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9/29/11

Obama may be 'worst Presidential threat to liberties in our history'

President Obama may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties, writes  Jonathan Turley in the LA Times.  Turley, Professor of Law at GWU,  writes:
 Ironically, had Obama been defeated in 2008, it is likely that an alliance for civil liberties might have coalesced and effectively fought the government's burgeoning police powers. A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that "the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals' rights and freedoms." Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not "soft" on terror. He assumed that, yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day, they would not dare stay home.This calculation may be wrong. Read the whole thing.