here are a couple of fine pieces on nsa from the wall street journal, which - remarkably - has been very aggressive in its coverage and condemnation. i'd say this has been a pretty good moment to see who the decent human beings, clear thinkers, and people who keep faith with american ideals really are, and any time you've got kucinich and noonan together in their outrage, you might want to listen up.
from a roundup by peggy noonan:
If you assume all the information that can and will be gleaned will be confined to NSA and national security purposes, you are not sufficiently imaginative or informed. If you believe the information will never be used wrongly or recklessly, you are touchingly innocent.
If you assume you can trust the administration on this issue you are not following the bouncing ball, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who told Congress under oath the NSA didn't gather "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans" (he later had to apologize) to President Obama, who told Jay Leno: "We don't have a domestic program." What we do have, the president said, is "some mechanism that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack."
Oh, we have more than that.
bob filner, currently looking for employment, would make an excellent nsa director.
