, in an official White House release entitled “Facts are Stubborn Things,” the White House Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, asserted that there was “a lot of disinformation out there,” and encouraged citizens to report “fishy” speech opposing your health care policies to the White House. Phillips specifically targeted private, unpublished, even casual speech, writing that “rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.” Phillips wrote “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed “fishy” or otherwise inimical to the White House’s political interests.

By requesting that citizens send “fishy” emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House. You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.

I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House. I suspect that you would have been leading the charge in condemning such a program-and I would have been at your side denouncing such heavy-handed government action.

So I urge you to cease this program immediately. At the very least, I request that you detail to Congress and the public the protocols that your White House is following to purge the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in “fishy” speech. And I respectfully request an answer to the following:

• How do you intend to use the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in “fishy” speech?
  How do you intend to notify citizens who have been reported for “fishy” speech?
• What action do you intend to take against citizens who have been reported for engaging in “fishy” speech?
• Do your own past statements qualify as “disinformation”? For example, is it “disinformation” to note that in 2003 you said:”I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan”?

I look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN

United States Senator

also:

Democrats Try to Dismiss Citizen Anger Over Socialist Health Care Power Grab

The rule: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” unless it’s practiced by Republicans!

Remember when Obama told his supporters that they had to “get in [our] face?”

Millions of dollars in union dues have gone to fund an army of paid supporters to promote Obama’s never ending campaign to socialize as much of American life as he can. ACORN and union activists bus in handicapped persons to be used as props at health care forums hosted by Democrats. But when tea partiers spontaneously rise in righteous anger and demand to have their voices heard Democrats attack.

The Democrat National Committee calls us “mobs of extremists” for daring to oppose plans to destroy America’s health care system as we know it. In a similar vein Democrats across the country are now deriding the natural anger they see when confronted by constituents at home. One liberal blogger went so far as to call our activities “civic vigilanteism.” Some of this is laughable; like the idiot Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) who suggested that the protesters were too “well dressed” to be sincere.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs suggests the protests are “manufactured anger” and a Brooks Brothers Brigade.” But when asked about the enormous and well funded White House effort to mobilize support for the health care power grab he simply repeated his attack on the protesters.

White House Astroturf Campaign Ramps Up

Vice President Biden, speaks today at a rally organized by “Organizers for America”, an Obama campaign group, many of whom are paid, which urged it’s workers to show up and counter “organized mobs” of conservatives.

It’s the tip of a very large iceberg. Nancy Pelosi sent congressional Democrats home with a memo letting them know that help is on the way:

The Leadership is working in close coordination with the White House and outside groups (including but not limited to HCAN, Families USA, AFSCME, SEIU, AARP, etc.) to ensure complementary efforts during August.

Funding for these efforts is estimated to be tens of millions of dollars. All of it coming from the same liberal big money/George Soros nexus that was responsible for creating the current fiction that is Obama.

But all that is being eclipsed by the outpouring of citizen anger we see so clearly on display at Town Hall forums across the country.

Tea Parties in Action: Citizen Democracy At Work!

The Tea Parties started as spontaneous groups of likeminded citizens coming together to oppose Obama’s socialist makeover. At first it wasn’t clear how these independent gatherings with no outside financial support or coordination could have an impact. But as tea partiers have taken to Town Hall forums to denounce the destruction of the U.S. health care system their voice is being heard.

The video which best sums up the argument against Obama Care is from Sunday’s Town Hall in Philadelphia, where Benedict Arlen Specter (DEMOCRAT-PA) and Kathleen Sibelius, Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, were forced to confront this truth:

This scene is being repeated across the country. Monday night in Green Bay Wisconsin, hundreds were turned away from a “Listening Session” with Congressman Steve Kagen (D-WI. These are not paid supporters being bussed to the event. These are voters and tax payers:

Obama’s hired goon squads are being outnumbered by REAL AMERICANS. That’s hope and change I can believe in!

Finally:

Dems Cap and Trade “Energy” Bill Will Raise Electricity Rates 20%

I thought Obama wasn’t going to raise our taxes?

Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released their study of the impacts of the Democrat’s Cap and Trade program which recently passed the House of Representatives.

Bloomberg news sorted through the bureaucratic language in the report and found:

higher prices will drop household consumption of energy while the average cost to each household will rise $204 per household by 2020 and $522 per household by 2030. A June Congressional Budget Office report estimated the measure would cost an average of $175 a year per household annually by 2020.

In addition to predicting higher power prices, the draft says the gross domestic product will fall by $492 billion from 2012 to 2030, or 0.2 percent, under the most likely scenario.

And Ed Morrisey points out:

[E]nergy costs get folded into every product and service provided in the marketplace. Energy cost increases magnify through the distribution chain, forcing prices higher and higher at each step. When manufacturers have to pay higher prices for their energy, their product prices go up, as does the markup at the distributor and the retailer. We saw this dynamic during the rapid increase in gasoline prices in 2007-8, as food prices especially escalated due to the cost of trucking produce and groceries to markets. Several estimates of the total impact of cap-and-trade have been published, with some estimates as high as $3200 per year per household.

Less energy, at a substantially higher cost and a negative impact on the entire economy!

Does that sound like a good idea?

Only a Democrat would think so!