During the Bush administration, the Republicans (with too much help from the Democrats) greatly increased centralized government power, all in the name of “security.” So now, when the DHS puts out a report warning local police agencies about a growing risk of violence from right-wing fringe groups, the Republican blogosphere goes crazy. Glenn Greenwald asks where their outrage was during the last eight years. The usual trope of the right – if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear – doesn’t seem to calm them this time.

It’s certainly true that federal police efforts directed at domestic political movements — even ones with a history of inspiring violence in both the distant and recent past — require real vigilance and oversight, and it’s also true that the DHS description of these groups seems excessively broad with the potential for mischief.  But the political faction screeching about the dangers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expanding the domestic Surveillance State and federal police powers in every area.  DHS — and the still-creepy phrase “homeland security” — became George Bush’s calling card.  The Republicans won the 2002 election by demonizing those who opposed its creation.  All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State — from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA “reforms” to massive increases in domestic “counter-Terrorism” programs — are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them.

When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you.  If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it’s going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity.  That’s its nature.

And Andrew Sullivan has more and points to the PSB video below.

At several points in the last few years, as I gamely tried to convince conservatives that they should be concerned about the scale and scope of the Bush-Cheney surveillance state, the torture program, the claimed presidential right to seize, detain and torture anyone deemed an “enemy combatant”, the avoidance of the FISA law, the suspension of habeas corpus, I was ridiculed as an hysteric. When forced to defend basic civil liberties against a presidency claiming unprecedented war powers within the boundaries of the US and potentially against American citizens, I found only one argument got through. What if Hillary Clinton got this kind of power?