The American government has hatched a plan to use its military satellites and surveillance aircraft against its own people, giving federal, state and local law enforcement the power to look in on the activities of American citizens from high up in the sky, or even from out in orbit. One would think that would be a major campaign issue, given that the spy program violates the Posse Comitatus Act requirements to separate the military and domestic law enforcement, and violates the prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure in the Bill of Rights.
Sadly, only one Democratic presidential candidate has spoken clearly on the issue so far. That candidate is Dennis Kucinich. In a rapid response to the revelation of the satellite spy program targetted on the United States, Kucinich released a statement in which he stood strongly against the new espionage, saying, “Not only are they ramping up their attempts to lie and deceive this nation into another war, they are also using those lies and deceptions to justify creating a police state right here where everyone is under suspicion and everyone is secretly under surveillance from Big Brother in the sky.” In this statement, Kucinich was directly addressing what he rightly called “using military spy satellites and other high-tech military assets to put every citizen in our country under surveillance”.
On his congressional web page, Dennis Kucinch explains, “This new domestic spying program is against everything this country stands on,” and warns, “This Orwellian policy is yet another example of the Administration’s continued desire to deliberately eliminate the Constitutionally-derived civil liberty rights from American citizens. The Administration continues to dodge the Congress, the Courts and the American public to avoid any form of accountability. The Administration needs to be held accountable for its full frontal assault on the Bill of Rights and our Constitution.”
Those are fighting words and they’re deserved. It’s about time we heard this kind of direct talk from a Democratic presidential candidate.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any such statement from any other Democratic presidential candidate. I’ve searched the campaign web sites and congressional web sites of all the other Democratic candidates, and found not one word of criticism from any of them for the satellite spy program.
We cannot assume that all the Democratic presidential candidates are against the new satellite and airplane spy program on American soil, just because they are Democrats. Too many times, we have seen Democratic politicians betray the principles of liberty and democracy that they claim to support.
Until we see statements from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, John Edwards and Mike Gravel in opposition to the new satellite surveillance program against Americans, we have good reason to doubt that the program would be discontinued with any of them as President.
Call the campaigns of these strangely silent Democratic candidates today, and ask them for a straight answer – are they in favor of military spy satellites and surveillance aircraft snooping on Americans, or are they against it?
(Sources: Dennis Kucinich congressional web page, August 16, 2007; Kucinich for President campaign press release, August 16, 2007)
