{"id":187115,"date":"2013-06-14T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T23:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/06\/14\/won-the-election-and-should-have-been-president\/"},"modified":"2013-06-14T18:48:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T23:48:00","slug":"won-the-election-and-should-have-been-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/06\/14\/won-the-election-and-should-have-been-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Won the Election and Should Have Been President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2013\/jun\/14\/al-gore-nsa-surveillance-unamerican\">Al Gore<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The National Security Agency&#8217;s blanket collection of US citizens&#8217; phone records was &#8220;not really the American way&#8221;, Al Gore said on Friday, declaring that he believed the practice to be unlawful.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In his most expansive comments to date on the NSA revelations, the former vice-president was unsparing in his criticism of the surveillance apparatus, telling the Guardian security considerations should never overwhelm the basic rights of American citizens.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">He also urged Barack Obama and Congress to review and amend the laws under which the NSA operated.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way,&#8221; Gore said in a telephone interview. &#8220;Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are some people who leave politics, and just cash in as a lobbyist (Evan Bayh comes to mind), and there are those who find freedom and grow.<\/p>\n<p>Al Gore is one of the latter.<\/p>\n<p>Let me offer a hearty f%$# you to the corrupt Supreme Court justices who mad the Bush administration happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Al Gore: The National Security Agency&#8217;s blanket collection of US citizens&#8217; phone records was &#8220;not really the American way&#8221;, Al Gore said on Friday, declaring that he believed the practice to be unlawful.In his most expansive comments to date on the NSA revelations, the former vice-president was unsparing in his criticism of the surveillance apparatus, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,998,1102,1003,978,1103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-congress","category-intelligence","category-philosophy","category-politics","category-secrecy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}