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stephanie
10-31-2008, 01:53 PM
:clap:

Suddenly, the Left isn’t concerned about privacy.

By Michelle Malkin

If Joe the Plumber were Jawad the Suspected Terrorist, civil-liberties activists would stampede the halls of Congress on his behalf. Liberal columnists would hyperventilate over the outrageous invasions of his privacy by Ohio state and local employees. The ACLU would demand the Big Brother snoopers’ heads. And Democratic leaders would convene immediate hearings and parade him around the Beltway as the new poster boy/victim of unlawful domestic spying.

But because peaceful American citizen Joe Wurzelbacher is an outspoken enemy of socialism, rather than an enemy of America, the defenders of privacy have responded to his plight with an impenetrable cone of silence.

After the last presidential debate, during which John McCain invoked Joe the Plumber’s anti-socialism shot heard ‘round the world, several taxpayer-subsidized employees in Ohio immediately rifled through government databases in search of damning information. The Columbus Dispatch identified Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, as one of the dirt-diggers. She also happens to support Barack Obama and contributed the maximum amount to his presidential campaign.

On Wednesday, Jones-Kelley admitted that the records checks on Wurzelbacher that she approved were far more extensive than she first acknowledged. In addition to pawing through his child-support papers, the agency “also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes.”

Jones-Kelley argued that plumbing the plumber’s information was no big deal because the agency always checks up on citizens who come into public light. Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland quickly pooh-poohed the civil-liberties infringements and denied any nefarious political motives.

If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, you don’t have a spine.


read the rest.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGYwYjFhMDRlZjEwOGQwMjUzMzk4ZDJhNjhhZjRiNmI=

Trigg
10-31-2008, 02:30 PM
The nerve of the guy, how dare he ask a question of bambam.

Joe Steel
11-01-2008, 06:12 AM
This isn't news. Everytime some event surprises a bureaucracy, it looks inside itself to find anything which might make the situation worse. With dozens of journalists probing Wurzelbacher's affairs, revelation of a hidden problem the State had ignored could have been embarrassing to both Democrats and Republicans. The State wanted to find it before the media did. While you may think this is a partisan attack, it actually served both parties.