Just about every tyrannical, dictatorial, and unconstitutional act perpetrated by the U.S. government –or contemplated by it — was first  done in some form by Lincoln. That’s why the Claremont Institute/Hillsdale College/National Review neocons adore him so much.   Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham (D-Ohio), who was deported by Lincoln, began protesting Lincoln’s “executive usurpations” in 1861 on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.  By April of 1863 Abe the Dictator had had enough and sent 67 heavily-armed soldiers to Vallandigham’s Dayton, Ohio home, who dragged him out of bed and threw him into one of Abe’s special gulags before deporting him without any due process.

Here’s what Vallandigham  had to say about Abe’s dictatorial abolition of the Fourth Amendment during his time, which is eerily similar to today’s NSA (National Socialist Administration) “surveillance scandal”:

“The privacy of the telegraph was invaded, in the search after treason and traitors; although it turns out, significantly enough, that the only victim, so far, is one of the appointees . . . of the Administration.  The telegraphic dispatches, preserved under every pledge of secrecy, for the protection and safety of the telegraph companies, were seized and carried away without search warrant, without probable cause, without oath, and without description of the places to be searched, or of the things to be seized, and in plain violation of the right of the people to be secure in their houses, persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizures.”

— Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, “Executive Usurpations,” Speech Delivered in the U.S. House of Representatives, July 10, 1861, in Speeches, Arguments, Addresses and Letters of Clement L. Vallandigham (New York: J. Walter & Co. 1864, p. 318).  Reprinted and available at Amazon.com.  Free download also available at Google Books.

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