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Jewish World Review
Oct. 31, 2008
/ 2 Mar-Cheshvan 5769
Plundering the Plumber's Records
By
Michelle Malkin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
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.
In addition to Jones-Kelley, investigators have uncovered at least three additional suspicious uses of state computer systems to access Wurzelbacher's data. Toledo police records clerk Julie McConnell has been charged with gross misconduct for accessing the Law Enforcement Automated Data System to retrieve Wurzelbacher's address. She reportedly did it as a favor to a reporter. Authorities also say the Cuyahoga County social services office was compromised and an outside contractor with access to the state attorney general's test account similarly searched Wurzelbacher's data. Moreover, his driver's-license and vehicle-registration information were obtained from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
I contacted the ACLU twice this week for comment about this rampant plundering of Joe the Plumber's records. Like the Genesis song goes: No reply at all. (That was the same reply the ACLU gave me two months ago when I asked if they had any reaction to the Chicago gangland tactics of a MoveOn spin-off group that announced it was trolling campaign finance databases and targeting conservative donors with warning letters in a thuggish attempt to depress Republican fundraising.)
For the last seven years, these left-wing privacy champs have lobbied on behalf of foreign enemy combatants. The ACLU fought unsuccessfully to kill the Bush administration's post-9/11 effort to monitor terrorist communications in the United States. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and USA Today went ballistic over the government's bank surveillance program to trace terrorist financing.
Those same papers fumed earlier this year when State Department contractors illegally sifted through the passport files of Obama (and Hillary Clinton and John McCain). Obama mouthpiece Bill Burton intoned after the passport scandal: "Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."
But when freelance members of the Obama Goon Squad take it upon themselves to do opposition research on The One's citizen critics and rummage through government databases, where are all the privocrats? And how safe will your state tax and IRS records be if Dear Leader is elected?
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Michelle Malkin's column by clicking here.
Michelle Malkin Archives
MICHELLE'S LATEST:
In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild
Un·hinged
adj : affected with madness or insanity; [syn: brainsick, crazy, demented, distracted, disturbed, mad, sick, unbalanced]
— The American Heritage Dictionary
*** Warning: Unhinged liberals are hazardous to the nation's health.
They're slashing your tires. Burning your lawns. Heaving pies at Republican pundits. Hurling racist epithets at minority conservatives. Nursing nutty conspiracy theories. And pining publicly for the murder of President Bush.
And they call us crazy?
In In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild, Michelle Malkin plays conservative Margaret Mead to the alien political creatures of the American Left. With uproarious detail and rollicking reportage, Malkin chronicles the bizarre world of leftists gone mad in their natural habitats: the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and Washington.
Unhinged unmasks liberals who've completely abandoned rationality and reality. They're taking chainsaws and bayonets to campaign signs. Running down political opponents with their cars. Setting fire to political opponents in effigy. Defacing war memorials. Swiping yellow ribbons off cars. And supporting the fragging of American troops.
In Unhinged, you'll meet:
- The Top 10 Unhinged Leftists, Celebrities, Media Liberals, and Politicians. - The Pennsylvania Democrat who repeatedly screamed "faggot" at his Republican opponents on the Senate floor. - The Florida Democrat who tried to run down former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris with his Cadillac. - The Democrat congressman who claimed the capture of Saddam Hussein was staged by GOP operatives to help the Bush re-election campaign. - The veteran newsman who claimed that Bush advisor Karl Rove and Osama bin Laden are working hand-in-hand to help the Republican Party. - And hundreds more unhinged liberals gone wild!
With wit, wisdom, and a bullet-proof vest, Michelle Malkin ruthlessly and raucously skewers the myths of liberal tolerance, peace, and civility. Unhinged shows how conservatives are driving their opponents mad. The good news for liberals? Self-help starts here.
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