(07-25-2021, 11:15 AM)homebiscuit Wrote:

(07-25-2021, 10:40 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote: It isn't necessarily this particular act that is troublesome to me, but the fact this acts as a stepping stone for future acts we will blindly accept.

A claim which has been made immemorial in U.S. history. But it simply isn't true. 

I myself have made claims of a deep state government and I stand by that. However, my definition concerns organizational bureaucrats who put politics over policy. They strategically leak information and use their authority to deflect and obfuscate, such as the FBI bureaucrat who decided to tip off CNN. You can rest assured that many of the people in the FBI, including the agents involved with the operation, disagreed with it. But that's an entirely different entity than actively surveilling those whose views they disagree with. 

Gaining permission to surveille is an onerous animal - by design. People of all political stripes appreciate and support that design.