"If any member of Congress should be under surveillance, it would be Sanders"
by digby
Sure, why not?
After Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) demanded to know whether the NSA was spying on U.S. Congress members, one self-styled media watchdog suggests that maybe they should.
“Not one article has dared to ask whether Sanders and other ‘progressive’ members of Congress should be under surveillance because of their contacts with foreign intelligence agencies,” wrote Cliff Kincaid, director of the Accuracy In Media Center for Investigative Journalism.
“In a sense, the story is a bunch of hype,” Kincaid wrote. “Like other Americans, certain data about members of Congress is being collected by the NSA, but not searched unless there is evidence of foreign and terrorist connections. Sanders wants the public to think this is sinister activity.”
Kincaid complained that no federal elected officials, including the president and lawmakers, are required to go through security background checks before being allowed to serve, which he suggests could put national security at risk.
“If any member of Congress should be under surveillance, it would be Sanders,” Kincaid wrote.
Kincaid pointed out that Sanders, a self-described socialist who runs for office as an independent but caucuses with Democrats, had worked with activists to halt nuclear proliferation – which the right-wing activist suggested was unpatriotic.
Who is Cliff Kincaid? Yeah, he's a member in good standing of the right wing noise machine:
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM [Accuracy in media] Center for Investigative Journalism. From 2003 – 2010 he was Editor of the “AIM Report.” A veteran journalist and media critic, he currently specializes in election coverage, the Fairness Doctrine, coverage of the U.N., and coverage of financial bailouts. AIM’s founder, Reed Irvine, hired Cliff as an intern and then a staffer in 1978, and Cliff has been associated with AIM in some capacity ever since.
Cliff regularly appears on television and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, NBC’s Today Show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, The Glenn Beck Show, Fox and Friends, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, The Savage Nation, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Laura Ingraham Show, The Mike Gallagher Show, Your World with Neil Cavuto, NOW, Frontline and Voice of America. His columns have been read on the air by Rush Limbaugh.
Accuracy in Media is a longtime wingnut welfare outfit that's easy to dismiss as just another bunch of right wing cranks. But they serve an interesting function in the right wing media ecosystem: they are refs that work the refs. Here's an example:
In November 2005, AIM columnist Cliff Kincaid criticized Fox News for broadcasting a program The Heat is On, which reported that global warming represents a serious problem (the program was broadcast with a disclaimer). Kincaid argued the piece was one-sided and stated that this "scandal" amounted to a "hostile takeover of Fox News"
At the time a bipartisan consensus was forming on climate change. AIM was instrumental in beginning the push back by pressuring right wing media. It's worked.
I doubt that his call for Senator Sanders to be put under surveillance will be quite as successful but it serves the purpose of getting it out in the wingnut ether that this is a reasonable position to take. You never know where that sort of thing will lead.
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