In making criminals out of whistleblowers, Obama worse than Nixon?

Earlier this morning, I was on the ready-set-go mode to head to campus when I was reminded that I fell asleep, with the bedside light on, half-way through Jane Meyer's essay in the New Yorker, on the NSA whistle-blowers.  So, grabbed the magazine and sat down on the chair ... and was absolutely depressed even before I reached the following final sentences in the essay:

“The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.”

President Obama has even managed to make the Bush/Cheney and even the Nixon folks look better:

the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. ...
Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”

Hey, that is probably the kind of changes Senator Obama promised, eh! 

What has President Obama managed to achieve through his relentless pursuit of whistle-blowers?  Meyer quotes Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin:  "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."

How does this bipartisanship manifest itself?  Here is an example: Glenn Greenwald notes that the Patriot Act got a four-year renewal, without reforms, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote

So when they were out of power, the Democrats reviled the Patriot Act and constantly complained about fear-mongering tactics and exploitation of the Terrorist threat being used to stifle civil liberties and privacy concerns.  Now that they're in power and a Democratic administration is arguing for extension of the Patriot Act, they use fear-mongering tactics and exploitation of the Terrorist threat to stifle civil liberties and privacy concerns ("If somebody wants to take on their shoulders not having provisions in place which are necessary to protect the United States at this time, that's a big, big weight to bear," warned Feinstein).  And they're joined in those efforts by the vast majority of the GOP caucus. 

Chronologically we might be moving far away from 1984, but politically, we are getting closer and closer to lining up to admit that thoughtcrime is death and to then proudly proclaim "I love Big Brother."