let's pretend: government by blackmail

in light of the commission report, i want to assert that the nsa surveillance regime cannot be stopped by anyone, including the president, and i assert that it is a permanent feature of american life. one asks oneself why, as obama took office, he just continued or redoubled the bush/cheney project for the entire vitiation of the constitution or the transition to a post-democracy america. obama has presumably, for example, read the constitution etc. welllll, gues what? when alexander or whomever briefed him on the program, he also conveyed, without necessarily having to say anything, that the nsa had the last x years of obama's communications in a storage facility. we are in a position where no one's enthusiatic endorsement of the program should be taken at face value, and no one's opposition will be effective. there can be no oversight, for the nsa is the overseer. all they're actually trying to do is re-secretize the whole thing, or re-institute the 'let's pretend to be a democracy' approach.