Dennis Kucinich Says Abolish The NSA And Throw Snowden A Parade

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – How many of you have used the term abolish in the last month?  How many of you have thought of how to abolish, for example, the IRS, how to abolish the NSA?  Around the time of the founders, when the Virginia Bill of Rights was written, principally by George Mason, the wisest man of his generation — that’s what Jefferson called him — there’s a clause in the Virginia Bill of Rights that says citizens have an indubitable, indefeasible, unalienable right to reform, alter, or abolish any form of government that has become destructive of the ends of society.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Dennis Kucinich in the Huffington Puffington Post:

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Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich had some strong words for the National Security Agency last week, arguing that the federal government should abolish it and throw leaker Edward Snowden a celebratory parade.

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Mike:  We all love parades, don’t we?  We used to love parades.  What happened to the parades?  Parades are another part of that glue that held communities together.  Unless you come to New Orleans and partake in the season of revelry known as Carnival here, you know it as Mardi Gras — although Mardi Gras is only one day, Fat Tuesday.  The season begins here in southeast Louisiana with the celebration of the king cake.  We begin our parading around, well the Twelfth Night Revelers — and I’m one of them — we roll on the twelfth night after Christmas.  We begin parading in January.  If you live in New Orleans, we don’t stop until Mardi Gras or St. Patrick’s Day or so, or St. Joseph’s Day, whichever comes last.  So throwing Snowden a parade, throwing anyone a parade for that matter, is definitely an occurrence that doesn’t happen very often.

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Kucinich spoke following a Washington screening of “Terms and Conditions May Apply”, a documentary film about federal data-mining operations and online privacy. The film’s director Cullen Hoback asked Kucinich what he thought should happen to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied to Congress about NSA surveillance.

“Clapper should be held responsible, but he won’t be, because that’s the condition we’re in right now. … In a just world, Snowden, we’d be having ticker-tape parades for him. But that’s not what’s going to happen,” said Kucinich, in remarks flagged by Techdirt. “Frankly — and I’m saying this with a lifetime’s experience in government here — it’s time to punch the NSA’s ticket here. They’ve ruined the brand. They’ve destroyed the idea of privacy.”

Despite President Barack Obama’s vow to increase oversight of the agency . . . [Mike: Kucinich isn’t buying it.]

“We talk about the death penalty for individuals, which I oppose, but I think … for government agencies that so broadly betray the public interest, there needs to be a measure of responsibility,” Kucinich said. “And if they go beyond the pale, which the NSA has, they just ought to be abolished. We don’t need the spying.”

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Mike:  That’s a term that is just not used enough, Former Congressman Kucinich, abolish.  How many of you have used the term abolish in the last month?  How many of you have thought of how to abolish, for example, the IRS, how to abolish the NSA?  Around the time of the founders, when the Virginia Bill of Rights was written, principally by George Mason, the wisest man of his generation — that’s what Jefferson called him — there’s a clause in the Virginia Bill of Rights that says citizens have an indubitable, indefeasible, unalienable right to reform, alter, or abolish any form of government that has become destructive of the ends of society.  Mason wouldn’t have drawn the line and said: We ought to get rid of the NSA, we ought to get rid of the TSA.  Mason would have been in the camp and of the belief that this entire edifice ought to be abolished.  We ought to wipe the slate clean and start over again, and begin designing or having conventions to draft new systems or new constitutions and forms of government as so may effect our safety and happiness.

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I know that’s a radical though, but I do not believe that that would have been a radical thought then.  Given our circumstances today, I don’t think it’s a radical thought.  What’s the alternative?  This is just what’s maddening.  What’s the alternative?  We’ll do that other part of the Declaration of Independence.  Part of the Declaration that people love to quote is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” [mocking] “Everyone’s created equal.  It says so right there.”  Okay, what about Jefferson’s part about men will tolerate evils while evils are sufferable, but when a long train of abuses evinces a design to reduce them to absolute despotism, they have the right, they have the duty to reform, alter . . . so reforming, altering, or abolishing was part of the founders’ creed.  I am heartened to hear former Congressman Kucinich use the term.  I think we need to bring back the “a” word, which, as I just said, is abolish.

One more point on this.  What was it that caused Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline and others to propose what we know today as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions on nullification and interposition, the complete story of which you will find in my docudramedy What Lincoln Killed: Episode I.  What was the event or series of events that caused them to propose what we today think are radical, radical solutions?  If you bring up nullification today, you’re bringing up slavery, if you ask Chris Matthews.  That would be news to Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, and the Virginians and Kentuckians that voted in the affirmative.  They gave their approbation to either interposition or nullification.  What was it that animated them?  What was it that got them all worked up?

It was the 18^th century equivalent of the NSA.  It was the Alien and Sedition Act.  It was the Adams administration saying: If you start talking bad about this government and we intercept your mail and find out you’re bashing the government, talking bad about it, saying bad things about agencies or President Adams, then we can find you guilty of sedition.  They actually did.  Several newspaper publishers were actually imprisoned, even though the First Amendment is clear and says Congress shall make no law — this is what Jefferson and Madison relied on when they were writing the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, that the First Amendment was clear.  Madison should have known because it was his shepherding of that amendment through the Congress that led to its passing and its ultimate ratification.  It was spying, ironically, that led to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions on nullification and interposition.

You could say today that what the NSA has done, what the FBI has done, what the CIA and every other hell bent on a single-world state where every activity of every American citizen is reported to our almighty federal and world overlords, you might say the states then have an indubitable, indefeasible and unalienable right to reform, alter, or abolish.  Participant in that would be should a state legislature desire to protect its citizenry from NSA, CIA, or other federal spying which violates Amendments Four and Five, then they could nullify or interpose against such an imposition.

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I would love to see how this would play out.  You have all this interstate commerce that’s going through the states over the phone lines, over satellite feeds and what have you.  Why would a state then tell the powers that be: If you want to come and snoop on people in this state, even though you’re not supposed to have any municipal or police powers whatsoever — those were reserved to us — you’re going to contact our legislature or contact our governor.  You will go through the appropriate channels.  Local law enforcement will then choose whether or not they want to ask a judge for a warrant to then get you the information that you desire.  To me, that is the proper constitutional course of action.  Unless there is a declared war, and unless there is a military or war-like or war-involved agency that is doing the snooping on behalf of the military, then there is no right for any of this to happen.  I like to point these things out and to give you some thoughts and ideas to think upon rather than just jumping up and down, screaming and hollering, buying flags and going to rallies.  There are other things that can be done.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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