Here are a couple of more things about the NSA.
First off, the President's speech and news conference last Friday were, arguably, a new low in his stumbling presidency. Far from treating us like adults, he showed contempt for the American people and reasserted that only he and the unseen professionals could evaluate what was proper with regard to the NSA snooping on all of us.
Second, the "outside and independent" review he promised on Friday will be nothing of the sort. The same clowns who have lied to us in the past will be the ones to review what the NSA is doing. It will be headed up by James Clapper, who has a track record of lying to Congress.
Feel comforted by that? It's sort of like Mayor Bloomberg asking the Police Commissioner to investigate his own department for civil rights violations: The results are pretty easy to foretell.
Congress needs to plow under its pro-police-state caucus and get to work exercising some serious oversight and conducting some detailed investigations, as the Church Committee did almost 40 years ago. And if the NSA won't cooperate, then defund the jackholes.
UPDATE: The White House is trying to walk back the involvement of Jimmy the Perjurer in the review. But since Clapper the Fibber is the one who will control the security clearances for the quote independent investigators unquote, he effectively will control who gets to investigate the NSA.
p.s. yes, I know about that asshole Christianist judge in Tennessee, but that's kind of small beer to me these days.
The Contr-urine-an Librarian
1 hour ago
7 comments:
I was waiting for a question about the DEA/NSA connection but was disappointed.
That would require the reporters in the White House Press Corps to have an attention span longer than that of a gnat.
Which they evidently do not.
I can only imagine that James Clapper's golf game will improve dramatically during the 'investigation.'
Sarah, Helen Thomas is dead. Alas.
Comrade, 'tis been so for quite some time, but the absence of Helen makes it even more obvious. We Are So Fracked.
Too true, BadTux. Helen did not hesitate to ask pointed questions - repeatedly - and while they were never answered, the asking revealed some truth.
These days, the press corpse just licks it up.
One last thing about Helen Thomas. I'm aware of why she fell from grace with her public remarks about Jews "getting the hell out of Palestine". It's one thing to criticize Israel, and (cough) settlement policy, it's another to suggest it should not exist. Too bad her career had to end on that ill-considered offhand rant.
Given how many times Israel has fracked over her ancestral country of Lebanon, I can understand, though not excuse, her personal views about Israel. The thing about Helen Thomas's personal views is that I'm not aware that they ever affected the content of her reporting. She was an old school reporter, not a Faux News "reporter" that spins everything to reflect their own ideological biases. When it came to reporting, her only ideology appeared to be truth. Which of course differentiated her from the current White House pool, whose only ideology appears to be accurate stenography, and they suck even at that.
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