Larry Flynt's Blog, page 14

Roy Moore

In America’s race for stupidest state, the results are in. Alabama is home to enough troglodytes to actually reelect Roy Moore as the state’s chief justice. This shit for brains with hair plugs was ousted by Alabama’s own Court of the Judiciary back in 2003 for blowing tons of taxpayer dollars on a hunk of rock with the Ten Commandments carved on it—plopping it in the judicial building, then refusing a court order to get it the hell out of there.

In other words, Alabama, you just turned the clock back over 3,000 years. While you’re at it, be consistent and give up electricity, dentistry, running water and incest laws. Wait, incest is okay in the Heart of Dixie. We forgot. That must be how we got Judge Moore in the first place.

Let’s look at the ol’ decalogue through his dark lens:

I. Thou shalt have no law above Roy Moore’s.

Like the old motherfucker in the sky who insists puny humans kiss his ass and not even look at another god (typical jealous bitch), Moore thinks the courts are there to do the paperwork after he decides what’s right. Moore argues that it’s not his law but God’s—meaning his God.

Moore recently said that secular government “that is denying God” would eventually lead to Islamic law in the United States. Yes, Sharia law would suck balls, which is why it would be unconstitutional—just like Christian theocracy. Non-religious government doesn’t deny God; it keeps crazy shit like talking snakes and rock-carving fingers of fire out of the lawmaking process. “It would bother me if a judge told me how I had to believe,” Moore once said. So you know how we feel, Judge.

II. Thou shalt not make any graven image, unless it’s of Roy Moore carving the Big Ten.

The jurist’s vaulting hubris—from enshrining the Golden Calf known as “Roy’s Rock” to naming himself the voice of divine law—is an obvious violation of the humility taught by scripture. Moore even enlisted his wife Kayla to spam Alabamians with emails proclaiming him the “national spokesperson for Christian conservatism.” How’s that for humble?

III. Thou shalt not take the name of God in vain, unless it makes a bitchin’ book title.

Calling his autobiography So Help Me God, Moore argues that the Founding Fathers habitually swore oaths to God and intended the Constitution to specify allegiance to a Christian deity. Actually, bona fide historians have documented that the only Founders who took Moore’s position back then were those against ratifying the Constitution.

IV. Remember to beg God for stuff every Sunday because it sure as shit works for Roy Moore.

It may seem like a miracle that Moore is back in office after being a public shitbird for decades, but God’s got nothing to do with it. If there’s one entity Moore should be on his knees thanking, it’s his mortal foe, the American Civil Liberties Union. Before it sued him the first time for hanging the Ten Commandments behind his bench and leading pre-session prayers, he was a nobody. Two lawsuits later he was “Ten Commandments Judge” Moore. Without that ACLU godsend, he’d be just another senile coot in a robe.

V. Honor thy father and thy mother because they brainwashed you first.

Moore relates that he grew up with a father who “shared with me the truth about God’s love.” It’s a good bet the pious codger didn’t spare the rod either. A bag of venom like Roy takes some nurturing. When Moore commanded an MP unit during the Vietnam War, his troops hated the hardass so much, he had to sleep on sandbags so he wouldn’t get fragged in his sleep by a grenade of justice rolling under his cot.

VI.  Thou shalt not kill anybody but the ones God doesn’t like according to a hodgepodge of politically motivated writing thousands of years old.

Alabama has been offing death-row inmates for 200 years, but now a theocrat will be wielding “the power of the sword.” Once indicating that gays could be subject to “execution,” Moore has shown no propensity for mercy when it comes to those who defy his Old Testament will. Let’s fence in Alabama and see how long it takes to turn into a real-life Walking Dead.

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery—or any other kind of adult fun.

God forbid your sex life isn’t as geriatric and trapped in a moribund marriage as Moore’s. If the judge ain’t having a good time, thou shalt not either. As for gay sex, Moore proclaimed it “an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it.” Don’t that sound like someone who tried it and forgot the lube? “Until we reject those evils,” he moaned, “we shall suffer accordingly.” In other words, bad shit happens because some guys have an innate hankering for dick and some ladies don’t. That’s some intelligent design, that is.

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, which is why there are so many other words for it.

Like earmarking taxpayer funds and church contributions for the biblical boondoggle that boosted his profile but didn’t help a soul.

IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness, unless it’s for political gain.

During his attorney years, Moore was dogged by investigations for accusing his enemies of “suspect conduct.” His claims were tossed out. He also lied about Coral Ridge Ministries, saying “I have no connection” after it poured moolah into his Ten Commandments fight. Most of the campaign cash that put this low-rent Moses back into office came from Michael Peroutka, a lawyer tied to League of the South, a gaggle of white supremacists who do their damnedest to keep the slackjaw redneck stereotype alive. Moore’s response? “I have no idea what they stood for.” Peroutka, by the way, also likes to appear on a white-power radio show called The Political Cesspool. God is one ironic motherfucker.

X. Thou shalt not covet crap that ain’t yours, like happiness and freedom.

Just because you’re miserable, Judge, no need to make everyone else the same way. As Alabamians voted in their Chief Troglodyte, the New York Times reported that even Republicans were “despondent” about how Roy Moore’s victory would affect the state’s image. Amen to that. Not even Lynyrd Skynyrd could bring Alabama back from this one.

The FBI’s Accelerating War on Freedom

Among the chief celebrators of the Presidential reelection of the most voracious Big Brother in our history was the FBI, Barack Obama’s tireless partner in putting this country under ubiquitous surveillance. But like the master spy in the White House, the FBI’s head honcho has yet to be satisfied.

Robert Mueller’s zeal has not waned since his May 9, 2012, appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, prompting this comment by Rense.com’s Stephen Lendman: “America now wages war on freedom. It’s perilously close to vanishing. One more major domestic terror attack may end it. Mueller wants unrestricted power to act.”

He nearly has limitless power and multidimensional resources. In light of the fact that the FBI’s tracking of us was never raised in 2012′s Presidential debates, I expect very few Americans remember that, in the final weeks of the George W. Bush Administration, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued “Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations.” As Lendman bristled, “Anyone may be investigated for any reason or none
at all.”

No wonder President Obama extended Mueller’s term until September 4, 2013. And will he replace his shadowy cohort then?

Having rated an FBI file back in the 1960s, “Watch Hentoff,” I in turn watch the FBI continually. I am horrified by its chronic lawlessness, and so is DefendingDissent.org, whose monthly reports I never miss. The Defending Dissent Foundation’s vigilant website made me aware of a nationwide initiative on “Suspicious Activity Reporting.”

It “encourages or requires police to collect information about a long list of legal activities that are considered ‘suspicious,’ including taking pictures (either of police, other security personnel or facilities, buildings or infrastructure).”

Of course, the FBI can do that too. Say an agent sees someone photographing a New York City police officer slamming a black teenager against a wall because he looked “suspicious.” Anyone snapping such a picture to show how evil U.S. police are just might—thanks to law enforcement’s tendency to overreact—be connected to an organization supporting terrorism.

As DefendingDissent.org reported, here’s what happened when Mueller’s agents and local cops banded together in the Pacific Northwest on July 27, 2012: “Dozens of police and FBI agents dressed in paramilitary gear and carrying assault rifles staged a predawn raid on several activist homes…in Seattle, Olympia and Portland, and the search warrant listed ‘Anti-government or anarchist literature or material’ among the items to be seized.”

The FBI has also wielded its ever-expanding powers in Boston, Massachusetts, where I grew up and where my reporting and commentary on radio station WMEX caught the attention of the city police and the Feds. But I never thought that having a passionate attachment to the First Amendment would generate as much official hostility there as it does today.

DefendingDissent.org reported that Boston police “have been caught compiling intelligence reports and incident reports on peaceful protests, logging them under the heading of Criminal Activity with the labels ‘Groups–Extremist’ and ‘Homeland Security–Domestic.’”

The ACLU of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild have documents and video-surveillance tapes revealing that “officers assigned to the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) at the Boston Police Department are collecting and keeping information about constitutionally protected speech and political activity…we don’t know how far and wide the information was shared.”

As DefendingDissent.org disclosed, an “‘Intelligence Report’ on an antiwar speech at a church was kept for over five years. … It is clear from the report that police had infiltrated meetings of the peace coalition, or had access to meeting notes or minutes.”

I attended Boston Latin School. It was founded in 1635, and one of my fellow alumni was a key enflamer of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams. If he, the Sons of Liberty and the Committees of Correspondence that spread the factual reasons for the Declaration of Independence throughout the colonies were still with us, their grievances would include what the FBI is up to: illegally spying on millions of law-abiding citizens.

Going South

re old white men genuinely nuts, or are they just throwing a collective tantrum? What is it about the Barack Obama Presidency that pushes so many of them over the edge? In this past election, white codgers— joined by some younger men who are dumb beyond their years—were exposed as the only major demographic group in the nation that felt deeply threatened by a well-spoken, moderate- to-a-fault, mixed-race President who was clearly brainier, more informed and far better intentioned than his intellectually unhinged and morally adrift Republican opponent.

Were he white, Obama would have been embraced as the dream candidate of the moderates who used to make up the base of the Republican Party from Abraham Lincoln through Dwight D. Eisenhower. That base consisted of largely modest and tolerant folks who supported racial integration even in the Deep South, where white Republicans stood for civil rights and opposed the racist Dixiecrats who, back then, controlled the Southern states’ Democratic Party. When Lincoln freed the slaves and Eisenhower sent federal troops to the South to complete the job of guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans, Republicans from coast to coast rallied in support.

But Eisenhower’s Vice President, Richard Nixon, was already hatching a plan to betray the proud Republican record of commitment to full racial equality. What came to be known as Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” involved an about-face on civil rights.

When Lyndon B. Johnson—a Democrat who had represented Texas in the U.S. Senate—became President, he betrayed the Dixiecrats by getting the Voting Rights Act passed. Suddenly, this was not your granddaddy’s South anymore because the descendants of former slaves finally were fully emancipated with a federally guaranteed right to vote. When LBJ signed the historic legislation in 1965, he threw the switch that turned the Deep South from blue to red, thus ensuring that whites below the Mason-Dixon Line would become the last bastion of racist idiocy.

Nixon jumped on that opportunity to champion reactionary madness when he successfully ran for President in 1968. He blatantly appealed to the evil that lurked in the white Southern soul as evidence of a “normal” America as opposed to the Democratic Party’s subversive “hippies” who had rallied around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and were also labeled as unpatriotic because they opposed the stupidity represented by the Vietnam War.

Nixon was shrewd enough to know that he couldn’t campaign in the South as an avowed racist without alienating the bulk of the nation’s Republican and independent voters beyond the old Confederacy. So he used code language by identifying with the South’s Christian Right.

The Southern Baptist church was a product of the moral deformity of slavery and segregation, and Nixon seized upon the white Baptists’ alienation from the post-Dixiecrats Democratic Party. The result of that unholy alliance was a revamped and indelibly racist Southern GOP, whose central goal was to prevent recently enfranchised black voters from hooking up with moderate whites to form a truly modern New South.

Instead, thanks to the sly endorsement of religious bigotry, the South became the haven of intolerance. But now the cracks are showing. The economy and demographics of the South have profoundly changed. In this past Presidential election, we witnessed a rise in reason when Florida went for Obama, who garnered considerable support from Latinos as well as younger white and female voters.

The times are a-changing, and given the shifting sands of population demographics, even older white males will be forced to become more rational. They cannot secede from the Union, not only because no other nation wants them—they have enough geezers of their own—but because being old means you are expecting those younger folks to carry the load while you struggle to stay alive on government subsidies of an increasingly burdensome aging population.

Don’t get those younger-male, diverse and female voters who carried Election Day for Obama too riled up, or they may cut off your senior benefits—including the God-given right to Medicare-funded Viagra

Greg Gutfeld

We weren’t sure Fox News’ late-night laxative had what it takes to be worthy of the world’s most feared award. But once we scratched his smarmy surface, we found enough shit to fill ten assholes.

Greg Gutfeld got our attention with his potshots at HUSTLER’s publisher. “Larry Flynt is incapable of hypocrisy because he lacks standards to betray,” Gutfeld wrote in his unreadable Bible of Unspeakable Truths. “[He’s] a man without values who delighted in exposing hypocrisy, but who also admitted to having sex with a chicken. Talk about lack of standards: That chicken’s a skank.”

Gutfeld may be a wiseass stuck at frat-boy stage who’s made a career out of painfully labored jokes, but he’s also a man of mystery. Not a good or cool mystery like who is Batman. More like a what-the-hell-is-that-at-the-bottom-of-the-cesspool mystery.

For starters, what does Greg Gutfeld really believe? This political whore says he abandoned the left because they couldn’t take a joke and can’t be loyal to the right because they hate stuff he likes. Now he’s a mouthpiece-for-hire libertarian. Basically, he’s a guy who spends his life in a losing struggle with irrelevance. He went from driving limp-dick mags like Stuff and Maxim into the ground to hosting a roundtable of fellow failed comedians for middle-of-the-night drunks who pass out on the couch.

As Gutfeld proclaims in his latest mind-number, The Joy of Hate, his new rule is: “Be a jerk.” That’s right. The conservative cause has swirled so far down the drain, the new dictum is “Fuck it, just be a jerk.” How refreshing.  

By his own account, he’s the douche in high school and college who scoffed at anyone trying to make anything better. “The longer I live, the more I’m convinced the world is just one big high school, with the cool kids always targeting the uncool,” he writes. Guess who the “cool kids” are now. Look out, the “Liberals” are ready to rumble!

The Joy of Hate is a litany of reasons why Gutfeld and his idols (Palin, Limbaugh, Reagan’s corpse) feel picked on. Lefties beat them with the “truncheon of tolerance,” he whines. These imaginary armies of “phony outrage” he dubs the “tolerati.” Guess what, they suffer from a “false sense of victimhood.” Sound familiar? Epic fail Mitt Romney peddled the same “people who believe they are victims” line to historically nonphony effect.

Cursed with his particular political sluttiness, Gutfeld resorts to pretzel logic, like: “Being conservative is a rebellion against predictable rebellion. It’s more daring to be traditional than to subvert tradition.” For him, all outrage—whether about smoking, racism, Tea Partiers or climate change “skepticism”—is just “a place to park your intolerance.” That’s intolerance by the “tolerati” who fetishize tolerance, of course. If you can keep up with that, you’re higher than we are.

When leftists fight for “wussy” causes like social justice and a level playing field, Gutfeld claims, “They don’t really believe that shit—they’re going against their own innate nature because liberalism is anti-man.” He seriously thinks men who fight for things like civil rights and scientific progress are just out to get laid. He calls this fantasy of liberalism for sex a “deal with the devil.” Let’s see if we got this straight: Liberalism is a pussy magnet, but it’s also strictly for “wussies” and losers: “Even with the deck so stacked in their favor,” he writes, “the left still can’t seal the deal. Because their message just doesn’t jibe with the American people.” He wrote this just before Romney had his ass handed to him by Obama in the national election. How was that, again, Greg? What message doesn’t jibe?

In his rant against Occupy Wall Street, Gutfeld writes, nonjokingly: “I will wager that most of the students who were [pepper-] sprayed wouldn’t have traded that moment for a million bucks.” They were in it for the extra credit, bragging rights and “later, a job in media or academia.” Besides, he says, being pepper-sprayed is no big deal; “the discomfort fades fast.” Okay, Greg, prove it. Take a shot right in the face. We’ll give you extra credit.

Then there’s that other mystery: Is he gay or isn’t he? Gutfeld’s love-hate relationship to mutual man love is one of the saddest parts of his bowel-like psyche. He says he likes gay marriage, but tosses his dickhead fan base a bone by comparing it to marrying your dog. Been done, Greg.

Obsessively spouting quips about groping houseboys and banging his male guests, our A-hole comes off like a cartoon version of an unouted, homophobic Republican. (Is it a coincidence the poor kid was reared in “a Jesuit-Catholic all-boys high school?”)

Gutfeld’s apparent gay subtext, it turns out, is actually one of his running gags: As he divulges in The Joy of Hate, his secret-life schtick is a game he dreamt up with fellow ex-lefty Andrew Breitbart to see if foes would “resort to calling me a homosexual.” As for us, we couldn’t care less where he sticks his dick, unless it’s in S.E. Cupp and somebody took photos. Come to think of it, Greg, you could prove your hetero cred by sending us shots of you putting it to your hot beard, Elena Moussa. (Can’t promise we won’t Photoshop you out.)

Making crapola claims like “I’ve never met more tolerant people than Texans,” he seriously says if you’re a “gay cross-dressing cowboy,” you should enforce that tolerance with a shotgun. So, in other words, if you demand respect verbally, you’re “tolerati,” but letting two barrels do the talking is okay. We can only hope Greg starts messing with gay black Texans.

His take on race is just as twisted. He quotes a friend of his, saying “the only people hurt by racism these days are the racists.” Seriously? Tell that to the black kid on Staten Island beaten with a pipe and the teenage girl shot to death in L.A.—just two out of hundreds of recent hate crimes.

We could go on about his endless crap—all of which is a big rimjob for boss Roger Ailes—but we’re already bored of Gutfeld and his stale humor. He’s the kind of wad that probably thinks being called Asshole of the Month is an honor. We created it, Greg, so take it from us: It’s not.

Don’t Let Your Face Turn You In

The science fiction I used to read years ago was only mildly adventurous and rather amusing compared to our government’s real-life bag of tricks. Did you know that high-tech wizardry is making us instantly and suspiciously recognizable to Big Brother?

Brace yourself for “FBI’s Facial Recognition Is Coming to a State Near You,” a chilling report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That digital watchdog group is the most alert and knowledgeable protector of what’s left of our individual liberties, which have been imperiled by the government’s systematic target-killing of the Constitution. By expanding its Next Generation Identification program (NGI), the FBI now has a “massive biometrics database that combines fingerprints, iris scans, palm prints, facial recognition and extensive biographical data collected from over 100 million Americans.”

Just imagine the reactions of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry if they could have foretold that the nation they were founding would eventually have a government keeping close track of almost one-third of its citizens. Without a doubt, many more millions are destined to be added to what promises to be ever-growing databases. I expect Jefferson would have torn up the Declaration of Independence he’d drafted in 1776 as a prelude to starting another revolution.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation discloses that in its surge to make NGI more wide-ranging, “the FBI is developing ‘Universal Face Workstation software’ to allow states that don’t have their own ‘Face/Photo search capabilities’ to search through the FBI’s images.”

Now dig this: You don’t have to be arrested or even “a person of interest” to be in this FBI gallery, which I’m convinced will be open to searches by all other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.

As the EFF notes: “This suggests the FBI wants to be able to search and identify people in photos of crowds and in pictures posted on social media sites—even if the people in those photos haven’t been arrested for or even suspected of a crime. The FBI may also want to incorporate those crowd or social media photos into its face-recognition database.”

Why not? To the FBI, anyone in those photos may be thinking of committing a crime someday against national security. When the time comes for them to be busted, there they’ll be!

Perhaps you believe all this data-collecting for facial recognition is being done only here at home. The Electronic Frontier Foundation knows better: “The FBI already has information-sharing relationships with 77 countries,” and its Criminal Justice Information Services “is now trying to partner with ‘Visa Waiver Program countries’ like Ireland, Spain and Australia to allow automatic access to each other’s biometric databases on a ‘hit/no hit basis.’”

I wholeheartedly agree with the EFF’s conclusion that “the time is right for laws that limit face-recognition data collection.”

What’s long overdue are laws prohibiting the various forms of FBI, National Security Agency and CIA dragnet surveillance I’ve reported here. But neither Democratic Presidents nor Democratic-majority Congresses have done anything remotely substantial. Nor have Republicans. Nor is there any credible evidence that President Obama and the current Congress will do a damn realistic thing about this during the commander in chief’s second term.

I’ve already warmed my imagination by picturing how our Founding Fathers would have acted. But I see no prospects of citizens seized by a passionate knowledge of American history putting sustained pressure on Congress to wipe the FBI’s facial-recognition program off the statute books.

What has happened to this nation conceived and nurtured by the Declaration of Independence? Astonishingly, citizen passivity continues to mount. In my book Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee, I quoted Ronald Reagan: “We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. … If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”

Where is the American spirit while the White House and Congress treat our “guaranteed” Constitutional liberties like garbage?

Entitlements Are A Right

Every time the federal government can’t get its fiscal house in order, we start hearing about entitlement reform. Republicans in particular like to use that word entitlement because it sounds like somebody’s getting benefits they don’t deserve. Nothing makes the hardworking Joe angrier than people who think they’re “entitled” to something.

Don’t believe the bull. Those so-called entitlements include benefits that Americans worked hard for: Medicaid, housing assistance, student grants, food programs, child care, job training, and more. These programs make up the social safety net that keeps the middle-class backbone of our economy strong in tough times.

The only reason politicians on the corporate leash want to slash needed expenditures like these is to protect the huge wealth imbalance that lets the rich get richer while everybody else pays. Instead of extracting the last few cents from the needy, we need to clamp down on greed.

Yes, I’m wealthy, but I remember what it was like to be a regular guy sweating for every dollar. And I know that most people aren’t going to get rich no matter how hard they work. That doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t keep up its end of the bargain. A 21st-century nation that lets its citizens slide into poverty and deprives its children of opportunity is taking a backward approach to history.

Don’t buy the right-wing, Tea Party nonsense that “entitlements” are a luxury we can’t afford. They’re a legal right and necessary for a civilized America.

Larry Flynt

Ann Coulter Comic

Gun Owners of America

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people children to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed.

Obama’s State of the Union Address

(Courtesy of Larry Flynt)

I am Barack Obama. I am the President. I am relevant. I know who elected me. It wasn’t the rich 1%. It was hardworking Americans, union members and minority groups who haven’t gotten the fair shake they deserve. I will keep the promises I made. My word is good.

To the wealth class of this country, let me say this: You supported my Republican rival Mitt Romney four-to-one against me. Now it’s payback time. I will end the Bush tax cuts for top earners and push through comprehensive regulation of our corrupt banking and financial systems. The era of unfettered greed is over.

I will halt unjust home foreclosures, protect Social Security and Medicare and relieve the crushing burden of student debt on our young professionals. I will enact labor-union reforms that will restore bargaining power and fair representation to our working class.

I will push for nonpartisan election reform to end voter suppression and make states abide by fair-voting rules. People will no longer have to wait in line for hours or endure lies and humiliation just to exercise their fundamental democratic right. I will embark on immigration reform and build a clear and just pathway to citizenship for anyone coming here to participate in the American Dream.

The frequency of powerful and destructive storms leaves no doubt that climate change is real and that humans are the cause. The United States must take the lead in moving humanity toward a clean-fuel future. I will say no to destructive fossil-fuel pipelines and drilling, spur investment in green technology and work with the world’s leaders to seal meaningful environmental agreements.

I will create incentives for investment in new industries, such as biotech and next-generation communications technology, that further the cause of scientific progress and keep America competitive.

If you think I can’t do all this with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, watch me. I’ll be reaching across the aisle—but only to welcome you to my side, not to compromise. I will veto any piece of legislation that comes across my desk that does not have the best interests of the American people at heart.

Selling Out to Big Brother

by Robert Scheer for HUSTLER Magazine

The most sacred principle of American life, honored in our Constitution and throughout our history, is that of privacy—or as Larry Flynt puts it, “the right to be left alone.” But thanks to the information revolution, the government’s assault on privacy is now more pervasive, though largely invisible, than ever under any preexisting totalitarian government.

The tools of intrusion are so varied—beginning with Google searches and Facebook “likes” and extending to cellphone-position locators—that a full accounting of the postwiretap- era intrusion is not possible. But recent data on just one of the snooping techniques involving cellphones mocks the relatively minuscule power of any previous fascist or communist government to spy on its citizens.

Unbounded by the strict restraints that used to govern telephone wiretaps of old, today’s high-tech telecommunication companies are required by law to cooperate with all federal and state surveillance requests. We know just how pervasive that snooping through cellphone data is thanks to Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, who released the government’s report to the New York Times.

“In the first public accounting of its kind,” the Times stated, “cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year [2011] from law-enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.” Because all of this surveillance has been conducted under the cloak of deepest government secrecy, there is no serious accountability as to why our right to privacy is being trampled upon so cavalierly. Indeed, as the Congressional report indicates, millions of us who are not even the target of any investigation are swept up in this surveillance. It’s more convenient for government snoops to make massive data dumps from cell towers, sweeping up all users in their wake rather than just isolating the person or persons suspected of malfeasance. Nor do the previous restraints on wiretapping that required a court order apply to these broad sweeps, which are clearly in violation of our Bill of Rights protections of individual freedom from arbitrary government intrusion.

Wiretapping of the kind you witnessed in old movies, with cops next door listening in on calls, is a thing of the past in the day of the cellphone. In 2011 that only happened 2,732 times, partially because of the inconvenience of needing a strictly governed court order and a surveillance outpost. Why worry about such legal niceties and the technical difficulty of a wiretap when law-enforcement officials can now request a data dump from a tower that happens to link the phone of a single suspect while receiving thousands of other folks’ information. All for the paltry cost of between $50 to $75 an hour they pay the obliging telecom company for the surveillance service.

That cellphone data can tell investigators everything about the life of unsuspecting and unsuspected citizens, from the food they order to the magazines and books they buy—not to mention all of their physical movements. The total totalitarian experience is now eminently affordable.

Technically cellphone carriers are required by federal law to obtain a search warrant, a subpoena or a court order, but that is easily violated in the broad scope of data dumps. In the case of the most rapidly growing intrusion into people’s personal lives, the use of GPS-generated data, there seems to be next to nothing in the way of legal restraint.

And, of course—as the George W. Bush administration established in its manic pursuit of terrorists—any claim that national security is involved gives government agencies full-throated permission to break down the walls around one’s private existence. When telecom companies were sued for cooperating on a massive level with the Bush government in wantonly reading the data of millions of Americans, Congress granted them immunity from lawsuits.

Sprint, the third-largest cellphone carrier, reported that it honors 1,500 data requests a day from federal, state and local police agencies. And since Sprint—like its counterparts— is paid for those searches, company officials are hardly inclined to complain on behalf of their customers, who might not want all of their data turned over.

The leading cellphone carriers have gone along with few complaints. As an AT&T subscriber, I was not thrilled to learn that law-enforcement agencies paid “my” phone company $8.3 million in 2011 to turn over subscriber data. A few of the smaller carriers have resisted. TracFone informed Representative Markey that the company “shares your concerns regarding the unauthorized tracking of wireless phones by law enforcement with little or no judicial oversight, and I assure you that TracFone does not participate in or condone such unauthorized tracking.”

Shouldn’t we all demand our cellphone carriers to endorse that Constitutionally protected standard our government has ruthlessly chosen to shred?

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Before serving almost 30 years as a Los Angeles Times columnist and editor, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hardhitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.