“What’s More Authoritarianism Than a No Fly List for People Who Disagree With You?” Dr. Paul on Fox
Here is some commentary regarding the ATLANTIC JOURNAL article Senator Paul references via the DAILY EXPOSE:
…..Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary for homeland security under President Obama, wrote in an article for The Atlantic titled “Unvaccinated People Belong on the No-Fly List”: “But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.
“The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate—a sweeping suggestion that the Biden administration could not easily enact if it wanted to—but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take.
“It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel—and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.”
These comments are essentially a form of left-wing extremism, comparing the unvaccinated to terrorists. Of course, the mainstream media won’t report on the quietly introduced legislation, instead opting to promote the vaccine agenda and encourage more Americans to roll up their sleeves and submit to the jab.
JACK PROBIEC notes that The Atlantic changed the title of the story. Here is first the changed headline followed by the archived headline (linked accordingly):
BREITBART notes that “Kayyem champions shaming the unvaccinated, who should ‘face scorn among their peer group’ and ‘may even be happy to have an excuse to protect themselves,’ along with celebrating Broadway, Disney, and Walmart for forcing the unvaccinated to give up ‘certain societal benefits’ to practice their their individuality and freedom of choice.”
Yet another site — which I do not recommend since they the author is a Nation of Islam apologist — still, I feel compelled to share. To be clear however, even in this post I linked to, I disagree with some positions, but I must hat-tip. And if you are not aware of the “Pegasus” software issue, NPR will allow you some understanding to the issue.
….Journalist Max Blumenthal noted on Twitter that other politicians are pushing for vaccine mandates and seem to be backing the no-fly list for the unvaccinated. Blumenthal tweeted, “Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres introduces bill to direct the Department of Homeland Security to place all unvaccinated people on the no fly list”.
Blumenthal is the editor of The Grayzone, an independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire. He also co-hosts the “Moderate Rebels” podcast.
“Rep. Torres’ bill appears to have been inspired by this op-ed by Juliette Kayyem,” Blumethal tweeted. “Kayyem is a former DHS official who lobbied for the Israeli NSO Group behind the notorious Pegasus tech used to spy on journalists & world leaders. What could go wrong?”
There is a reason people like Juliette Kayyem wanted [actively] “Pegasus type” spyware. because the administration kept getting caught via Freedom of Information Acts and other methods promoting transparency.
The Obama administration, much to the surprise of the current ethos of the politically maligned, was the leader in violating the press’ rights. Even far Left orgs at the time “got it” — DAILY BEAST:
The press-punishing, speech-chilling, and unabashedly overreaching actions by the Obama administration against the Associated Press and Fox News Channel’s James Rosen lay bare the essential dynamic between any president and a press that is always more prone to being lapdogs than watchdogs: the president feeds or punishes them as he sees fit, while chanting a bogus rosary about “national security.”
In the case of the AP, the Obama administration secretly subpoenaed phone-call logs and other information from an office where over 100 journalists worked. Officials were on the hunt for the sources that cooperated with the AP on a story about a failed terrorist plot in Yemen. As AP head Gary Pruitt has put it, the administration’s subpoena was “so secretly, so abusively and harassingly and over-broad … that it is an unconstitutional act.” As important, Pruitt says that the subpoena revelation has already chilled even routine news gathering, as government officials have become paranoid—with reason, perhaps—about sharing even banal sorts of information.
To make matters worse in terms of press freedom, there are many reasons to assume the Obama administration is secretly spying on many other journalists and organizations. With Fox’s Rosen, the administration got an actual warrant to read his email and contends that he has committed crimes by pursuing and publishing a story about North Korea, even though the story apparently doesn’t include any classified information per se. Rosen hasn’t been legally charged as of yet, but as Glenn Greenwald notes, the accusations against Rosen parallel government charges against WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange. “Under U.S. law,” writes Greenwald, “it’s not illegal to publish classified information,” so the Obama administration is claiming that it’s illegal for journalists and publishers to “solicit” such information. That doesn’t simply fly in the face of the First Amendment and Vietnam-era rulings guaranteeing press freedoms, it declares “war on journalism” by essentially criminalizing the very act of investigative reporting…..
Some Reminders:
Here’s All the Times Obama Ejected the Media (POLITICAL INSIDER)
- And that’s not all! Not long after taking office, the Secret Service literally dragged away a black female reporter. Imagine the optics if an African-American woman were dragged away by Trump’s Secret Service.
If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama (NEW YORK TIMES | unlocked article @ INVESTIGATINBG TRUMP)
- Over the past eight years, the Obama Administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists. Under President Obama, the Justice Department and the FBI have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
PROSECUTED and JAILED!
Here’s the Proof: Obama Treated Journalists WAY Worse than Trump (DAN BONGINO): …Obama prosecuted more journalists under the Espionage Act than all other Presidents combined. While many certainly deserved it (such as Chelsea Manning), are we to believe there were more acts of espionage from 2009-2016 than the rest of American history? In total, 13 people have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for sharing classified information with journalists since 1945. Of those 13, eight were arrested while Obama was president. Only one person has been prosecuted under the Espionage Act under Trump’s presidency (a woman bizarrely named “Reality Winner’), which is entirely justified for the same reasons that Manning’s charges were justified. As one writer put it, “Trump rages about leakers. Obama quietly prosecuted them.”… Trump Rages About Leakers. Obama Quietly Prosecuted Them (WASHINGTON POST) ….Experts on executive-branch leaks say it’s too early to gauge Trump’s legacy. But much has been made about the Obama administration’s hunt for leakers. Of the 13 people who have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for leaking secrets, eight were arrested under Obama’s administration, according to Alexandra Ellerbeck, senior Americas and U.S. researcher with the Committee to Protect Journalists. And prosecutors under Obama have spied on journalists and named a journalist an “unindicted co-conspirator,” according to the New York Times. Ellerbeck said that’s just a step away from arresting a reporter for writing a story — and raises dangerous constitutional issues about freedom of the press. “Obama was furious over leaks, but his fury was directed internally,” said David Pozen, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University who specializes in national security law. [….] Mark Mazzetti, an investigative reporter who covers national security for the New York Times, talked to The Post’s Greg Sargent about the effect of Obama’s leak investigations. “There’s no question that this has a chilling effect,” Mazzetti told Sargent in 2013. “People who have talked in the past are less willing to talk now. Everyone is worried about communication and how to communicate, and is there any method of communication that is not being monitored. It’s got people on both sides — the reporter and source side — pretty concerned. “It certainly seems like they’re being very serious about hunting down people talking to reporters.” Trump’s approach to leaks has had the opposite effect, experts say…. DESTROYED BY THE ESPIONAGE ACT: Stephen Kim Spoke to a Reporter. Now He’s in Jail. This Is His Story. (INTERCEPT) ….Rosen’s email helps explain the part of the case that has received the most media attention: In 2013, the court unsealed a prosecution document that described Rosen as a potential “co-conspirator.” The document, an affidavit in support of a search warrant to Google demanding access to Rosen’s Gmail account, revealed that the government had tracked Rosen’s movements on June 11 and had obtained records of his phone calls and some emails. There was widespread condemnation from the media about what seemed to be a profound violation of First Amendment protections for a free press. This came as the Department of Justice was continuing to threaten the New York Times reporter James Risen with a jail sentence if he refused to identify one of his sources (last month, the Justice Department announced it would not prosecute Risen), and it came just a few days after news broke that the government secretly had obtained the records of more than 20 Associated Press phone lines as part of an investigation into the source of an AP terrorism story. The government responded to the outcry by promising that Rosen would not be prosecuted, and that the seizure of reporters’ emails and phone records would be done with greater care in the future. [….] after years of fighting to stay out of jail, wanted to go to prison as soon as possible, so that he could get on with his life. When I visited him in April and May, there were surprisingly few things in the small apartment he was renting in Reston, Virginia. Clothes, dishes, sheets, books — everything was being sold, given away, or put into storage as his incarceration neared. He mentioned that he had a picture from the day he briefed Cheney. I asked if I could see it, and he brought it up from the basement. I looked at it for a while, Kim and the vice president going over documents about North Korea. When I asked whether I could make a copy, he waved at the picture abruptly. “Take it,” he said. “Take whatever you want.” Kim’s pain emerged in flashes like this. Most of the time he was adept at hiding behind a self-protective dry humor. At lunch with a few of his supporters after he was sentenced, he joked that he could write a memoir titled From Yale to Jail. When someone asked what he would do after getting out, he wisecracked, “Welcome to McDonald’s. Would you like to supersize your order?” This wasn’t too far from the truth. To improve his odds for early release, he lined up two job commitments once he got out of prison — one was working in a Catholic church, the other was a job in a women’s beauty shop…. …..AND…. Obama Used The Espionage Act To Put A Record Number Of Reporters’ Sources In Jail, And Trump Could Be Even Worse [HINT: Trump Wasn’t] (PRESS FREEDOM TRACKER) …For much of the law’s existence, while it was used perniciously against anti-war demonstrators, it was not applied to journalists or their sources. It was not until 1971 that a person was indicted under the Espionage Act for providing classified information to a journalist. Between 1917 and 2009, only one person was convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking to a news organization. But the Obama administration was determined to change that. Under pressure from Congress and intelligence agencies, Attorney General Eric Holder directed the Department of Justice to aggressively prosecute government employees who discussed classified information with reporters. In 2012, after news organizations reported on U.S. drone strikes and attempts to disable Iranian nuclear reactors, Holder assigned two U.S. attorneys to track down the journalists’ sources. President Barack Obama strongly supported Holder’s war against journalists’ sources, despite once promising to protect whistleblowers when in office and running for president on the national security scandals of the Bush administration — misdeeds that became public only because of leaks. “Since I’ve been in office, my attitude has been zero tolerance for these kinds of leaks and speculation,” Obama said in June 2012. “Now we have mechanisms in place where, if we can root out folks who have leaked, they will suffer consequences. In some case, it’s criminal. These are criminal acts when they release information like this. And we will conduct thorough investigations, as we have in the past.” Obama’s Justice Department succeeded in putting a number of people in jail for daring to help national security journalists report on classified government programs. During the Obama administration, the Department of Justice brought charges under the Espionage Act against eight people accused of leaking to the media — Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Chelsea Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden. Two other high ranking Obama officials, General David Petraeus and General James Cartwright, were also prosecuted as part of leak investigations. They both ultimately pled to lesser charges and were never indicted under the Espionage Act. Cartwright was also later pardoned. Including their cases, the total number of leak case prosecutions under the Obama administration was 10…. 
“What distinguishes Trump is that he is directing his [anger] to the public. What is the point of complaining about leaks in a public tweet? He can call up the attorney general at any moment of the day or night. … He’s the chief executive and he has powerful investigative tools at his disposal. Twitter is not one of the tools.”
