Huckabee: NSA spying, Clinton's private emails making Americans 'more distrustful' of government
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Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee expressed his opposition Sunday to extending NSA phone-spying and suggested the program -- along with recent revelations like Hillary Clinton’s having used private email for official State Department communication -- has resulted in Americans’ unprecedented distrust of the Obama administration.
“The secrecy with which this government has operated and, specifically, Hillary Clinton using a private email server outside the bounds of normal State Department protocol is very troubling,” Huckabee told “Fox News Sunday.” “There’s never been a time in my lifetime where people are more distrustful of government.”
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, is now the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 White House race.
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Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, made his comments a day after the Senate failed to pass legislation to extend the section of post-9/11 Patriot Act that covers the National Security Agency’s bulk phone data collection program, which expires on June 1.
Huckabee said U.S. intelligence-gathers should “get a warrant” if they suspect an American of being involved in such activity as terrorism or spying, instead of the sweeping phone-data gathering, especially since it has been ineffective in thwarting a major terror plot.
“If this is so effective, why hasn’t it foiled potential terrorist plots?” he asked. “Not one [foiled plot] has been tied to the NSA’s collection of metadata. … It seems like we’re spending billions of dollars on the whiz-bang technology and not enough on human resources, which have proven to be the most effective way of stopping terrorism.”
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Huckabee also said the Constitution “already provides what we should do.”
“If you have probable cause … you go to a judge and get a warrant and then you can listen to his phone calls,” he said.
Huckabee also argued Americans are concerned about the Supreme Court now having too much authority because the high-court’s decisions become law without the checks and balances of the legislative and executive branches.
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“One can’t overrule the other two,” he said. “We learned that in 9th grade civics. It’s a matter of balance of power.”