In 1971, U.S. defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg gained worldwide notoriety after he leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Those documents dealt with the U.S. military's growing involvement in Vietnam, about which the American public was fed falsehoods. The Pentagon Papers caused an uproar, as Americans felt they had been deceived by their government. Richard Nixon was president at the time the Pentagon Papers were released and the story did not earn him much respect. Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old systems administrator with past work experience at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, revealed to the British newspaper The Guardian how the American government monitors telephone calls and Internet activities both in the U.S. and around the world. From a hidden location in Hong Kong, Snowden exposed his identity and justified his actions by saying, "What they're doing [poses] an existential threat to democracy." Barack Obama is the current president and this story probably won't bring him much respect either. How ironic is it that the first association that comes to the minds of Americans today when they hear the name Barack Obama is Richard Nixon? And how ironic is it that Ellsberg expressed support for his young comrade Snowden on Monday- Obama was the president who was supposed to lead global nuclear disarmament and be the great reconciler between America and Islam. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in the first year of his presidency. Mainly, Obama wanted to be the complete opposite of his predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush. But since the start of his second term in January, Obama has been mostly dealing with scandals (the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups, the cover-up of the failures in Benghazi and the wiretapping of journalists). And now there is the new scandal related to the most basic rights of American citizens -- freedom and privacy. It's no wonder that leftist liberals and extreme rightist libertarians have formed an unnatural alliance, as both see the newest scandal as a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which since the 18th century has protected Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures by their government. The latest scandal has united former Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian, with Senator Bernie Sanders, a liberal. Perhaps Obama has not lived up to expectations, but he has brought the term "liberal-tarian" back to fashion. How did Obama, who promised to close Guantanamo Bay and wanted to be remembered as the president who ended the post-September 11 War on Terror, become the president on whose watch two wiretapping scandals took place and hundreds of civilians were killed in U.S. drone strikes? The Obama administration's initial wiretapping entanglement was the journalist affair. Several weeks later, the PRISM scandal rocked the entire nation. During Obama's era of enlightenment, "Big Brother" can read any of your emails, as if you were Osama bin Laden's cousin. However, there may be one positive note to this story. You no longer need to hire a private investigator to check if your spouse is cheating on you. You just have to ask Obama.
