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| Stephen Colbert as the fictional Stephen Colbert (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
4 funny Stephen Colbert video clips. 2 Daily Show clips.
From Denny: When NSA Leaker Edward Snowden poked the hornets' nest of the intelligence community (IC), the military, private contractors, the government and the Justice Department they geared up into a defensive posture like never before this week.
Their collective backlash was the usual heavy-handedness of the 800 pound gorilla, heaped upon one individual they figure is an easy win, which only made the government look worse to the casual observer, especially the enthusiastic voting demographic under the age of 30.
Clearly, the
government agencies are laying out the case to the court of public opinion, hoping to turn the public against Snowden so they have an excuse to either give him the death penalty or send out another wave of assassins. It's a shameful attitude and excessive behavior.
The smart thing would have been to STFU, issue a few press statements in defense of the phone sweeping and then wait for it to blow over or get replaced by yet another news story. But no, the nasty Justice Department and the military guys running the various intelligence agencies just couldn't leave their testosterone in the bottle. They just had to pounce and gang up on Snowden. So now they are creating a social martyr. It's the usual oxymoronic display of "military intelligence."
Why such an over reaction? What are they really hiding? Does Snowden really know and plan to reveal something far more intimidating than what we already suspected and knew to be true about our government? If it's true that Snowden made off with at least one million documents after only employed for a mere three months how can the government and its private contractors make the case they had in place strict difficult to break protocols to prevent what Snowden did so easily? Are they asleep at the switch or just plain lazy?
Get this; Snowden was quickly given access to the
FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) warrant order and more related materials posted on a web server during the NSA orientation on his first day. The Chinese, the Russians and the Israelis must be laughing in their sleeves about now at the silly levels of security of which the American government places so much confidence and hope.
Special public hearings to prove the various government communities have done nothing wrong and how they have safeguarded everyone's privacy is what they are selling today. The problem with
the hard sell is that it becomes increasingly obvious that something odious is on the other side of the door and the sales folks are hoping to distract us all away from it.
After all, too many of the vociferous Snowden critics and those in the military, the IC, the government's politicians own stock in those private contractors making billions of dollars from those NSA contracts and other defense industry projects. It's more about defending their wallets than it is about justice or America's safety from terrorists. America: Home of the Bought and Sold Government. It's no wonder a small level guy like Snowden went public with as much as he could gather up to publish.
While
most Americans understand and accept the need for surveillance, we also expect it to be reasonable. We expect that snooping to have a targeted
specific person in their sights not a regular rolling over 90-day search warrant rubber stamped by the secret FISA court. It's annoying when the
government officials keep parsing their words to be legally correct but ethically and morally deceptive.
Are you guys tired of selling your souls a little at a time every day? Just take a look at how haggard some of Team Obama look and it's obvious they are allowing themselves to be bullied by the IC and the military generals into making decisions they know they should not.
There has been enough killing and it is a practice to which our government should not get addicted. Get your compasses back to wisdom. Quit trying to balance the egos in government agencies and stay straight on smart.
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