The Obama scandal that's going to stick. And it's a shame, because in reality it's a Bush administration scandal.

Courtesy of CNN:  

The U.S. government has obtained a top secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency on an "ongoing daily basis," the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported. 

The four-page order, which The Guardian published on its website Wednesday, requires the communications giant to turn over "originating and terminating" telephone numbers as well as the location, time and duration of the calls -- and demands that the order be kept secret. 

If genuine, it gives the NSA blanket access to the records of millions of Verizon customers' domestic and foreign phone calls made between April 25, when the order was signed, and July 19, when it expires. 

While the report infuriated people across the country -- former Vice President Al Gore called the idea "obscenely outrageous" -- a senior official in the Obama administration defended the idea of such an order early Thursday. 

Without acknowledging whether the order exists, the administration official emphasized that such an order does not include collection of "the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call." 

"Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," the unnamed official said in a written statement to media. 

The official also insisted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes intelligence collection. Activities "are subject to strict controls and procedures under oversight of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA Court, to ensure that they comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties."

Regardless of whether this data mining is subject to "strict controls and procedures under oversight of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA Court: or not, the truth is that it is wrong. Just like it was wrong when the Bush administration started it: 

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.

The difference then was that the news agencies simply did not get as indignant and demonstrate the kind of outrage that they are about to demonstrate now that President Obama is in the White House.

However if anybody expects me to make excuses for this President, and his administration, you are wrong. I fucking hated this crap when Bush was doing it and I hate it just as much now that a Democratic President is doing it.

So if Fox News wants to jump all over this and use it to attempt to attack the President, something they would NEVER have done while Bush was in office, I see that as a good thing, because if people get angry enough perhaps we can finally put a stop to this outrageous spying on American citizens.

You know I heard somebody way back when Obama was first elected say that no President gives up the powers gained by his predecessors. In other words now that this kind of program was in place it was highly unlikely that Obama would not take advantage of it.

Sadly that turned out to be true.

We need to do what we can to make sure that the NEXT President does not have that same opportunity.

Though that may turn out to be virtually impossible as the bill which supports this kind of overreach passed the Senate 72-23 and the program has been extended five more years. Well past the end of Obama's second term.