A new Pew poll shows that Democratic voters who apparently hated President Bush's surveillance policy now love President Obama's.  What a coincidence!  Joshua Green notes in Business Week:

What’s shifted are the political affiliations of who supports and opposes the surveillance program. When Bush was president, Republicans supported the program by a three-to-one margin (75 percent) and Democrats were nearly as strong in their opposition (61 percent). A similar partisan breakdown existed on the question of e-mail monitoring: Most Republicans (53 to 38 percent) thought it should be allowed; most Democrats (51 to 41 percent) thought it should be forbidden.

But it's not just Democrats who are blatantly political in their response to the surveillance question:

Flash forward to today and a Democratic president. Now Republicans are essentially split on the acceptability of NSA surveillance (52 percent favor it; 47 percent oppose it), while a strong majority of Democrats (64 percent) supports the program. The two parties—but Democrats especially—have changed position. On the issue of e-mail monitoring, the partisan flip-flop is clearer still: Republicans favored it under Bush, but oppose it under Obama; Democrats opposed it under Bush, but favor it under Obama.

This, by the way, is what we mean when we talk about "low information voters."  These poll respondents lack the principles that allow them to see beyond politics to a systematic erosion of their liberty.

And that in itself is perhaps far scarier than any amount of government snooping.

This is an absolute must-listen!  In his "The Testing Time"--first broadcast in the early 1960s, radio legend Paul Harvey proves himself to be prophetic:

A huge hat tip to FOX Nation for reposting this.

With Russ Feingold and Ron Kind both declining to run for governor next year, the Wisconsin Democratic Party appears to be in a serious bind.As WISN's Dan O'Donnell reports, they have only themselves to blame:

The pro-life group Alliance Defending Freedom has released stunning new audio of an IRS agent telling the group's director "not to push [her] faith on somebody else."  The Blaze reports:

The Texas-based pro-life group offers counseling to mothers who are considering abortion. The group also seeks to educate scared soon-to-be mothers on the possible long-term physical and psychological ramifications of abortion.

Wan lectured Joseph on the group’s mission and told the pro-life leader that she needs to "know [her] boundaries."

Listen to the stunning audio here:

IRS Caught on Tape from ADF Media Relations on Vimeo.

In yet another sign that America's welfare state is in desperate need of another overhaul, taxpayers spent a whopping $41.3 million in 2011 just to advertise food stamp programs.  The Daily Caller reports:

According to calculations released by Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions Budget Committee staff, using data from the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, in the year 2000 spending on advertising for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — or food stamps — was approximately $6.5 million.

In the ensuing years, spending on advertising and outreach steadily increased reaching $41.3 million in 2011, according to the calculations, which were confirmed by the Congressional Research Service, according to Budget Committee staff.

But no, there is no push by the federal government to get more people dependent upon the federal government.  None at all.

A soldier who says he was reprimanded for placing anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car and for reading books by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh now faces charges in an (allegedly) unrelated incident.  FOX News columnist Todd Starnes reports:

Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a decorated soloist with the Army Band, is being charged under a federal law that permits commanding officers to conduct non-judicial proceedings for minor offenses.

Sommers is accused of giving a superior officer the wrong date for a doctor’s appointment. He’s also accused of failing to carry out an order. In order to comply with that order, Sommers would have had to disclose private information about his autistic son’s medical records.

The charges were handed down one day after Sommers told Fox News that he was facing discrimination and persecution because of his conservative political and religious beliefs.

Sommers' attorney maintains that the timing is suspicious, but the Military District in Washington told Starnes in a written statement:

"The Soldier is not, and never has been, 'facing retribution and punishment from the military for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, reading books written by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh, and serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his promotion party. ' "

While we would like to believe the Military District, with everything we have learned over the past month or so about the vindictiveness of the federal government toward its perceived political enemies is giving us pause.

Developers in South Africa may have hit a goldmine with a new app called "Seecrypt."  As The Daily Caller reports:

Users, according to the developers, don’t have to worry about the government knowing who they are talking with.

For the app to work, both people wanting to text or call each other must have the application. But when the application is used, the phone company will not know the identity or phone number of the other person on the line. It will only know that the caller used Seecrypt.

Once the communication begins, it becomes encrypted and private.

According to a release at the company’s launch last month, the app is available for Apple and Android smartphones.

And yes, we here at Common Sense Central are looking to install it on our phones as soon as we finish this game of Candy Crush!

During a speech in California today, President Obama addressed the NSA's phone records scandal and claimed that "no one is listening to your phone calls."  Does anyone actually believe him?

A stunning New York Times editorial rakes the president over the coals over his NSA's collection of phone records:

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility.

Wow.  Just...wow.  "The administration has now lost all credibility."  One would have never believed that the Grey Lady would ever utter those words, and they weren't even the most damning of the piece:

To casually permit this surveillance — with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power — fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy. 

So much has changed about the fundamental shift in power toward the government in the past five years that it's almost difficult to keep up with.  We conservatives have seen it. We've been screaming about it for the past five years.

It just took The New York Times a while to catch up