By PETER FENN

This is a bad week for Americans’ personal freedoms.

First, the Supreme Court opens up a national DNA database for people arrested of a serious crime. This, no doubt, will lead to more of an invasion affecting many more people, as I pointed out in a column a few days ago.

And yesterday, the Guardian revealed a collaboration between at least one phone company, Verizon, and the National Security Agency to collect phone records of Americans. We will know shortly whether other phone carriers are involved. But Verizon has 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 residential customers and about 10 million commercial customers. That is a lot of telephone calls!

In my view, we have a serious problem. First, a little history.

[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]

In the spring of 1975, I was a young 27 year old on a mission as a Senate staffer to investigate the National Security Agency for spying on Americans. At that time, many used the line that NSA stood for “No Such Agency.” For those of us on the Senate Intelligence Committee, penetrating the agency was far more difficult than breaking into Fort Knox.

But thanks to some at the top of the super-secret agency who were concerned with spying on American citizens who were protesting the war in Vietnam or participating in civil rights demonstrations, it opened up and halted such intrusions in the mid 70s. Sadly, all that has changed.

We are now where we were at the start in 1945 except that the technology today is so mind-boggling. Back then, the NSA and Western Union, AT&T and others had a loose agreement that international telegrams would be provided, en masse, to the government. In the 1940s and 1950s, all ticker tape of incoming and outgoing telegrams from the central location in New York City would be scooped up off the floor, put in bags and transported to Washington for potential analysis.

Key “watch list” names were selected for interception. Mostly, at that time, these were suspected spies or foreign agents. Later, the ticker tape was dispensed with and computer tapes of the telegrams were sent to the NSA. At the peak, these numbered about 150,000 messages a month. And during the 1960s and early 1970s names of well-known war protestors or civil rights advocates were added to the list.

[See a collection of political cartoons on defense spending.]

This prompted Senator Frank Church, D-Idaho, the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, to remark that Operation Shamrock, as it was known, was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.”

The ability of the government to collect information on Americans was considered a real threat back during the Church Committee investigations of 1975-76. This led not only to revelations of abuses but to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to curb them.

But our concern back then was the need for a special FISA court that could examine both the right to privacy and national security interests and create a balance. Warrants were required and were limited. Oversight was created, judicial and legislative. Yet, our real concerns at the time were about tapping home phones or the privacy of pay phones – cell phones, the internet, Twitter, Facebook, texting, email were not even remotely on our radar screens! What was digital, anyway?

[See a collection of political cartoons on Congress.]

Senator Church seemed to see around the corner, however, when he commented on the NSA: “That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.”

We are there.

The decisions since 9/11 to allow the government access to all phone calls, domestic and foreign, from any American, for any reason, has created a dangerous precedent and sent us down a slippery slope. The access to virtually all phone records, internet communications, emails and postings has left us “no place to hide.”

[Take the U.S. News Poll: Should the Government Stop Collecting Phone Records?]

We need to seriously rethink the role of the FISA court and the relationships between telecommunications companies and the NSA. We need to determine whether we are headed toward building files on Americans that contain not only their communications but their DNA as well. We need to take seriously the sad conclusion that many Americans have come to that “there is no right to privacy anymore.” Everything is out there. Everything is fair game. By going on my computer or talking on my cell phone, I have given up my freedom.

That is not the America we should accept or have believed in for nearly 250 years.

I wonder what my old boss Frank Church would think if he were alive? Would he be haunted by his own words from 1975? :

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency (NSA) and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

PETER FENN

By PETER FENN

One of the first jobs I had in Washington was as a young staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee – the so-called Church Committee.

This select committee was named after the late Senator Frank Church and was created primarily to investigate intelligence abuses directed at Americans, but also included certain foreign transgressions, such as the use of assassinations, coups and other covert activities.

It led to a permanent committee and put in force important checks and balances on executive power. Critical legislation to protect American citizens from unreasonable search and seizure came out of that committee’s work.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Congress.]

I was worried about privacy thirty years ago – but that was nothing compared to now.

The latest decision by the Supreme Court on the use of DNA scares me. It is a further use of current technology to erode individual rights. I understand the arguments that it can be an effective tool to free the innocent and convict the guilty.  I understand that it makes law enforcement’s job easier and more efficient. I understand the argument that “we live in a different word” and that if we compile a national database of fingerprints, why is it not OK to do the same with DNA?

I see those points, but I just don’t buy them. I agree, for once, with Justice Antonin Scalia when he wrote, “your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”

[See a collection of political cartoons on health care.]

Here is why: for those who worry about the power of government to collect and build personal files on Americans, cataloguing their every key stroke, phone call, email and text message, now here comes even more intrusion.

I rather doubt DNA swabs will be kept to dangerous felons, but rather expanded to those picked up for far more minor offenses. It also may be required or requested by others for jobs, various kinds of licenses, permits, credit applications, you name it.

Americans are giving up their rights at an alarming rate and this is a great deal more important than worrying about the Internal Revenue Service doing its job and looking at political groups. That was clumsy; this is incredible for its long term consequences.

Americans, especially many younger ones, have very little expectation of privacy any more. This Supreme Court ruling will only further undermine our personal liberties. This is not a wise road to head down for a nation built on individual freedom.

The quitters: The Bachmann and Palin pathology

It is one thing to raise millions from grassroots activists or appear on record numbers of TV talk shows or give rhetorically charged speeches before adoring crowds – it is quite another to do the hard work of governing.

Both Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin were political lightweights who were full of sound and fury and accomplished very little. Both quit their posts like spoiled children, after meteoric rises that had precious little to do with actually getting anything done.

Both were bad examples of what public service should be all about and both exhibited a certain pathology steeped more in ego and appearance than serious legislating or governing. Just watch Bachmann’s rambling 8-and-a-half minute diatribe announcing she was quitting Congress.

I can’t resist comparing these two to Hillary Clinton, a serious and disciplined leader who was a senator of substance sponsoring legislation with nearly three dozen Republicans who voted for her husband’s impeachment. She was known in elective office and as secretary of State as a pragmatic, accomplished, focused public figure.

Palin and Bachmann were just the opposite. Flashy, outrageous, flippant, charismatic to be sure, but devoid of much left behind.

Bachmann’s sole real accomplishment was a bridge to somewhere – from Minnesota to Wisconsin; Palin’s may be the proposed bridge to nowhere in Alaska.

Both of them may point to the Tea Party rise – a weak brew and cold at that. Bachmann was known for non-attendance and paltry participation in her Republican Caucus and as a member with little interest in legislation. Palin seemed to enjoy her time in Wasilla more than in the governor’s office and, despite all the press conferences, left the governorship in the middle of her term.

These two set back efforts to put women in serious positions of power. Like their male colleagues of a similar ilk – Alan West, Jim DeMint, Joe Walsh, Herman Cain – they could move their mouths but couldn’t move legislation.

They left little to show except their time as show horses.

Palin cashed in and made millions off her fame; likely Bachmann will do the same.

The sad part is that what they have left behind is a Republican Party so very extreme and so ideologically straight-jacketed that they are unable to get much of anything done in government. Palin and Bachmann clearly prized rhetoric over results, media over what matters. Not exactly the examples our founding fathers set.

By PETER FENN

USNews & World Report–Thomas Jefferson Street Blog

I have to confess that I am the only Washington political junkie who has not watched the series “Scandal,” or even the much acclaimed “House of Cards.” Maybe that makes me not competent to comment on what is going on in Washington these days – IRS, Benghazi, Associated Press reporters tracked. I hope not.

What we are seeing on the nightly news or emanating from Capitol Hill is so far from a “scandal” I find myself in an Alice in Wonderland world. (A Mad Hatter tea party?)

The word scandal does not even fit – this is not Teapot Dome, this is not Spiro Agnew, this is not Watergate, this is not Iran Contra. The 24/7 news cycle has taken the confluence of events and the ease with which congressional hearings become show trials and blown this all way out of proportion. After all, the definition of scandal is “an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage.”

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Tea Party.]

But we have seen a version of this movie before. We saw it during the Clinton era. Investigations, special prosecutors, hearing after hearing, attack, attack, attack. What did we end up with after Whitewater, Hillary’s billing records, Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky, impeachment? Zip.

Once again, Americans are bombarded with the word “scandal.” And the words that go along with it: “cover up,” “conspiracy,” “corrupt.” The trouble is there is no scandal; there is no issue remotely resembling Watergate.

In an attempt to identify organizations that were hiding their donors, garnering tax-exempt status and claiming the “social welfare” mantle, staff at the IRS included key words that targeted the tea party. Big mistake. But blame Obama and the White House? Please. The IRS also targeted over two-dozen liberal groups. All these political campaign groups should never have been given status as tax exempt, social welfare organizations. That is the real scandal.

[See a collection of editorial Cartoons on the IRS Scandal.]

And how long are we going to investigate Benghazi? Again, no conspiracy, just the usual interagency competition, confusion and rush to get something out without jeopardizing an ongoing investigation.

The sad fact is that the steady drumbeat is eroding the public’s trust and leading to greater cynicism. Just as we are emerging from a horrendous recession, have to deal with real disasters in our heartland and need to focus on rebuilding, some in Congress want to do more tearing down of Obama and his administration. It is crassly political and it exploits the word scandal – but it is not even close.

The Republicans are beginning to resemble the boy who cried wolf just a few too many times.

The Republicans’ obsession

I’m tired.

Under Bill Clinton we had to endure the Republicans’ obsession with so-called “scandal” Whitewater, the death of Vince Foster, the travel office, and finally Monica Lewinsky and impeachment.

It was all so exhausting and so useless and so far from doing the people’s business.

Nevertheless, Bill Clinton had one of the most successful presidencies in modern times.

Ever since Barack Obama was elected, various elements of the Republican Party have engaged in nothing but petty character assassination, false accusations and partisan political attacks designed to undermine his presidency.

Sadly, the press refuses to call them on it and, in my view, the Obama team is being far too tolerant of the absurd charges. The president’s senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer hit back this weekend but more voices should be heard. 

Think about it. The first term saw the birther movement, a definition of insanity if there ever was one. How many years can you spend on a birth certificate? Then there was Obama the Muslim, Obama the socialist. Crazy. None of it stuck.

But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the scandal-monger in chief, won’t give up. He told Rush Limbaugh last year that Obama was “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.”

Now he is setting out to prove it with investigation after investigation. If ever there was a true witch hunt, this is it. Keep berating witnesses, keep asking for useless documents, keep leveling accusations without regard for the facts: this is the time-honored tradition of some Republicans since Bill Clinton.

The IRS investigation is a far cry from a “Watergate” scandal. There was no conspiracy, no effort to go after “enemies” emanating from the White House. Two dozen liberal groups were also singled out according to Sunday’s The New York Times.

The real scandal is that large political groups were allowed to spend without limit on political campaigns and without disclosing their donors. Over $250 million in unreportable contributions. That is the real wrongdoing. This is where the outrage should be directed and where the hearings on the Hill should go.

As for Benghazi, it was a tragedy and surely a mistake to pull together the talking points for Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before the facts were all in and the situation analyzed. But, again, was it a conspiracy, a vast effort to mislead? Not close. This investigation is going nowhere.

Finally, the AP-leaks issue? This should help lead us to a clear definition of policies toward civil liberties, something long overdue since the trampling done by the Bush-Cheney administration. The technology at the government’s disposal is too vast and too intrusive for us to ignore the harm it can do to our freedoms. This should not be a partisan issue, but a privacy issue.

We need to focus on the problems at hand. As Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on Issa’s committee, made clear: it is time to look into new ideas on job creation, how to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and what to do to help those caught in the foreclosure crisis.

American voters want Washington to hear them on boosting the economy, not holding hearings that lob political cheap shots.

Strange, isn’t it, that we don’t hear much from these Republicans about the economy when the stock market is going up, unemployment is going down, inflation is holding steady and $200 billion has been shaved from the deficit projections in just three months.

Just as with Bill Clinton, it is still about the economy. Made-up scandals will get the Republicans exactly nowhere.

By PETER FENN

Rep. Darrell Issa greets Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya.

Benghazi was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy and because of it a light should be shone on what more can be done to protect those who serve America overseas. What our country does not deserve is a political show trial designed to vilify Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. What we don’t need is a crass partisan effort to influence the 2016 presidential campaign.

Unlike the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, there are no questions of illegal acts, no secret funds, no shredding of documents and no efforts to directly circumvent a law passed by Congress. People may forget that 14  administration officials were indicted and 11 convicted as a result of the arms-for-hostages scandal.

Instead, what we have after eight months of investigation, 11 congressional hearings before five committees, 20 staff briefings and 25,000 pages of documents is exactly what we started with: a tragic situation with lessons to be learned, but not a grand conspiracy. It is sad that Rep. Darrell Issa has decided not to conduct a series of hearings to help solve the problems that out diplomats face every day but rather to engage in a partisan, political witch hunt for a conspiracy and cover-up that doesn’t exist.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Republican Party.]

If he were truly interested in solutions he would have Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen – the chairman and vice chairman respectively of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board which investigated the incident – before the committee to discuss the 29 recommendations that they proposed. He would seek more ideas on boosting security, not cutting funds for the State Department that many in his party have so enthusiastically embraced.

As for Issa’s political motives, take it from Iran-Contra, when many Democrats thought it would influence the presidential campaign of 1988. It didn’t. I can speak from experience. Our ads linking George H.W. Bush to the scandal really fell on deaf ears. Voters were done with it; it was in their rear view mirror.

Republicans who think that Benghazi will be an issue in 2016 should think again.